The announcement of Safari 5 went relatively quietly during WWDC with all of the news surrounding the iPhone 4. However, there were some pretty awesome improvements brought to the Apple’s browser. Chief among these improvements would probably be extension support. Firefox and Chrome have had support for extensions for quite some time, and there has been some extremely awesome development in those markets. One of the main reasons I’ve used Chrome over Safari (other than its speed) is because Chrome can support the extentions I need. Well, as of June 10th, Apple announced the Safari Developer Program that allows developers to create extensions using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Shortly thereafter, a flurry of extensions become available for the browser.

To find a good listing of those you can already download, check out the Tumblr site for Safari Extensions. There are already some pretty useful ones such as Gmail This, a way to easily email links to others, and Coda Notes, a way to mark up webpages and show developers what they need to improve visually. If Safari 5 sees anywhere near the amount of activity that Google Chrome has, then expect some pretty powerful extensions in the next few weeks.

It’s good to see that Apple has finally caught up with Firefox and Chrome in this regard. It will surely help their browser market share.

Apple manufacturer Foxconn may relocate some Chinese factories

Facing increasing scrutiny from the media and general public over a rash of employee suicides, Apple manufacturing partner Foxconn is rumored to be plotting an exodus from mainland China sometime in the future.

The Chinese-language ON.CC broke the news earlier this week, citing sources who attended the annual shareholders meeting of parent company Hon Hai. Those claims remain largely unverified, however.

Nevertheless, the report cited Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou as saying his firm was in the midst of planning a restructuring that would uproot its mainland China operations in favor of peppering them throughout other regions in Far Eastern such as Taiwan, Vietnam, and India.

The move could reportedly affect up to 800,000 employees, including those employed at Foxconn's Shenzhen location that builds the vast majority of Apple's mobile devices and some Macs.

Foxconn has come under fire in recent weeks as reports of employee suicides over the past year continue to mount. Just before the 10th suicide last month, when a 19-year-old worker who had been with the company just 42 days jumped from a building to his death, Gou insisted to reporters that his company was not running a "sweatshop."

The matter drew enough attention to warrant a comment from Apple, which said it was "saddened and upset by the recent suicides." The iPhone maker added that it was in direct contact with Foxconn senior management and believed the company was taking this matter very seriously.

For Apple, it's not the first time that events at Foxconn have threatened to sour its squeaky clean image. In 2006, the company began conducting a thorough audit of one of Foxconn's manufacturing plants that created iPods after an in-depth media report suggested that workers at the factory were being treated unfairly and forced to operate under sweatshop-like conditions for little pay.

Apple now issues an annual audit of its overseas manufacturing partners. Last year's review found that more than half weren't paying their workers valid overtime rates. Still, Apple -- and numerous other electronics manufacturers like Dell and HP -- have maintained their business relationships with Foxconn, and the company is believed to be the manufacturer of the next-generation iPhone that will hit the market later this month.

At this week's shareholders meeting, Guo reportedly said he suspects the ongoing suicides may be of the copy-cat variety, fueled by media coverage and the expectation of monetary compensation for the families of the deceased. As such, he said Foxconn has suspended death benefits to deter employees from plunging to their deaths from the rooftops of its factories.

In other efforts to improve employee moral, Foxconn has reportedly instated pay raises for its employees, with media reports putting figures at anywhere between 20 and 33%. Separately, the company is said to also begin offering a 66% performance-based raise incentive, though details on how that would be calculated are scarce.

In addition to Apple's inspectors, the Chinese government recently sent approximately 200 inspectors to Foxconn's facilities, who reportedly exonerated Foxconn management for any wrongdoing in the ongoing string of suicides.

More Details Surface on iMovie for iPhone

During his keynote address at the start of WWDC 2010, Apple CEO Steve Jobs found a more than receptive audience for his introduction of the mobile version of iMovie. The $4.99 app was even given a live demo by Randy Ubillos, the developer behind the '08 redesign of iMovie. During the presentation, we witnessed just how similar the mobile app is to its computer counterpart. That is, iPhone users can create projects that include themes, transitions, titles, music, photos, and even geolocation maps.

But this weekend, our friends at Tidbits (citing sources from Apple) are delving deeper into the strengths and weaknesses of what could be the most highly-anticipated app in quite some time. While there are some less-than-ideal attributes of the iMovie app, for $5 it will all but certainly stand head and shoulders above any similar video editing application in the App Store.

