In the wake of a new report out over alleged Apple sweatshops in China, CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield spoke with chief business correspondent Ali Velshi about what Apple knew and when they knew it. “Steve Jobs — he seems like the kind of guy who never, when he was alive, would have allowed any of this to go on,” Banfield observed. “Did he know? Did he not know? Did he not care? Do we know?”

On Tuesday’s Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert interviewed the ever-enigmatic Icelandic performer Björk, who was promoting her new album Biophilia. The Nordic songstress astounded the late-night comedian with an iPad app that corresponded with the music from the album and her tales of elves. Colbert was particularly enchanted by her innovative utilization of the iPad, opining, “This album in particular isn’t just music, it’s got this graphic interface here!”

The New York Post‘s Jeremy Olshan put it best: “you’d think they’d know better than to trust their valuables to Bernie Madoff.” But as the Post reports this morning, a tech entrepreneur who bought up Madoff’s clothes at auction has fashioned them into pricey iPad covers–and people are buying (even though, just like Madoff, these covers are a fancy veneer only, and you could lose everything). “They are strictly for fashion purposes,” he said. “If you drop it, it’s going to crack.”

An issue of the New Yorker may be long and densely packed, but at least one only comes every seven days. It’s possible that the incarcerated manage to read every issue. I am skeptical of anyone else who makes that claim.

What happens, subscribers know, is that you build a pile of New Yorkers that you mean to get to. At some point, you get a new issue in the mail while you’re still working through the previous week’s. You’ve read about up to the film reviews, maybe, but the fresh new issue is hard to resist. So you put the unfinished one aside. A week later, that once-fresh issue joins it – maybe this time you skipped the fiction or the theater review. Then two months have passed and you have a stack of nearly ten magazines. You’re drowning, surfacing to suck in the new Talk of the Town with ragged gasps, desperate for the one-week reprieve that follows a double issue.

The New York Daily News‘ Nina Mandell put it best: it’s a case of “naked political ambition.” Indeed. A group calling itself “Putin’s Army” seeks to show support for the Russian prime minister by showing that Vladimir Putin‘s got the sport of “beautiful, young and smart girls.” Oh, and naked. There’s that part also. Putin, who’s considering a presidential run, is not connected to the online effort, which promises stripping campaign supporters a chance not just to boost Putin’s standing in the polls, but also to win themselves an iPad 2. And so there’s that.

TV keeps expanding from that screen in your living room, and today CNN begins 24-hour live streaming its entire on-air schedule to 50 million people who’ve downloaded CNN’s app and have satellite, cable or telco service, part of the network’s participation in the TV Everywhere initiative. “We have long believed that our growth depends on [...]

Some people just really love their Apple products. In China, a 17-year-old boy returned home one day with a new laptop and iPad 2. His mother asked him how he’d gotten them and eventually he had to reveal the big, red scars going up the side of his body. Yep, he’d sold his kidney for an iPad.

Today, Fox News launched its first (free!) iPad application, allowing Fox’s audience to access to the channel while at school, work, in the subway, or enjoying a slice of Famiglia pizza.

The app allows users to watch videos, catch breaking news alerts, and even listen in on Fox News Radio. It also includes a “Happening Now” feature that gives users a quick look at the Fox News ticker and the network’s latest headlines, all sent directly to their desktops.

Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) is taking some ribbing in the blogosphere for a rant against the job-killing iPad on the floor of the House, in contrast to his effusive praise of another Apple device as a jobs engine just last month. However, if you listen to a fuller context of his remarks, he’s actually not slamming the iPad or the iPod, but our consumer economy for not retaining a manufacturing base.

Good rule of thumb: if somebody urges you to lick your iPad–and you happen to be on live television–just assume it’s a gag. That’s probably what KSWB morning anchor Shally Zomorodi would tell you after her co-anchor Raoul Martinez punked her on air Friday.

San Diego morning show viewers were treated to Martinez pretending to describe an amazing new iPad app that allowed users to “smell” and “taste” food right on their tablet.

Last night Stephen Colbert took on The Daily, the much ballyhooed iPad application jointly produced by Apple and News Corp. Colbert railed on Fox News editorial decision to eschew breaking news of the Egyptian revolution for promoting the new iPad product before lampooning a leaked memo of Daily EIC Jesse Angelo.

