Like any devout follower, writer and performer Mike Daisey was reluctant to ask questions about his favorite religion—the church of Apple. A self-professed gadget freak and number one fan of the ubiquitous technology company, Daisey’s reluctance is probably familiar to all of us.  In his most recent monologue on NPR’s popular series, This American Life, Daisey renews the debate about “fair trade” electronics by traveling to China and investigating working conditions at Apple’s main manufacturing plant, Foxconn.

Listen to his story here.

Is anyone truly surprised by what he found? Should it come as a shock that while hundreds of thousands of Americans are perusing the latest gadgets at this week’s Consumer Electronic Show, children as young as 12 are working full-time in China in conditions so poor their manufacturing plants are surrounded by suicide-thwarting nets? Read more…

With the rise of online video sites such as YouTube, Vimeo and Viddler, the almighty video view count has become increasingly more important as a way of ranking success. Success of not only the producer, but also those paid to promote or “syndicate” online videos. While some of us might be uploading videos we think will quickly become the next YouTube sensation, we shouldn’t be disappointed when we only get 100 views and others with similar videos have thousands – they’re likely paying for them.

Online video syndication services have been around for several years and are helping many businesses, advertising agencies and producers transition from paid television ads to paid online video ads. While many of these services provide legitimate ways of attracting consumers to the videos, others have developed ways of short-cutting the process to quickly increase view counts and other forms of engagement.

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I’ve been bartending on Capitol Hill for two years. My customers, for the most part, are awesome. But Capitol Hill is a busy place on the weekend, attracting people from all over the Seattle area. Lots of us joke about the hipsters on the Hill, but the fact is, we (they) live here, and so if they want to continue sceneing it up on the weekend they know to display at least basic courtesy. Ask, pay, drink, tip, repeat!

I’ve got a lot of beef with the most recent social media vengeance story currently making the Internet rounds. On Friday night, according to Cha Cha/Bimbo’s waitress Victoria Liss, a customer ordered $28.98 worth of food and beverages, didn’t tip, and scrawled “you could stand to lose a few pounds,” on the bottom of the credit card receipt.

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In my last post, we got a glimpse into the way new digital media may affect our interpersonal relationships in the future, through Aritifical Intelligence and conversant robots. This post explores another potentially game-changing technology: digital currency.

We are all familiar with digital payments, from PayPal to iTunes accounts, direct deposits and online bill payment—but all of these are tied directly to actual fiat currency, or governmentally regulated, internationally compatible money. In Second Life, players use Linden dollars in daily activities, but these are also for purchase through US dollars. Digital currencies such as Bitcoin, however, operate independently from any national government. Bitcoin is “a currency by the people, for the people,” according to NPR’s Planet Money reporter Jacob Goldstein. It exists only digitally, essentially a computer program designed and implemented by a reclusive and mysterious man named Satoshi Nakamoto—which may even be a psyuedonymn for the actual creator.

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A Consumer Reports study from May 2011 shows that an estimated 7.5 million U.S. kids under 13 are on Facebook, and about 5 million of those are under the age of ten. Yet federal regulations concerning the collecting and sharing of personal information of minors puts the age cutoff for having an account on Facebook at 13.

What’s the big deal about letting young children onto Facebook? Isn’t it just natural for these digital natives to connect with their friends and share information and updates with each other online?

Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg thinks it’s a great idea to let kids into the online community. In an interview following the Consumer Report, Zuckerberg said to Fortune Magazine that it would be a great “educational experience” for kids to be on Facebook.

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There was a lot of clamor in digital music world last week as Amazon unveiled their new Cloud Player. Industry experts labeled it as a move to increase pressure on competitors such as Apple and Google, which are rumored to be releasing similar digital locker products later on this year.

Launched last Tuesday, Amazon’s Cloud Player gives users the ability to listen to their music collection anywhere they have an Internet connection, either via a Web app that’s compatible with all major browsers or an Android app. Amazon trumped Google by creating the first digital locker of it’s kind on Google’s own Android operating system. That’s no small accomplishment, although that makes you think Google is likely planning something even better.

Naturally, all of this is drawing staunch criticism from major record companies who aren’t happy with the Seattle company’s decision not to secure music licenses from labels and publishers before releasing its service. Read more…

In partnership with Seattle Arts & Lectures, MCDM faculty member and Partner with Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, Kraig Baker, gave the third in the five-part lecture series: Storyteller Uprising: Narrative and Engagement Intelligence in the Digital Age - You Posted What on Facebook? Identifying and Managing Legal Risks in Social Media

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Students in Kraig Baker’s Digital Media Law course already appreciate his insistence that we understand the legal risks associated with new media and platforms. Understanding all the ramifications of taking these risks is “difficult under the best of circumstances,” Baker said during his SALu presentation Wednesday evening at UW’s Kane Hall.  Whether a strong union successfully defends a woman’s right to rip her workplace in a Facebook post, or a woman loses her job for calling her friended-in boss “dumb” (Oops!), there seems no real rhyme or reason to who or what is protected, and who or what is not.

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A feature in this year’s conference is a panel on “Information, Values and the Justice System”. The workshop, which takes place on Tuesday the 8th, is organized by members of the Technology Committee of the Access to Justice Board, of which I am the current committee Chair.  The panel will examine the role that technology plays in assisting access to the resources of the Washington State court system. Technology and access are key components in how citizens can make effective use of government services.  The policy implications of how government agencies can provide technological access to services across geographical, cultural, social and economic areas are immense.