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Apple product factories in China are opening their doors to the media and labor rights experts amid reports alleging poor working conditions at the plants.

ABC's Nightline is scheduled to air a report Tuesday after a rare behind-the-scenes look inside the factories. And earlier this week, Apple released a statement that said the Fair Labor Association would be conducting special voluntary audits of Apple's final assembly suppliers, including Foxconn factories in Shenzhen and Chengdu, China, at Apple's request.

Google and Apple talk up security, but recent disclosures serve as a painful reminder of how much control mobile phone users give up when they power on their handsets.

The very nature of cloud-based software is that we're sharing our content with a remote server. Google, Apple, and other companies just reminded us of how much we trust our content security, but the writing has been on the wall for a while.

Rumor has it the iPad 3 will soon be here. The device will most likely be a tremendous success simply by virtue of being an iPad, but if Apple wants to put some of its $100 billion hoard to use and get “creative†with the pricing of its tablets it could virtually assure its dominance and force many competitors to abandon the market completely.

The iPad has started out at the 16GB Wi-Fi only model for $499 since it originally launched. When the iPad 2 came along, Apple continued selling it at the same original iPad pricing, and slashed the price of the original iPad models to clear out inventory.

Apple's enhanced display on its yet-to-be-unveiled iPad 3 appears to be the worst kept secret, judging by all the eyes that are reportedly able to see it.

MacRumors owner Arnold Kim says anyone can buy the next iteration of the popular tablet at the Chinese website TrueSupplier. The skinny: The screen measures 9.7 inches in diagonal, the same size display as used in the iPad and iPad 2, but the resolution is twice as sharp.

Exploits. Sometimes, they break games in your favor, allowing you access to powers, abilities, and cheap ways to accomplish difficult tasks that a game’s developers didn’t intend for you to have (and a game’s testers somehow overlooked). But these exploits can sometimes turn the tables against your peaceful adventures – especially in massively multiplayer games like World of Warcraft or EVE Online, where game-breaking bugs can give your peers untold advantage over your hapless, plays-by-the-rules self.

And then there are the exploits that are just downright funny.

Get ready to flex your creative muscle. In Andy Wallace's new tower defense game, Doodle Defense, creativity is just as important as strategy as you use your drawings to fend off an oncoming army.. Doodle Defense uses Xbox Kinect and a projector to turn a whiteboard into a game board. As the enemies begin marching across the board, you must draw barriers to divert them and towers to kill them in order to prevent enemies from exiting the play area.

By using markers with different colors, you can create towers with different attack modes. The Xbox Kinect monitors the whiteboard, updating the game based on what you've drawn. The projected enemies will respond in real time to your drawings; moving around barriers and falling down dead when the towers shoot them.

[Photo: Erik de Nijs]

It's happened to the best of us: You spilled coffee on your keyboard at work, and the IT guy is so pissed that he doesn't want to give you a new one. What do you do? Get pants with a built-in keyboard of course!

It's official: Rovio's Angry Birds franchise will soon soar to the heavens for yet another round of revenge role-play.

Angry Birds Space will arrive March 22, and based on Rovio's teaser video, it appears the wrathful fowl will battle their egg-thieving porcine adversaries among the stars--or at least on the Moon.

Examples of Geek Fight cards. [Images: Kalan Vazquez/Diving Dragon Games on Kickstarter]Battlestar Galactica vs. Babylon Five vs. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine--if this is the sort of deep conversations you have with your friends, Geek Fight by Kalan Vazquez might be for you. It'll take your real-life geek fights to the next level--the card game level.

Geek Fight, currently a project on Kickstarter, is a Collectable Card game that's similar in nature to Magic: The Gathering, YuGiOh! But instead of battling with mythical creatures, you battle with geeky archetypes, like the Fan Boy, the Angry Video Game Nerd, and the Nostalgia Critic. The archetypes look like animation illustrations with furrowed-brows, tough visages and bodies ready to nerd-slam their opponents.

As we get closer to the launch of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, Microsoft has been releasing a steady drip of information about its next operating system. The latest tidbit? A new logo--sporting the same "Metro" aesthetic as Windows 8 itself.

“Open source†is a term most often applied to software, and it's become increasingly common in both the business and consumer worlds.

What some may not realize, however, is that hardware can be open source too, with design specifications, schematics, source code, and other data about the device's inner workings available for inspection and customization by the user.

This week, BioWare released the Mass Effect 3 demo with both singleplayer and cooperative multiplayer modes. Next week the publisher, Electronic Arts, will release early copies into space using weather balloons.

As reported by USA Today, EA will launch six copies from New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Berlin, London and Paris. Each is fitted with a GPS tracking device you monitor from the Mass Effect site.