The company's had to endure quite a number of red marks on its books recently - sweatshop iPods, hot-running laptops, the lawsuit with Creative, MacStains, malfunctioning logic boards, and their own massive LiON battery recall in the wake of the Sony battery/Dell exploding laptop scandal - but they didn't stop Apple shares from finishing 50 cents higher in the NASDAQ Friday.

Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said that the company will not be feeling any financial impact from the battery recall program - despite the fact the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) estimates up to 1.8 million Apple laptop batteries worldwide are covered by the recall. By comparison, Sony expects costs of between $172 million and $258 million to recover bad batteries and ship replacements. And the Japanese government had recently ordered both Sony and Dell to investigate their battery troubles, and report their findings by the end of August - or face a fine.

The battery recall is the latest in a series of "irregularities" either publicly revealed or admitted to by Apple, or accused of by third parties. The latter case is represented by the iPod sweatshop accusations leveled against the Chinese-based factories where iPod manufacturing is outsourced. Cases falling under the former include the battery recall, both of their older models and of certain batches of MacBook Pro batteries, as well as MacBook quality control issues.

But by stock performance it seems that the company's still ticking and kicking. Even if it wasn't the highest in the past year, things are still looking up for Apple.

Then again, we did say long before that any idea of an "Apple customer backlash" could be illusory.

Apple, Acer, Motorola, and Lenovo are among the worst polluters, according to Greenpeace, while Nokia and Dell just barely passed. Greenpeace ranked major electronics companies according to what they were doing to remove the harmful chemicals in their gadgets, phones, and computers. Also, Greenpeace ranked the companies according to their policies about taking responsibility for their products when these are thrown away by their customers (for example, companies should recycle old components as much as possible and they should process and dispose of the chemical waste properly). Like all other piles of garbage, the amount of toxic waste caused by electronics ("e-waste") is growing, and it often gets dumped in poor developing countries.

Greenpeace's rankings (points are out of 10; 10 is the highest possible score):

7: Nokia - Needs to improve recycling program.
7: Dell - Some models still have the worst chemicals, but has a good program of taking back their toxic trash.
5.7: Hewlett Packard
5.3: Sony Ericsson
5: Samsung
4.7: Sony
4.3: LGE
3.3: Panasonic
3: Toshiba
3: Fujitsu-Siemens
2.7: Apple
2.3: Acer
1.7: Motorola
1.3: Lenovo

Greenpeace will update the rankings four times a year. And as for Apple scoring so low, the Greenpeace article had this to say: "It is disappointing to see Apple ranking so low in the overall guide. They are meant to be world leaders in design and marketing, they should also be world leaders in environmental innovation."

That's right, you can go right ahead and call KeyBank and ask them to send that 1GB iPod Nano first thing! Well, after you open an account with them first, that is.

KeyBank currently has an ongoing promotion: anyone who opens a checking account with them by September 9 will receive a free iPod as a welcome gift. If you're not comfortable with walking around with a checkbook though, then you can go right ahead and just apply for a credit card by October 31 to be able to avail of the same promo.

We're not exactly sure about bank policies that they may have though, so it may be best to just check out their site or call them up directly. Yeah, it was just the free iPod that caught our eye. But then who knows, perhaps this can be the beginning of a beautiful friendship between KeyBank and you. If not, well, at least you got a free iPod. Not too bad, don't you think?

A big, big thanks to Montoge360 for the heads up!

A survey conducted in London for recruitment firm Office Angels found that 67% of the 1,500 respondents considered gadgets like Blackberrys, the latest cellphones, and laptop memory sticks as the ultimate status symbols for today's workforce generation.

A large number of the participants (45% of the respondents) said that the office worker MUST have an iPod and at least 2 mobile phones for him/her to gain socio-corporate status. Why two? One for social chit-chat and one for work-related communications. Also, another way to gain status is to spend over 10 pounds on coffee even though you can get it for free at the office.

According to Office Angels, the concept of yuppies (Young Urban Professionals) is now outdated and should give way to office workers who they now call GOSSIPS (Gadget Obsessed Status Symbol Infatuated Professionals).