Some of the details posted by Tidbits include: If you want iMovie for the iPhone, you'll need the iPhone 4. It won't be available for the iPhone 3GS. The reason given is that any previous generation device lacks the iPhone 4's A4 processor, which is needed to employ the app's many video editing tools. As it stands, projects cut on the iPhone also cannot be transferred to iMovie on the Mac for additional editing. Clips, however, can be recorded directly within iMovie for iPhone or come from the Camera Roll. The folks at Tidbits suggest that you may even be able to email a video clip (properly formatted as H.264) to yourself - from desktop to mobile, that is - and then include it in your iMovie production.

The current version of the iMovie app won't run on the iPad. But that will likely change with the release of iOS 4 for the iPad later this summer.

Flash 10.1 Released, No Mac H.264 Acceleration Yet

Adobe has finally released an official 10.1 update to Flash Player six months after the initial beta back in November, and two months since the release candidate went live. The security holes noted last week have all been fixed along with a long list of other identified bug fixes. Hardware acceleration for Mac OS X is not yet supported, nor is the Mac version of the Chrome browser. Adobe is still at work on the "Gala" version, which uses the discrete graphics on some Macs to accelerate Flash video.

Flash Player 10.1 provides support for browser Privacy Mode, which honors the privacy settings of the browser that the plugin is running in and keeps Flash local data and browsing activity from being cached. However, Adobe says "this feature is supported in Firefox, Chrome, and Microsoft Internet Explorer," meaning that "Flash cookies" will persist on every Mac OS X browser except Firefox.

Last week, a "critical vulnerability" in the Flash Player candidate 10.0.45.2 and earlier versions was discovered. This bug led to crashes and opened a potential security hole that let attackers take control of computers through malicious swf files or via PDFs with Flash malware embedded inside them. Adobe Reader and Acrobat, which have their own versions of Flash Player, are still vulnerable to these exploits. A patch is not expected until June 29.

The Mac OS X Flash Player 10.1 release does not include hardware support for H.264 video acceleration, which is a feature Apple just opened APIs for in Mac OS X. However, the second preview release of "Gala" H.264 hardware decoding is available for download. The new code supports NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M and GeForce GT 330M GPUs available on newer macs.

This is awesome news. Vodafone India has just confirmed that it will bring iPhone 4 to India by this September. “Vodafone Essar will launch iPhone 4, the thinnest smartphone in the world, in India in the coming months,” the company said. Airtel might do the same in next one of two days. This news was broken by CIOL sometime back. Here is rest of the details.iPhone 4, the sensational smartphone that Apple released on Monday, will be launched in India by Vodafone Essar.However, Vodafone did not provide any details about the date of availability. According to a CNN-IBN report, it is likely that the iPhone 4’s India launch date will be sometime in late September when the phone is slated for release in 88 countries worldwide. The smartphone will be initially available in the US, France, Germany, Britain and Japan.

Vodafone and Airtel have been selling the earlier versions of iPhones in India.

No details have been provided on the price either. As per my expectations, 16GB should cost around Rs. 36,000 ($780) and 32GB Rs.41,000 ($890). And iPhone 3GS will be available in 8GB version along post iPhone 4 launch and might cost around Rs.29,000 ($630).

Closeup Photos of the Official iPhone 4 Bumper

AppAdvice has posted some closeup photos of the new Bumper case for the iPhone 4.

Dress up your iPhone 4 with a Bumper. Choose one of six colors — white, black, blue, green, orange, or pink — and slip it around the edge of your iPhone 4. With metal buttons for volume and power, two-tone colors, and a combination of rubber and molded plastic, Bumpers add a touch of style to any iPhone 4.

Take a look below...

iPhone 4 Glass Shatters Easily ?

A new report by iFixYouri suggests that although Apple claims the iPhone 4 glass is incredibly strong, it shatters very easily.

Apple says the glass is "chemically strengthened to be 30 times harder than plastic, more scratch resistant and more durable than ever."

iFixYouri notes that 95% of glass shattering is caused by shock and sudden impact rather than bending. They decided to put the glass to the test.

We have a full iPhone 4(minus the circuit board), here at our shop and decided to do a little drop test. This drop was performed from 3.5 ft up. Mind you that these parts ARE original apple parts. Laser etched and all. The iPhone 4 did survive 2 drops, as expected, but on the 3rd drop there was a loud POP, and yet again, shattered glass.

The site believes that the new design has flaw which contributes to this easy shattering. On the new iPhone, the glass basically sits on top of the aluminum frame. On the old iphone, it was recessed and protected by a chrome bezel.

This may be why Apple has announced its own official cases for the iPhone 4. These cases called "Bumpers" slip around the edge of your iPhone 4 and likely cushion the impact to the glass when dropped.

Android 2.2 (Froyo) Ported to the iPhone

Android 2.2 (Froyo) has now been successfully ported to run on the iPhone 3G; although some features are still not working. It's likely that iPhoDroid will be updated with Android 2.2 in the near future.