Peggy Watt

So Angry Birds Space is launching this week – where better than with a giant slingshot from the Space Needle in Seattle?

That’s why a 35-foot tall red Angry Bird is languishing in a 300-foot slingshot, which dangles from the 605-foot-tall Space Needle. Rovio Entertainment representatives spiffing the promotion call it a “supersized” slingshot, and it’s emblazoned with the name of sponsor T-Mobile.

If it's not enough that Microsoft had to scramble when a reference to its apparently semi-secret social networking project, Tulalip, slipped out, the software giant then had to deal with trademark concerns by the neighboring Tulalip tribe.

The 22,000-acre Tulalip (Tuh’-lay-lup) reservation is north of Microsoft's Redmond headquarters. The Tulalip Tribes operate a casino and resort, amphitheater, and outlets shopping center adjacent to Interstate 5. Apparently its name -- and perhaps its success? -- inspired the members of the Microsoft team who needed a code designation for their project.

After years of covering Apple, I figured any play called "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" sounded like fun. And it is fun, with lots of laughs and anecdotes and insights about Apple’s history. But it is also an indictment of worker neglect by Apple’s Chinese manufacturing partners and Apple itself. It also fingers the complicit acceptance by buyers of consumer electronics (not only from Apple). So it was particularly striking that I saw Mike Daisey’s play the same weekend I edited a couple of stories about an explosion at the Foxconn facilities in Chengdu.

Daisey’s two-hour monologue is in turns funny, insightful and serious. He is a storyteller, and he relates the early creative marketing efforts of the two Steves – covering the infamous blue boxes that enabled free phone calls, the Scully years, and Apple’s ups and downs until its recent resounding iSuccesses. He mixes in the story of his trip to the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen, where he talked with hundreds of employees about working conditions that would not be tolerated in the U.S. Daisey met employees as young as 12 and 13, whose small hands assemble iPhones and iPads. He charges that Foxconn forces workers to routinely log 12- and 14-hour and even longer shifts to meet demand. Daisey notes that Foxconn’s answer to worker suicides was to install nets near the top of its buildings (although PC World and others have also reported that the company cites some changes in conditions and resources as well).

Sony is still investigating the security breach that downed its PlayStation Network and Qriocity online services, but expects the gaming network will be back in operation this week, a company exec told media Sunday afternoon in Tokyo.

Full service on PlayStation Network to resume this week with online gaming, full service expected to be restored by mid-May, Executive Deputy President Kazuo Hirai told media at a briefing that ended just minutes ago.

It's a marriage of an online pioneer and a dot-com upstart with the Sunday night announcement that AOL is acquiring The Huffington Post and with it Arianna Huffington, who will serve as president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, a new subsidiary of America Online.

Huffington will oversee all Huffington Post and AOL content, including its (recently acquired) tech sites Engadget and TechCrunch, as well as a variety of entertainment and lifestyle sites. AOL has been beefing up its news operation of late, especially hiring local community reporters for its Patch.com site.

S. Craig Watson, author of The Young and the Digital. Photo: Lillian FurlongSocial media isn't isolating us as we tap on our laptops, smartphones and tablets; rather, we're becoming "hypersocial" in our virtual, avatar-populated environment, suggests researcher and author S. Craig Watkins. Rather than gathering in, say, the bowling alleys that were social hubs in the 1950s, we Wii-bowl with companions nearly anywhere on the globe.

The author of "The Young and The Digital," a book about today's so-called digital natives, visited that always-on generation Tuesday evening, speaking to students at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.

Clearwire is offering a pay-as-you-go mobile hotspot called the Rover Puck as an alternative route to its 4G service. Aimed at consumers who don't want to commit to (or can't qualify for) a service contract, this very portable device lets you become a walking hotspot, sharing 4G Internet access with up to seven friends.--

The catch is that you can use it only in Clearwire's WiMax service areas. I took it to an offsite staff meeting, but the building was not quite within range of the WiMax signal. The WiMax symbol (which resembles a martini glass) on the top of the disc flashes as the device seeks a signal, and stays solid when the Puck is connected to WiMax service. I walked about 20 feet from the meeting room and got a connection, but the WiMax indicator started flashing when I returned to the meeting. What's more, the Puck doesn't support 3G--and though Clear is ambitiously expanding its WiMax service, that service still doesn't reach some places I frequently go. But if you stick to WiMax turf, the Puck is a good and economical option.

Clearwire is offering a pay-as-you-go mobile hotspot called the Rover Puck as an alternative route to its 4G service. Aimed at consumers who don’t want to commit to (or can’t qualify for) a service contract, this very portable device lets you become a walking hotspot, sharing 4G Internet access with up to seven friends.

The catch is that you can use it only in Clearwire's WiMax service areas. I took it to an offsite staff meeting, but the building was not quite within range of the WiMax signal. The WiMax symbol (which resembles a martini glass) on the top of the disc flashes as the device seeks a signal, and stays solid when the Puck is connected to WiMax service. I walked about 20 feet from the meeting room and got a connection, but the WiMax indicator started flashing when I returned to the meeting. What’s more, the Puck doesn’t support 3G--and though Clear is ambitiously expanding its WiMax service, that service still doesn't reach some places I frequently go. But if you stick to WiMax turf, the Puck is a good and economical option.

The newest entry in the quest for new models of making money in news media is Fizwoz, an online marketplace for citizen journalists who want to sell their work to the highest bidder -- many of them major media companies.

The service, on display at a CES media reception after a soft launch last month, invites anyone to become a "Fizzer" and upload photos or videos for auction. Buyers pay via PayPal and Fizwoz staff reports that purchase prices range from a few dollars to thousands, and that most sales are for a few hundred bucks.

Couldn't get to Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show this year? Not quite getting that on-theClark adjusts his iPhone video gear.-scene feel from video, slide shows and text reports? Take a look through the eyes of Sean Clark, a software engineer from MP3Car who is constantly streaming whatever he sees at the show.

Clark rigged his iPhone, video camera pointed forward, to the back of a baseball cap equipped with a battery pack and nestled inside a stocking cap (mostly for comfort) and is streaming live to a Ustream.tv forum to take the MP3Car community along to Las Vegas.

Hey, Apple, Inc.: Every apple can't be yours.

I have a new alarm clock, and it's Clearwire.

It's actually a bit late for an alarm, most mornings. But Clearwire's telerobot calls me regularly shortly after 9 a.m. every day to cheerfully announce, "Clear is here!" and babble on about the virtues of the new WiMax service now being rolled out in my neighborhood, and exhorting me -- with increasing urgency -- to upgrade to the new equipment, because my current gear will soon not work.