Much talk recently ensued in many online communities after Apple has linked to Japanese Video Artist and Musician, Takagi Masakatsu's site, and then shut down the his site because of the bandwidth consumption.

This has caused a lot of disappointed reactions as many have found Apple's move unethical and unintelligent. Above all though, there is a general air of agreement that it was Apple who linked to the site in the first place, which is even hosted on .mac, and yet Apple couldn't find the courtesy to host what they linked to and even shut it down.

Masakatsu's website (check it out here) mostly contains static image samples of his work and some audio clips.

Again, we would like to quote one of our readers who wryly observed you can sell anything these days by putting an "i" before it. This must be the same philosophy that inspired Sergio Trujillo to come up with his concept product: the iCap Opener. Specs-wise, it is the same as your run-of-the-mill bottle cap opener. What sets it apart from the mundane is purely cosmetic. But in this iDecade that's probably enough to sell a million of these - that's if this concept product do get sold in the market.

In case you don't know, the 99 Cents Download isn't very popular with major music labels. It does sound a bit small, considering Michael Jackson has to feed his chimp and llamas. And then there's Whitney and Bobby's "hobby" which isn't exactly cheap. But we found out the artists don't even get all the 99 cents. The record label does! Which explains why it's the record executives, not the artists, who's been crying all the way to the bank.

Michael Kanellos, an editor at CNET News, says record labels make the most from legal downloads. Record companies keep about 72.5 cents on average for a 99 cent song. Does the rest go the Bubble's retirement fund? Not at all. The credit card company also gets a small slice. Then the last slice goes to the people who sold the song. No wonder Jackson isn't doing much singing these days.

After a lot of back and forth, rumors and denials, Microsoft has now confirmed that the name of its new brand of multimedia devices will be Zune. As expected, the project will focus on music primarily - at least for the time being. As hinted in an interview with Billboard Magazine, depending on the success of the devices, a gaming-oriented Zune product might eventually see the light of the day. But it's safe to say that for now, Microsoft aims to compete with Apple, not Sony and Nintendo.

Chris Stephenson, General Manager at Microsoft, commented, "Under the Zune brand, we will deliver a family of hardware and software products, the first of which will be available this year. We see a great opportunity to bring together technology and community to allow consumers to explore and discover music together.Â?

The first incarnation of Zune is set to arrive within the year, and employees working on the project have noted that with Zune, Microsoft is approaching multimedia in a holistic way, providing not only connectivity with as many Windows-powered devices as possible, but perhaps more importantly, trying to build a community, a social music network that enables users to connect with others to "discover new music and entertainment".

ProCare is $99 membership program that offers exclusive services and offers at local Apple retail stores. ProCare members are entitled to such goodies as next-day turnaround on in-store repairs; no waiting at the Genius Bar with up to seven-day advanced reservations; free setup and transferring of files when you buy a new Mac; free one-hour workshops; special discounts on selected Apple and third-party products; and a price match guarantee in case you see a Mac cheaper somewhere else.

To hype its ProCare package, Apple Store employees made a promo video piggy backing on South Park's popularity. Yes, we think the video animation is slick. But, really guys, South Park isn't South Park without, at least, killing Kenny.

There has been rumors about the existence and the release of the iPod phone ever since time immemorial...well not really. Ever since the iPod became the icon that it still is today, backfence talks that we reported earlier about the iPhone mentions that Apple is planning to release a 3G and VOIP ready iPod phone. Well you might say that the Motorola ROKR is basically the iPod phone, with its compatibility to iTunes and its ability to play great sounds. But this one may be the closest thing we have for an iPhone-- with all the wheel and stuff.

Although it has already been mentioned earlier that PDAs could masquerade as iPods, no one has ever seen a working video of a PDA donning iPod like qualities. Until this one. The controls of this one is fairly modest and it is really nice. The app is apparently called ppod, and it's out there, lingering within the recesses of the world wide web. So if you wanna give your PDAs more capabilities, you could always try it out.