Hasta La Gadget!

Devices between the traditional smartphone and notebook PC categories occupy a gray area. We break down the differences between several self-proclaimed tablets. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20006077-260.html” class=”origPostedBlog”Circuit Breaker/a/p

After a string of highly localized suicides at Foxconn’s manufacturing campus captured the world’s attention — again — the company has decided to increase worker wages by about 20 percent. Foxconn says that the pay raise had been planned for some time but did not say when it would be implemented. Mind you, a 20% bump in the third quarter is not unusual as Foxconn ramps up production for the holidays. In fact, Foxconn has given raises by as much as 50% in the past according to Vincent Chen, analyst at Yuanta Securities in Taipei. At the moment, Foxconn entry-level line workers are paid 900 yuan (about $131.80) per month — remuneration that exceeds the local minimum wage in the area. And that’s before bonuses and that oh-so tempting overtime pay are factored in. It’s also worth noting that Foxconn is said by a factory worker surnamed Wang, to pay 100,000 yuan (about 10 times a worker’s annual base salary) to families of suicide victims — a sum he says has tempted some to their death.

Update: CEO Terry Guo is being quoted as saying that Foxconn plans to relocate some facilities and about a fifth of its Shenzhen workforce (that’s about 80,000 people based on the 400k estimates tossed around) to western parts of China so that the workers can be closer to their families. Meanwhile, Sony, Nokia, and Nintendo, all Foxconn customers, have joined Apple, Dell, and HP in expressing their public concern over the working conditions in Foxconn.

Foxconn raising wages, relocating 20 percent of Shenzhen workers closer to home (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 May 2010 06:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Equip your scooter with Marc Graells Ballvé’s anti-theft armor and you’ll give a thief two-things to steal: your scooter and its armadillo-like cover.

I kid. Called Protect 486, Ballvé’s device is indeed inspired by the armadillo’s shell. The overlapping plates offer weather-protection and also stop thieves from getting physical access to the scooter within. Ballvé says that this is better than the usual padlock or alarm as thieves already know how to get around those, although I imagine that if every scooter were so equipped then there’d soon be a way to defeat this, too.

It is rather cool-looking, if a little awkward to carry on the bike all the time, and you certainly wouldn’t lose your ride in a busy parking lot. We also have to assume that Ballvé knows what he’s talking about. He’s from Barcelona, which as we have seen before is a great place to get your bike stolen.

Protect 486 [Themarcswork (Flash) via Oh Gizmo]

We previously reported on Tokujin Yoshioka’s amazing “breathing” digital window display at Ginza’s ever-impressive Maison Hermès store. Passing yesterday we saw that the current display has been done by French artist Nicolas Buffe.

The stunning glass building’s facade and window display have now been transformed by the artist’s recognizable monochrome, chalk-style design. The theme is kind of Red Riding Hood, but comically done, proving that even chic brand stores have a sense of fun.

This article was written on August 21, 2007 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Transferring files from one folder to another, or from computer to computer is something most people do on a regular basis. Have you ever thought about speeding up the process by using a file transfer utility? They’re similar to the download managers in your web browser, except they’re made to be used all around your computer.

The best part is that the two free programs that I mention below replace the built-in Windows file transfer manager. You can still use Windows Explorer just as you normally do, but anytime you try to copy, paste, or move files, these apps will do the dirty work for you. Not only that, but both programs will pick up where they left off, should you shutdown your computer in the middle of a transfer, or need to stop it for some reason. Heck, you can even pause the transfers and resume them later on!

–Copy Handler (Homepage)–

This is probably my favorite of the two programs this article covers. It has an insane number of options (over 60) that you customize, doesn’t require any installation, and is open source. One of the reasons that I love this program so much is that you can adjust the number of simultaneous transfers, and once that number is hit it will queue up the rest for later on.

After you download the ZIP folder and extract the contents, the first thing you’ll want to do is register the DLL. This will ensure that Copy Handler replaces the built-in transfer manager for Windows:

Then whenever you go to transfer a file you’ll be presented with an extremely compact file transfer window (left – actual size), or you can open a more detailed window full of all the stats that you crave (right – click to enlarge):

Then if you want to try and speed things up even more, or want to change how something works, just head on over to the options where there are plenty of things for you to play with:

There is one downside to this program, and it’s that it isn’t actively developed any more. The last update was provided back in October 2006, but luckily it still works great on Vista. The developer is currently looking for a sponsor so that he can continue the development on Copy Handler.

–TeraCopy (Homepage)–

This application is similar to the Copy Handler above, but I saw it on Lifehacker recently and it also piqued my interest. I gave it a whirl and found it to be much simpler than Copy Handler. It doesn’t really have anything for you to configure, and what you see below is essentially the entire application.

You’ll be notified if an error occurs while in the middle of a transfer, but TeraCopy will continue working on the other files. That way one bad file doesn’t screw up the entire batch of files being transferred.

–Overview/Benchmarks–

You’ll only notice a large speed difference with these file transfer utilities if your moving or copying many files, or really big files. To give you a quick comparison of the differences in using these I transferred 85 images over the network that totaled 114MB. Again, the differences aren’t that large, but if you’re moving around a few gigabytes of data these utilities could possibly chop a few minutes off of the transfer time.

• Copy Handler – 58 seconds
• TeraCopy – 1 minute
• Vista (with Performance Pack) – 1 minute and 3 seconds
• Vista (without Performance Pack) – 1 minute and 14 seconds

Note: Default options were used in each of the applications.

If you find yourself frequently moving large things around, these apps could be priceless to you. Of the two, I would recommend Copy Handler to anyone that is a power user, and TeraCopy for anyone looking for a simple replacement for what’s built-in to Windows.

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