I often wake up with a tune playing in my head. I don't know why it's that particular tune, and sometimes I waterboard myself for hours trying to find the reason for this apparently random madness.
This morning, for example, it was that Spanish Lullaby song that Madonna numbed us with some time around the last century. (I never said it was only good songs that blared in my internal jukebox.)
So why might one's mind have been invaded by "La Isla Bonita?" Was it because this time last year I was in Spain, sipping sangria with some dubious Europeans? Was it because last night I saw a trailer of a new film directed by Madonna's last husband? Was it because I hadn't had enough sleep?
All this thinking is painful and useless, but it has brought me to an idea for Apple: it's time the company took the apparent randomness of the iPod Shuffle and made it mean something.
Might I propose that Apple creates an iPod that, whenever worn on your person, can immediately discern your mood? Please imagine that this new iPod, let's call it the iPod Shrink, is a tiny little thing that has within it even tinier sensors that monitor your heart rate, your blood pressure, your digestive calm, even your sweat level.
On the basis of this entirely factual information, the iPod Shrink would then select the precise piece of music that would match your mood. It's important to consider just what is meant by "match your mood."
Perhaps you, the moody consumer, might have the ability to ask the iPod Shrink to enhance your mood or to counteract it.
If you ask for counteraction and the machine sees that you're miserable, the iPod Shrink would bypass "My Immortal" by Evanescence, "Creep" by Radiohead or anything by James Blunt and go straight to "I Feel Good" by James Brown or the utterly classic Manilow rendition of "Copacabana." For enhancement, it would do the reverse.
If it detected anger, it could soothe you with some Bebel Gilberto or stoke your fires with some Sex Pistols. If it detected concern, it might offer the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris." Or, alternatively, something from Disturbed's fine little album "The Sickness."
Perhaps the greatest surprise for you, the iPod Shrink owner, would be to discover what mood you are actually in. After all, your little device would be more familiar with the true scientific nature of your innards than would you. So your own self-knowledge would surely be enhanced by such a wickedly wily machine.
This could be a very big seller. It would certainly make me look more kindly on the self-absorbed, frustrated, preening, angst-ridden waddlers in the gym.
Apple won praise for its latest efforts to rid its products of harmful chemicals in a new report released Tuesday from environmental organizations ChemSec and Clean Production Action.
While Greenpeace downplayed Apple's environmental advances in its latest report, ChemSec and Clean Production Action's report, "Greening Consumer Electronics: Moving Away from Bromine and Chlorine," highlights Apple's efforts as one of seven companies who have come up with solutions negating the use of harmful chemicals. Apple was the only computer maker to make the list.
"Apple established an innovative program that restricts the use of nearly all bromine and chlorine compounds across all their product lines," the report says of Apple. "As such, Apple now offers a wide range of PVC and BFR free consumer products including iPhones and iPods, as well as computers that are free of BFRs and most uses of PVC."
Apple recently unveiled a major overhaul of its environmental Web site, allowing users to see exactly what it is doing to help the environment. Not only does it show the individual products, Apple calculates the impact of its products from mining the materials and use to recycling.
Apple's environmental Web site is broken down into several categories, including Life Cycle Impact, Product Usage Impact, and Product Environmental Reports. There is also a section for Apple to post its own updates.
While Apple was the only computer manufacturer to make the list, the report praised six other companies for their environmental efforts, too.
With its products 99.9 percent free of brominated flame retardants (BFRs), Sony Ericsson will have no PVC components in its products by the end of 2009, according to the report. ChemSec and Clean Production Action praised the company for "not only removing substances of concern from their products but also taking on the complicated task of establishing full chemical inventories for all their product lines."
Hard drive manufacturer, Seagate, eliminated chlorine- and bromine-based chemistries from its disk drives, and Netherlands-based DSM Engineering Plastics is one of the first to offer engineering plastics that are free of bromine and chlorine.
Nan Ya and Indium were added to the list for their efforts to produce bromine- and chlorine-free components for printed circuit boards, while maintaining the reliability of the products.
Semiconductor manufacturer Silicon Storage Technology was among the first company to provide bromine-free chips to companies like Apple.
Apple on Monday resigned its membership to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest over the organization's environmental policy, according to a report on the San Francisco Chronicle.
"Apple supports regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and it is frustrating to find the chamber at odds with us in this effort," Catherine Novelli, Apple vice president of worldwide government affairs, wrote to in a letter to chamber President Thomas Donohue.
With its resignation, Apple becomes the fourth company to leave the Chamber of Commerce in the last several weeks, according to the Washington Post. The others--Pacific Gas and Electric, PNM Resources, and Exelon--have all been power companies.
