Another worker at China’s Foxconn Technology Group has died. While few details were released by the state-run Xinhua News Agency, the incident is the 10th death in the past year at the electronics maker. Ironically, the death followed an announcement Monday by Foxconn disputing reports of a sweatshop atmosphere. “We are certainly not running a sweatshop.

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Report: Latest Foxconn Death Makes 10

Reports are circulating that Apple’s iBookstore model may not be entirely legal in the European continent because the company has too much control over the products being sold and distributed through the digital store. Book publishers must be certain that they are in control of product pricing through the Cupertino-based company or else they could fall into trouble with Britain’s competition law. “The legality of the model in the UK is yet to be established,” reports The Bookseller . “Industry sources have warned for several weeks that the agency model used to sell e-books through the iBookStore could face legal hurdles.” Macnn ‘s industry source said that publishers are currently discussing a deal for the UK iBookstore that would make it work within UK and European Union competition laws. The source is quoted as saying, “The situation is very different in the UK, where Amazon does not have the same hold over e-book sales and where there are not such worries over e-book prices, so it may not prove to be right. We have to make sure that the way we sell e-books is appropriate to each individual territory.” The source also warns that it may be an “enormous challenge” to have these deals prepared in time for the iBookstore to open in several other countries, the same day that the iPad device will become available outside of US borders.

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iBookstore May Be Under Fire from UK Competition Law

Section: Mac Software , Games As promised, Valve has rolled out the Mac version of Steam, the digital distribution platform for computer gaming. The software is available for immediate download at steamgames.com. Each Wednesday, a new group of games highlighting an area of Steam functionality will be released. This week’s titles show off Steam Play, but the big news is that Valve is making Portal available for free until May 24th. Portal has been called one of the most innovative games of the decade. A hybrid of FPS style and a new genre of spatial brain teasers, Portal offers hours of totally unique gameplay. Set in the mysterious Aperture Science Laboratories, players must solve physical puzzles and challenges by opening portals, maneuvering objects, and moving themselves through space in ways that used to be impossible. The other titles available this week are: And Yet It Moves Atlantis Sky Patrol Bejeweled 2 Deluxe Bob Came in Pieces Bookworm Deluxe Braid Brainpipe Chocolatier: Decadence by Design Chuzzle Deluxe City of Heroes: Architect Edition Civilization IV: The Complete Edition Cooking Dash Diaper Dash The Dig Diner Dash: Hometown Hero DinerTown Detective Agency DinerTown Tycoon Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child Escape Rosecliff Island Fairway Solitaire Fitness Dash Football Manager 10 Galcon Fusion Gemini Lost Guns of Icarus Hotel Dash Suite Success Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade KrissX Loom Luxor Luxor 3 Luxor: Mahjong Machinarium Mahjong Roadshow Max and the Magic Marker My Tribe The Nightshift Code Nightshift Legacy: The Jaguar’s Eye Parking Dash Peggle Deluxe Peggle Nights Portal Professor Fizzwizzle and the Molten Mystery Quantz Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse Tales of Monkey Island Season 1 Toki Tori Torchlight Trijinx: A Kristine Kross Mystery Unwell Mel Valarie Porter and the Scarlett Scandal Wandering Willows Wedding Dash 2: Rings Around the World World of Goo Zenerchi Zuma Deluxe Products [ Steam for Mac and Portal ] Full Story » | Written by Kirk Hiner for Appletell . | Comment on this Article »

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Mac users get free Portal for a limited time

Filed under: Apple AdvertisingAge confirms today what the Wall Street Journal pointed out last week : advertising with Apple’s iAd service won’t be cheap. Most advertising agencies charge either a flat rate per thousand impressions (CPM) or a small amount each time a user clicks an ad (CPC). With iAd, Apple will do both. Under Apple’s arrangement, advertisers will pay US$10 per 1,000 impressions, $0.01 for each ad displayed, and $2 for each ad clicked. By comparison, AdMob reportedly charges $10 to $15 CPM (on average). Customers opting into CPC campaigns will pay $0.15 to $0.30 per click. AdAge’s Kunur Patel and Michael Learmont dislike Apple’s deal, saying “Apple is reinventing mobile ad pricing, and not in a good way.” Fortune notes that Apple has not yet released an iAds developer’s kit, meaning that customers will have to work with Apple when creating campaigns. Again, the price tag is high: Apple will charge $50,000 to $100,000 to agencies spending less than $1 million on iAd buys, according to agency executives. In related news, Google is currently hoping to convince the FTC to allow its intended purchase of AdMob. They’re using Apple’s forthcoming iAds service as evidence of competition in the mobile advertising market. AdAge doesn’t like iAd’s pricing scheme originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 05 May 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . AdAge doesn’t like iAd’s pricing scheme originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 05 May 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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AdAge doesn’t like iAd’s pricing scheme

