An unnamed executive at Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn has revealed that Apple's iPhone 5 is the most challenging assembly the company's workers have ever faced.
"The iPhone 5 is the most difficult device that Foxconn has ever assembled. To make it light and thin, the design is very complicated," the exec reportedly told the Wall Street Journal.
"It takes time to learn how to make this new device," he or she said, adding, "Practice makes perfect. Our productivity has been improving day by day."
Now it seems troubles at Foxconn is perhaps to blame as well, though that shouldn't come as a surprise.
Foxconn strikes again
Foxconn has courted its share of controversy this year, so it's easy to forget that 99 percent of the time its employees are simply making iPhones and other devices.
That's when they're not going on strike due reportedly to unreasonable quality control demands combined with lack of proper training of course.
We take a set tour and talk to the cast of Syfy Channel's upcoming TV show, Defiance, a show that is just one piece of a much larger world.
When Defiance launches in April 2013, it will be much more than either Trion Worlds’ newest massively multiplayer online game, or Syfy’s latest science-fiction series. It will be the first-ever true cross-medium entertainment franchise.
It is a massive undertaking, requiring multimedia coordination between two completely separate, and yet now inextricably connected sides of the same property, working towards expanding the same universe following a failed alien invasion that left the Earth a changed place. Trion’s game will take place in the remains of the Bay Area and follow hunters searching for an alien mineral, while the Syfy TV show will focus on survivors in the city known as Defiance.
Walking around the massive set in Toronto, it’s obvious that the show will have a big-budget feel. And playing the third-person perspective shooter MMO, it’s clear that the last four years of development have resulted in what looks like yet another hit for Trion Worlds in the ultra-competitive online gaming space.
“Defiance is the most exciting thing I’ve ever heard of,” said actor Grant Bowler, who plays Jeb Nolan in both the game and the show. “When I got asked to look at the show, I initially had no idea that we were going to be here doing this. This idea of bringing those media together, TV is in everybody’s home, and we play our games, generally, on our TV at home. It’s a natural fit, but I think it has always seemed so complicated and difficult to do that, it’s been beyond the realm of the possible.”
According to Bill Trost, lead game designer at Trion Worlds, from the very beginning the game developers in San Diego have been working with Syfy as a partner. They’ve had regular calls and meetings and discussions on how to craft this new intellectual property.
“It’s something we’re excited about,” Trost told us in a recent exclusive interview. “It’s something that hasn’t really been done in that way before.”
It’s taken a lot of work to craft a story that begins in the game world in the Bay Area with two of the protagonists of the TV series leaving the area, then picks up in the show with those same two characters driving into Defiance, which rests atop what was once St. Louis.
“When I started doing TV in the early ‘90s, the idea of having something that was as immersive and gigantic as this overwhelming mythology would not have been possible,” said Kevin Murphy, who wrote and executive produced Desperate Housewives, Reaper, and now Defiance. “Something like Game of Thrones or Defiance would not have been possible because TV was much more close-ended. Now, with the advent of online, you can really do a lot of things you were not previously able to do. We’re really trying to see how far can we push those boundaries. What can we take advantage of in terms of creating an actual world that is unlike anything that we know today, but at the same time is very familiar.”
Both the show and the game take place 30 years in the future after an alien race known as the Votans attempted to immigrate to Earth. The governments of the Earth decided to turn away the Votans, which led to a disastrous war that partially terraformed the Earth and forced the two races to attempt to peacefully coexist. Players will enter the universe as “Arc Hunters,” exploring the Bay Area and looking for alien technology that occasionally falls from the sky. Although there will be TV characters migrating in and out of the game world, because the locations are so far apart there’s plenty of space for two separate stories to be told.
“There are big events and small things that will cross over from game to show,” said Trost. “Everything from the flora and fauna in the game world and the television show matching up, to these huge crossovers with characters both coming from the game world and going into the show, and from the show coming into the game world.”
When the game debuts, the first crossover will already be well under way.
“I’m finally in two places at one time,” joked Bowler. “My character, Nolan, starts off in the video game and then goes into the series. When we launch the video game, there’s a point where Nolan leaves, and then exactly in that way, we begin the television series. So right from the beginning, there’s a synthesis between the two. The two worlds of game and show are connected, and they’ll stay that way.”
The show features some of the creative minds behind Syfy hits Farscape and Battlestar Galactica, which bodes well for this new series. While the game will focus more on action, the show will involve more character development and drama — and there’s plenty of drama to go around with so many different alien species living together in one town.
“I play Irisa and she’s an Irathient alien [a subspeciaes of the Votans],” explained actress Stephanie Leonidas, who is almost unrecognizable with all the prosthetics on. “There are many species of alien in Defiance. The pilot is about Irisa and Nolan’s journey to Defiance. Nolan is basically her father figure. And then the show picks up from when they get there.”
The series is being filmed in Toronto, where a full-sized recreation of the town of Defiance has been built outside of large sound stage areas.
“What we’ve done up there is build an entire city,” said Bowler. “What’s really exciting about it is, there are different parts of town. There are parts of town that are built from parts of old billboards, bottles, or anything that comes to hand. They’re the more affluent, or commercial parts of town. Then there are the poorer parts of town that are built out of old shipping containers, or pellets and crates. It’s amazing to see this town and to be able to work within this set.”
Thanks to the online game, Syfy is already thinking about season two of the TV series. That’s a luxury that a typical show doesn’t get. Given the success Rift has had in the online space and the positive momentum End of Nations is riding on, the odds are good that the past four years of development will result in a quality Defiance game world. Given the loyalty and devotion that online gamers have to their games, the thinking is that they’ll also gravitate to a TV show that involves the same world and some of the same characters.