Apple has reached a $22.5 million settlement agreement in the class action iPod Nano scratch lawsuit and potential claimants began receiving settlement notices this week, according to the plaintiffs attorney.
The lawsuit, filed in October 2005 in a California Superior Court in Los Angeles County, alleges Apple's iPod Nano is prone to scratches and its alleged defects were not disclosed by the company.
A $22.5 million cash settlement agreement was reached in late October and a court has preliminarily approved the agreement, said the plaintiffs attorney. But it wasn't until this week that notices of the settlement agreement began going out to the potential pool of claimants, estimated to be a few million people.
A court hearing is scheduled for April 28 for final court approval on the settlement agreement.
Under the settlement agreement, potential claimants must have purchased an iPod Nano that was subject to scratches that affected the enjoyment of using the media player device, or impaired its operation.
Users who opt to file a claim may be eligible to collect one of two types of payments.
Tier one payments of $25 per iPod Nano purchased, may be distributed to claimants who did not receive a free slip case when they originally purchased their iPod Nano.
Tier two payments of $15 may be distributed to users who received a free slip case with their original iPod Nano purchase.
Those payment figures, however, may shift in one direction or the other, depending on how many users file a claim.
If there are additional funds leftover, after all tier one and two users file a claim, then the remainder will be distributed to those claimants--but that additional payout will be capped at 150 percent of the type of tier they filed under. And any money left in the fund after those additional payouts will be award to charities.
But if the number of claimants outstrips the $22.5 million fund, then the payouts will be reduced on a prorated basis.
Apple declined to comment on the settlement agreement.
However, on the lawsuit Web site, Apple denies all allegations in the lawsuit and in the class action, noting it is "entering into this settlement to avoid burdensome and costly litigation. The settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing or an indication that any law was violated."
One of the common complaints about Apple's iPhone--and one that did not get solved with the launch of the iPhone 3G--is the lack of a copy-paste function. An independent developer, Zac White, recently unveiled his open-source solution: OpenClip, a standard for other iPhone application developers.
He's not the first one to have that idea: another developer, Preston Monroe, has created a hack called iCopy that lets iPhone owners copy and paste between the e-mail and Web browser applications.
OpenClip is not a standalone app but rather a technology that developers can incorporate into their iPhone applications, should they choose to participate. No applications yet support OpenClip, but it's coming soon for the American Heritage Dictionary and Roget's Thesaurus applications, Twitter client Twittelator, notepad application MagicPad, finance lexicon Wall Street Worlds, and a number of others.
iPhone users will be able to copy and paste from one OpenClip application to the next, but not to developer applications that aren't participating or to Apple's own iPhone apps, such as its e-mail client or the Safari browser.
Apple has acknowledged that copy-paste functionality will be officially coming to the iPhone, eventually, and OpenClip's creator has recognized Apple's plan.
"Instead of just waiting on the sidelines, we wanted to help iPhone users and Apple by being proactive and trying to help with a solution," the site's FAQ reads. "While just an interim fix until Apple adopts a systemwide version, OpenClip hopes to add to the iPhone user experience and provide a working case study for Apple, hopefully allowing (company engineers) to roll out their version more quickly."
Avon Products CEO Andrea Jung will become Apple's eighth member of its board of directors, the company announced Monday.
Jung gives Apple an expert on direct sales strategies and the buying habits of women--at least a certain demographic of women--which could be enormously helpful to the company in helping grow its various businesses. She has been with Avon since 1996, and before that was executive vice president of high-end retailer Nieman-Marcus.
Avon Chairman and CEO Andrea Jung
(Credit: Avon Products)An informal poll of women in the News.com office suggested that Avon's brand name doesn't exactly resonate with the typical under-40 San Francisco female (believe it or not, I'm not their target customer either), but Jung is well-known for her management prowess. She has been one of Fortune's 10 most powerful women in business for the last several years, and has turned around Avon's fortunes by tacking to the high end and cutting costs.
She's also fluent in Mandarin, and has helped turn Avon around in part by focusing on the growing market for consumer goods in China. That could help Apple refine its strategy for China: in many big cities throughout China, computer and electronic equipment sales are almost like the beauty section in a department store, with rows of counters decked out with different brand names staffed by aggressive salespeople. At least computers don't give off a sneeze-inducing combination of 12 different fragrances.
Apple's board had a busy year last year, fending off accusations that CEO Steve Jobs was involved in a stock-options backdating scandal that created the current board vacancy when former CFO Fred Anderson resigned his position as a director. William Campbell of Intuit and Arthur Levinson of Genentech are co-lead directors of Apple's board.
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