Federal regulators apparently have taken note of the ongoing spat between Apple and Adobe, and the iPhone maker’s decision to prohibit developers from submitting apps originally created for Flash. The U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are “days away” from deciding which agency will launch an antitrust probe into Apple’s developer agreement banning

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Report: Apple Faces Federal Inquiry Due to Developer Policy

Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iPad , iPhone , iPod touch , Mac Software Macintosh and iPhone/iPod/iPad product updates and announcements for April 29, 2010: Macintosh iPod Macintosh Only two days are left to get 20% off any purchase of PopChar, KeyCue, Typinator, and SharewarePublisher. A couple of weeks ago, Ergonis Software launched a completely new web site, with a new online store, and switched to a more flexible license policy. Ergonis celebrates the relaunch with a 20% discount off any purchase before the end of April. So hurry and place your order at Ergonis’ new web store now. Humble Daisy, Inc has announced their “Thanks Mom” Mother’s Day contest . Do you have a great mom? Why not win her some great prizes and have a little fun to boot? The makers of SonicPics want to help you and your mom celebrate how awesome she is!  The moms of the winners will not only get the recording that you send them, but they will also get maid service and flowers delivered to their homes for Mother’s Day. Eltima Software has announced SWF & FLV Player for Mac version 3.8

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Mac, iPhone, iPod and iPad product news – April 29, 2010

It’s part of the Congressional record: the head of the NSA says the iPad is “wonderful.” During hearings to determine whether he will take charge of U.S. Cyber Command, the head of the National Security Agency, Lieutenant General Keith Alexander, said: “I am a technologist. I love computers. I have a new iPad,” Alexander told the committee of Senators. A

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Head of NSA Says iPad “Wonderful” During Congressional Hearings

Apple and Google’s throw down only seems to get more and more interesting each day.  Apple is now insisting that iPhone and iPad apps can only share user-interaction data with Apple, which translates into iAd being able to know when users view and interact with embedded ads, according to Gawker.com . This could mean trouble for rivals such as Google’s AdMob.  Their platform, as well as others, won’t have access to such data, which could seriously undermine their ads worth. The new policy first caught the attention of Peter Kafka of All Things D .  Apple has already gotten around to rejecting one app, because it used a largely-deployed analytics system, according to Paul Boutin with VentureBeat .  Google’s AdMob also reportedly told Boutin that it was concerned about Apple’s new rules.   But just the same, ad agency Hill Holiday said that iAd will contain "premium…expensive" ads built on "high-quality creative," after visiting with reps from Apple.  They also said that Apple’s iAd is "very impressive in its granularity" and that iAds could gain access to the "compass..accelerometer [and] multitouch" information. How do you feel readers, about Apple’s latest jump into the mobile advertising industry?  Is it too much?  Just right?  Doesn’t matter?  Feel free to leave comments below!  

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Apple Continues To Give The ‘Ol 1-2 To Google With iAd

The Financial Times has reported that a good number of executive eyebrows have been raised at publishing juggernaut Random House’s head office over Apple’s share of the pie for content served up via their iBookstore . Random House is reportedly none too pleased with Apple’s use of an "agency model" in its pricing practices. Under an agency model, a company serving up a publisher’s content has a right to snag a cut of the publishing company’s coin on a per-item basis. In this instance, Apple’s cut of the profits sings to the tune of 30% of the total purchase price of every E-book sold via the iBookstore. Where have we seen Apple engage in this sort of behavior before? Why, in the App Store, of course. They’ve been enjoying a 70-30 profit split with application developers since the store’s launch in 2008. So far HarperCollins, Penguin, Hachette, Simon & Shuster, and MacMillan have hopped on the iBookstore bandwagon, and will have a slection of their publications available for consumption when the iPad hits the streets. With great authors like Ian McEwan and Sophie Kinsella under their imprint, we can only hope that Random House will follow suit

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iBookstore’s Cut Too Steep for Random House?

Filed under: Apple , iPad Apple’s “Meet iPad” ad, which debuted during the Oscars , became the second-most viewed viral video ad last week. Michael Learmonth, writing for AdAge , points out that “Apple has had a YouTube channel since 2005, but only recently started using it. In the past, they’d focused on driving views on Apple.com, but for the iPad, they allowed the video to be embedded across the web, and views were distributed across 100 different placements.” Those 100 different placements totaled a cool 2.5 million “Meet iPad” ad views last week. The only ad that beat “Meet iPad” was E*Trade’s popular “Milkaholic” Superbowl ad, which had increased views due to interest from Lindsay Lohan filing suit against E*Trade claiming the ad was a parody of her. “Meet iPad” was produced by the TBWA/Chiat/Day ad agency. Apple’s iPad ad goes viral originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Apple’s iPad ad goes viral originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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Apple’s iPad ad goes viral