A look inside Oppo’s Silicon Valley
How China’s number 1 phone maker launches a phone and markets it to Australia
Foxconn “ahead of schedule” in improving working conditions, says Fair Labor Association
After an initial investigation in February – initiated by Apple, in the wake of a New York Times piece and a Mike Daisey’s piece on Apple working conditions (which was later retracted) – the Fair Labor Association has released their follow-up verification report to see if they are implementing the 195 actions that had to happen, and the organisation has found that some progress has been made. “Our verification shows […]
Huawei banned in NBN supplier bid due to ASIO’s fears of army ties
Photo: Kainet/Flickr (Creative Commons) The Australian Government reportedly stopped Chinese mobile equipment maker Huawei Technologies from bidding to become a major supplier to the National Broadband Network, over fears of cyber attacks from China and its CEO’s links to the army. According to The Australian Financial Review, the Attorney-General’s office told the company that they were banned – despite a reported endorsement by NBN Co’s technology department. That advice was […]
OPINION: Foxconn is not just an Apple problem, it’s a consumer problem – and there’s no way out
Image of Foxconn's facilities (Image by ttstam/Flickr, under Creative Commons) You may have heard in the news that Apple has had a serious problem with building its products with China. Constant news reports from the main technology press, and soon the more mainstream press, have shined a light of the inner workings of its manufacturing partners. But, why are we so focused on Apple? We shouldn’t focus on them at […]
Apple manufacturer Foxconn hacked after protests over labour conditions
Screenshot of the data dump (Image: 9to5Mac) Controversial manufacturer Foxconn has been hacked in protest over its working conditions, with the group leaking login details of the staff inside the company. This comes as protesters are demanding Apple to make an “ethically-made iPhone 5”. Yes, because they are stuck between two problems – remain hipster with the iPhone, or support poor working conditions. I know, it’s a really hard decision. […]
Lenovo announces S2 Tablet, runs ICS – available in China now, everyone else has to wait
Lenovo has announced that a brand new tablet – the Idea Tab S2. A 10-inch tablet and running on a custom skin (as you can tell from the image), everyone else will have to wait as China gets its now – a big gamble and could possibly a mistake in the crowded field of tablets. The S2 weighs only 1.1lbs and runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8960 dual core CPU […]
China to launch 3D TV trial, aims for Chinese New Year launch
Sony's HMZ-T1 Personal 3D Viewer (Image: Sony) China will soon embrace 3D television with a trial channel to be launched during Chinese New Year. Operated by China’s state television – China Central Television – and five local stations, it will also be free-to-air. it will broadcast 4.5 hours of programming that will be repeated twice. What will be on the channel, however, is unknown. I’m guessing that it has been […]
Google: Gmail problems in China are from Govt.
Google has accused the Chinese Government for interfering with its email service Gmail as the government attempts to crack down on a “Jasmine Revolution” – a dissident movement inspired by the protests in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and across the Middle East. Chinese customers and advertisers have, according to The Guardian, complained about the service in the past month, such as attempting to send messages or even mark messages as unread. […]
TECHGEEK Weekly 33: It’s Raining Tablets
This week saw Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and the number of tablets have expanded with Samsung, LG and HTC getting in the mix; while publishers are angry with Apple and Telstra gains some love with us with its announcement over 4G. We also get into a shouting match over the fact that processors are different – with Tom on one side and the rest of us on the other. […]
China Firewall “needs improvement”, says creator
Image by: Skye Inominatus/Flickr The creator of the Great Firewall of China has come out to the public spotlight and is reported to have said that the firewall needs improvement if it needs to combat people trying to bypass the firewall in order to access sites blocked by the Government, such as Facebook and Twitter. Fang Binxing, the 50-year-old president of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, has told a […]
TECHGEEK Weekly 31: Where’s my IPv4?
The internet has run out of IPv4 addresses and also Intel has a bad batch of Sandy Bridge chips that needs replacing. But it’s not all bad news – Murdoch is spreading his empire on the iPad, while Google’s Honeycomb is looking delicious with its sexy user interface. That’s this week on the TECHGEEK Weekly podcast. James Wilson joins the podcast again (for the last few minutes of the episode) […]
TECHGEEK Weekly 27: CES is driving us GaGa
And we’re back officially. CES was in full swing, and we saw a lot of tablets, 4G phones and 3D from Sony. We also had crazy Harvey Norman trying to put GST on our purchases online, Facebook being valued at $50 billion and the Mac App Store launch – and hack. And yes, it is the first hour long podcast – and the only one as it seems. But, hey, […]
Lenovo’s IdeaPad U1 (+ LePad) becomes reality – in China
Remember last year when Lenovo presented this really cool laptop-tablet combination called the IdeaPad U1? Well, Lenovo has confirmed that the project isn’t dead – and will come out to market sometime in the first quarter of this year. Only problem – only in China. The device, which is a laptop but the screen can be pulled out to be a tablet computer a-la the iPad, will run on both […]
Zuckerberg to partner with Baidu to open Facebook China?
Image: Sina (via guardian.co.uk) Founder of Facebook and recent inductee to Time’s Person of the Year, Mark Zuckerberg, has been spotted in China taking a tour around Baidu; and now, speculation is rising of a possible Facebook in China, with the help of Baidu’s power in one of the largest markets in terms of users on the Internet. Baidu has been quick to downplay such rumours, telling that his meeting […]
TECHGEEK Podcast 17: Let’s squint for Amazon
It feels like the longest episode so far, but it’s apparently not. Yes, the whole team is back… before they left again. However, not before we go through all the week’s Apple stories that managed to take up 15 minutes of the episode. Yes. You heard that. You might as well skip the 15 minutes. We talk about Skyfire, iBookstores and introduce a new segment called Gadgets. We are resting […]