“I think there’s a huge appetite for this,” said Leonidas. “It’s exciting to combine both the game world and the TV show. If it all works well, it could be really exciting for people who watch TV and play games. People that have never experienced an online game might want to go play and gamers who don’t watch Syfy may want to watch the show.”
That’s exactly what Syfy and Trion Worlds had in mind when they ventured into this uncharted territory four years ago.
Mobile network O2 has vowed to rebuild customer faith following two significant service outages in recent months.
An estimated 2 million users were left without cellular and data services on Friday last week due to another failure of O2's Central User Database, which the network says is provided by one of its suppliers.
Now the company says it will spend an £10m on moving to a "proven alternative solution" rather than "risk this happening to our customers for a third time."
In a blog post entitled 'Removing your trust in our leading network' COO Derek McManus said O2 will continue to spend £1.5m a day on improving the network and also "up-weighting and re-focussing our Service Experience Team" in the build up to next year's 4G LTE launch.
Dented the confidence
McManus added: "While we recognise that we have dented the confidence and trust of some of our customers, I hope this plan will demonstrate our commitment to rebuilding that trust.
"We will not rest until we have cemented the stability of our network and can deliver the level of service customers have come to expect of us over the last ten years."
O2's network woes couldn't have come at a worse time for the company, with the launch of Everything Everywhere's 4G LTE service coming before the end of the month.
The Orange and T-Mobile 4G alliance already offers a decent sized incentive to jump ship without O2's recent problems, so it's little surprise that it is looking to reassure its customers.
However, humble O2's admission of fault appears to be, wavering customers may note the absence of two words from McManus' blog post: The first is 'sorry' and the second is 'compensation.'
Color has had a spotty history as an over-hyped up app that has floundered since launch, and a report indicates that the startup may soon be closing its doors for good.
According to VentureBeat, Color, the startup with more unsustainable hype than the the world has possibly ever seen, is preparing to go dark. Shareholders and the board have voted to close the company’s doors for good.
Color has had a spotty history, and was a disappointment after raising $40 million last year from Sequoia Capital and Bain Capital, enjoying what was obviously now a serious overvaluation. Many saw Color’s inevitable demise, despite having received more money from Sequoia Capital than the early-stage venture capital allotted even Google.
At launch, the app jumped on the photo-sharing bandwagon while also introducing us to the idea of the elastic, location-aware social network. Users could share photos with others in their current location, giving them a real-time photo album of strangers near and around them. But even without location features, Instagram was still dominating the photo-sharing space, and we all know how that’s gone (hint: very, very well). Color’s intial idea floundered, and its founders went back to the drawing board.
Its pivot then transformed the photo-sharing app into a live video broadcasting service integrated with Facebook (and then Verizon). The concept had some potential thanks to the “Instagram for video” trend, and according to AppData was used by 460,000 users per month, but Color Labs’ investors and shareholders purportedly have finally come to the conclusion that it’s not enough.
Venturebeat got a hold of an email that was sent out to its employees that indicates the bleak future for the startup:
“I hope is all well with you. As you may or may not have heard, Color is going through a number of changes. Last week, the board and major shareholders voted to wind down the company.
We ask that you politely cancel any existing commitments stating we are closing our [redacted] program.”
The internal turmoil within Color Labs has been well-documented, and it should come to no one’s surprise that the startup has been on shaky ground for awhile. Color Labs was burning quickly through the $40 million to sustain its first app but had no significant user traction to show for the investment. To the tech world, Color has been the quintessential disappointment.
Color’s co-founder Bill Nguyen was rumored to have retreated from his role as CEO and in his stead, investor and Color Labs board member Geoff Raiston took over the reins. Boardmembers were torn between letting a new CEO officially replace Nguyen, while others have been loyal to its current CEO. Nguyen confirmed with TechCrunch that he had ceased his day-to-day activities with Color, but assured them that everything was in order back at Color Labs headquarters and that he was simply taking a breather. Of course if these most recent reports are valid, his words were simply meant to brush off the uncertain state of the company.
We’ve reached out to Color Labs and will update this space with any new developments.
Iconic Nintendo characters like Mario and Link will be joining the upcoming Wii U-exclusive Scribblenauts Unlimited.
Though a teaser image appeared a few days ago that hinted at the possibility of Nintendo characters in the upcoming Scribblenauts Unlimited, today we have official confirmation from publisher Warner Bros. Interactive that “characters and items” from Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. and Legend Of Zelda franchises will appear in the game.
The announcement makes no mention of which characters might appear in the game — though Link and Mario are safe bets — but it does claim that the Nintendo characters will “behave in the fun and fantastical ways they do in their respective game worlds.” So, Link will swing his sword and Mario will shoot fire balls?
Notably absent from the announcement is word on how these Nintendo icons might appear in the game. Given that Scribblenauts Unlimited uses a relatively wide-open side scrolling game world, it’s entirely possible that you might stumble into them on your journeys and have actual, meaningful character interaction. On the other hand it’s much more likely that these characters will simply be new additions to the in-game dictionary. Type in “Bowser” and Scribblenauts Unlimited will summon a giant turtle-dragon to stomp on things for you.
It should be pointed out that this announcement seems to signal the start of a trend for the Wii U. When taken alongside the news that the console’s iteration of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 will include special, Nintendo-themed costume customization options, it seems as if Nintendo is making a push to elevate the appeal of third party games by injecting them with some minor amount of Nintendo’s own fan-favorite characters. Whether or not that strategy will actually benefit third-party development on the Wii U to any noticeable degree is anyone’s guess, but at least it shows that Nintendo realizes that historically its consoles have had poor third-party support. Maybe now, finally, the company wants to change that.