Think you need to purchase an iPad to check out Rupert Murdoch‘s latest media project? Think again, plebe! Friend of Mediaite Rex Sorgatz reports via his Tumblr page Fimoculous a new means of reading The Daily online – without an iPad – after bemoaning the fact that the iPad news “paper” (newspad?) didn’t have its own homepage or official index of stories.

Clive Thompson’s latest column for Wired picks up on something I’ve noticed: “I save the little stuff for Twitter and blog only when I have something big to say,” as blogger Anil Dash put it. It turns out readers prefer this: One survey found that the most popular blog posts today are the longest ones, 1,600 [...]

Perhaps you cool kids have noticed that ABC’s World News anchor Diane Sawyer now keeps her iPad on the anchor desk during the evening news. And maybe you saw her using her iPad during that news bonanza interview she did with Janet Napolitano (“24/7, 364″) and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (Um, London, you say?)

In the weirdest feminine hygiene-related media meme since the release of the iPad, the red-hot WikiLeaks controversy has inspired an ad campaign in Pakistan that boasts of Butterfly brand sanitary pads, “WikiLeaks…Butterfly doesn’t.”

According to a spokesman for the ad agency, “Nobody has said it’s in bad taste yet,” which could pave the way for other WikiLeaks-related ad campaigns.

National Journal, a publication most well-known among wonky political insiders, wants to be the publication that starts and dominates the national political conversation. Can they do it?

The New Yorker is now available on the iPad. If you are reading this and are already the owner of an iPad you likely know this. Perhaps you’re even watching the instructional film starring Jason Schwartzman and directed by Roman Coppola. But I think it’s worth noting the news for two reasons.

Amazon.com sent out word today that the sale of electronic books (books in digital form that can be read on devices like the Kindle or iPad) have outsold hardcover books for the past three months. Presumably softcover books are still holding onto their “most purchased” title, but it may only be a matter of time before they as well fall to the digitized onslaught. This is a sad day for Luddites everywhere. And a happy one for folks who hate paper cuts.

Gourmet Lives! Conde Nast CEO Chuck Townsend just announced plans to bring back the recently shuttered food title, not as what previously existed in print, but rather as a digital interactive experience that leverages its massive database of recipes, branded merchandise and social network. “We see tremendous upside in leveraging social networks,” said Townsend, and Gourmet Live appears to be the trial balloon.

News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch stopped by the Fox Business Network today for an extensive interview on business, Wall Street, and the future of media, with Brian Sullivan, and he had effusive praise for Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Calling the iPad a “really beautiful device” and predicting that Apple will sell “at least 10 million” iPads within the year, Murdoch hinted that he would like to see the News Corp-owned Wall Street Journal make its way to the improve it’s iPad app and supported Jobs’ statement yesterday that he backs the established media.

He is the head of a computer company that’s in conflict with Google and Adobe, has come out against porn, and now expressed fears that America will become a “nation of bloggers” at an All Things Digital conference yesterday. Does Apple CEO Steve Jobs understand the Internet?

At two months old, we’re just at the beginning of figuring out cool new ways to bring the iPad into our lives. Which is how we get this new video currently making the rounds on Twitter: iPad + Velcro = ♥.

Yeah, so I took my iPad to Africa. Contrary to what Gizmodo‘s Joel Johnson considers, don’t go selling your laptop just yet. But you know who liked it? The lions.

On Fox News’ America Live this afternoon, Megyn Kelly and Brit Hume were discussing President Obama‘s remarks about tech devices like the iPad, casting him as a tech-phobic hypocrite who uses the devices himself, when Hume suddenly vanished from the screen, leaving Kelly to jokingly conclude that maybe the President was on to something, or was even responsible for the outage.

This should be fun. In a commencement address at Virginia’s Hampton University yesterday, President Obama fed meme-hungry media types the kind of quote they can really sink their teeth several millimeters into. The NY Post already has the President “declaring war on technology,” and Fox News says he “Warns Grads of iPad Peril.” The combination of über-pop-buzzword “iPad” and lightning-rod POTUS is almost irresistible, with even the Huffington Post missing the point of what Obama was really saying.