Daily Cuppa: tweets disrupt Olympics, Apple blacklisted by China
It seems that everyone has difficulties of some sort on Mondays, and that was no different overnight.
Google's Glass project has everyone's tongues wagging, but getting people together to talk about it has caused some confusion. The Glass team was meant to hold a hangout to discuss where the project is going, but limited space in a single hangout meant that users created several of their own, which were mostly filled with people who had no idea what was happening. Well, the upside is that everyone now knows how to create a hangout.
Hangouts is a technology that Google seems to be pushing, with the company now rolling it out to Gmail.
If this means that more users will be clogging up mobile phone networks, it could make the situation worse for the Olympics. Eager fans watching Olympic cyclers and tweeting about the races have prevented athletes' coordinates from being sent back to race organisers, due to network congestion. The International Olympic Committee has even gone as far as to ask Twitter users to "take it easy" with the tweets, unless they are urgent.
Apple may have already realised that there's money to be made from these highly mobile users. ZDNet contributor Robin Harris said that all you need to do is follow the money, pointing out that Apple's evolution over the past few years has been towards making more investments in mobile, not desktops.
This is probably good news for those who are hoping to get their hands on an iPhone 5: photos and videos of the yet-to-be-announced device have been leaked online from a Japanese smartphone-repair company, although the quality of the fit and finishes has led some to believe that they may just be rejected components from Apple's factories.
Also in China, the China Consumer Association has placed Apple on a "company integrity" blacklist after numerous complaints from Chinese customers, including poor or refused after-sales support. The association also suggested that Apple may be impeding on Chinese consumer rights and protection laws.
The blacklisting isn't affecting OS X 10.8 sales, however. Mountain Lion has already hit 3 million downloads, making it Apple's most successful OS X release to date.