What’s it like to work at Foxconn’s hellish factories? The New York Times interviewed  24 Yuan Yandong, whom describes his technical ten hour nightshift as an assembler of hard drives.

“His task is to help complete 1,600 hard drives — his workshop’s daily quota — and to make sure every one is perfect. Seated in the middle of the assembly line in his black Foxconn sports shirt, cotton slacks and company-mandated white plastic slippers, he waits for the conveyor belt to deliver a partly assembled rectangular hard drive to his station. He places two plastic chips inside the drive’s casing, inserts a device that redirects light in the drive and then fastens four screws with an electric screwdriver before sending the drive down the line. He has exactly one minute to complete the multistep task.”

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The Apple Store is finally getting some iAds love this morning in a few popular applications you might be familiar with. iLounge reports Avantar developed applications such as OneTap Movies and the Yellow Pages are gleaming with the shiny new banner, although there is one major caveat: iAds don’t officially launch until July 1st, and a test ad or empty banner act as current placeholders.

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If you’re a heavy user of Delibar, they’ve just released a new Safari Extension that should improve your link sharing abilities ten fold. Have something great you want to share? Then download the new extension from Shiny Frog at their announcement page.

Safari Extension for Delibar

Update: Destroy Twitter 2.0 is now live. Check out the new features here.

We’re not hearing too much about Tweetie 2 for the Mac, and even other clients are getting stale as we venture forward in the Twitter verse. We also haven’t heard too much out of DestroyTwitter, but the master of DestroyToday (a quick warning, there is a disturbing image on his blog if you’re squeamish) and related projects is planning to release a big update today that should bring an improved preferences canvas, improved item rendering, and an overhauled account canvas.

DestroyTwitter is a solid Adobe Air client that should be released sometime later today, or as Jonnie Hallman puts it: “It’ll be released between now and 11:59pm EST.”

We’ll likely go hands on this evening and post a review tomorrow morning.

While the Kindle has been an amazing accomplishment in paving the way for e-books, its time has seemingly passed. Citi analyst Mark Mahaney predicts that the Apple iBookstore will surpass Amazon’s service as the selection gets bigger and Apple sells more iPads. Electronista writes,

“Although not mentioned by Mahaney, Amazon also faces concern over the exposure of the Kindle reader and store versus Apple’s devices.”

As iBooks will begin opening doors on iPod touches and the new iPhone 4 starting next week, Apple will have a prominent advantage in simply outselling Amazon. The sheer amount of iBooks compatible devices, coupled with iBookstore integration with pre-existing iTunes accounts, makes purchasing e-books incredibly convenient. For the value of the Kindle compared to the iPad, consumers looking for an e-book platform may feel they’re getting more bang for their buck with Apple’s portable computer. Quite quickly, Apple is set to dominate yet another electronic market.

[via Electronista]

For those unfamiliar with Scribd, it’s an excellent social networking tool designed to get people talking about written materials – documents, comics, books – they’re all there. Lately they’ve been undergoing the arduous process of freeing themselves completely of Adobe Flash, and as they wipe away the last remaining remnants, the results have been dramatic.

CEO Trip Adler reports that user engagement, “Has surged.” Scribd isn’t saying their user base is increasing, rather, their pre-existing user base (50 million unique visitors) are spending a substantially greater amount of time searching for documents and sharing materials with friends.

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Manufacturing is an intense process that requires cooperation amongst a variety of vendors. Preparing to launch a new product isn’t simply a matter of ramping up production, due to the limited availability of product in our ever increasing demand for electronic devices. With the industry under enormous pressure to support multiple clients like Hewlett Packard, Dell, and of course Apple, the answer isn’t simply, “You should have prepared for this.” It’s an incredibly complicated issue.

Because the iPhone 4 is in such huge demand, customers outcry against Apple’s foreboding delays. Of the issues Apple faces between customer relent and manufacturing woes, The Mac Observer sources the problem in obtaining plane switching displays. While the issue is expected to be resolved by this holiday season, Apple’s initial demand for the new iPhone 4 may be met with later shipping dates as they wait to receive the necessary components.

[The Street via The Mac Observer]

Has the iPad revolutionized the publishing industry? Not quite, but according to publishers it is providing them with a new avenue of integration for video and text that’s just starting to transform business. While publishers are taking advantage of a new market that’s engaging early adopters worldwide, CEOs are responding with rather mixed results.

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