Apple's got a lot of problems when it comes to overheating iPod batteries -- not only is the situation potentially dangerous, every move Cupertino makes is subject to sensational misinterpretation. Take today's Times UK story this morning about 11-year-old Ellie Stanborough, whose iPod touch blew itself up last month: when her father Ken contacted Apple for a refund, it seems he got a little bit of a runaround, but was eventually sent a settlement agreement offering a full refund if the family agreed to keep the deal confidential. That's actually totally standard practice when companies settle out-of-warranty claims, but since the agreement was written by lawyers, it contained a bunch of vaguely threatening language about how breaking confidentiality might result in Apple relentlessly suing everyone until Liverpool itself goes bankrupt and the populace is forced to resort to cannibalism and network television. Cue hysterical media coverage.

Now, it's no secret that lithium-ion batteries like those used in the iPod have a long history of overheating and exploding, and Apple's certainly had large-scale problems with defective cells -- the first-gen iPod nano has been recalled in Korea and Japan, for example. It's also obvious that the sheer number of iPods sold means there are more exploding iPods than anything else -- and while we're sure some accountant at Apple has a spreadsheet showing the exact failure rate is acceptable, all we've got right now is story after story of these things blowing up with zero context. So here's our suggestion to Apple: maybe instead of having lawyers draft individual settlement agreements full of impenetrable and scary legalese for each and every jilted iPod owner out there, why not simply fess up to the problem, let people know exactly how common it is and how to avoid it, and provide a dead-simple replacement option for people who've had their iPods go up in smoke? That would put everyone at ease, and make these types of stories much less likely to blow up in a media feeding frenzy. Or, you know, do nothing because overwhelming market share inevitably leads to arrogant laziness -- your call.

[Via TUAW]

While Apple may have moved on to selling the 4th generation iPod nano, consumer protection agencies are still focused on gen-1. For good reason too, apparently, as there's mounting evidence that those early white and black plastic players have a tendency to overheat, swell, and possibly burst into a nasty chemical fire. Responding to four formal consumer complaints made between December and June, the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards sent a request to Apple on June 25th recommending that Apple "aggressively" collects first generation iPod nano with Lithium Ion batteries made by the Chinese company ATL. Initially, Apple agreed to replace faulty units as they did in Japan upon request by the consumer. However, KATS is now reporting that Apple will recall the players under its own initiative making this the first formal iPod nano recall we can, uh, recall.

Just a note to everyone who carries around a spare smartphone Li-ion in their rear pocket: buy thicker underwear. The scene you see above was all caused by an obviously volatile HTC Touch Pro battery, one that the pants-wearer claims is an authentic HTC cell and not a cheap-o alternative from eBay. As the story goes, a foul odor led him to a laundry pile, where he uncovered eight moist socks, a torched battery and a ruined pair of pants. Look, we're glad this guy's okay and all, but seriously, can you imagine what this testy little thing would've done when tossed into the dryer? It's a blessing in disguise, kiddo.

[Via phoneArena]

Look, it's pretty clear that the lithium-ion battery in the first generation iPod nano has the potential to burst into flames. Seriously, how many more cases do we have to see? Even after giving Apple a stern talking-to and ferocious wag of the finger back in March, Japan's government is once again investigating possible battery defects that caused a pair of Tokyo nanos to burn: nano model MA099 recently singed a piece of nearby paper while a model MA005 nano burned a traditional tatami mat in January (no injuries were reported).

Presumably Apple is calculating the cost-of-recall at this very moment. In other words, take the number of 1st gen nanos in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, they don't do one.

Update: Japan has issued a warning to iPod nano users saying, "Users need to be careful about overheating of the machines," particularly when charging the players. Japan's government has reported a total of 14 similar incidents to Apple related to models MA004J/A, MA005J/A, MA099J/A and MA107J/A all sold between September '05 and September '06 -- two of which resulted in minor burns. NHK claims that Apple does not plan a recall but is ready to exchange defective parts.

It's not like ThinkPads have been immune to the notorious overheating battery issue, but a fiery incident in Ohio may not be IBM's fault. In a somewhat bizarre tale, it's reported that an Ohioan purchased a replacement battery from Shentech for his ThinkPad, only to later have it overheat, catch on fire and damage his machine. After discovering that the faulty cell was actually a counterfeit, IBM took the liberty of ordering a dozen batteries from the Flushing, New York-based company, and it soon discovered that all twelve received were indeed fakes. As you can probably guess, IBM has filed suit against the outfit and has asked the court to require Shentech to hand over all of its batteries for destruction, profits it made from selling the fakes and a million dollars "per counterfeit mark per type of item sold." That'll teach 'em to mess with Big Blue.

[Via TGDaily]

Here we go again kids. After all those notorious fires related to the batteries used by the world's largest handset manufacturer, Nokia has issued a product advisory for the BL-5C, Nokia-branded battery. That's right, Nokia branded, not just those third-party knockoffs everyone had been pointing the finger at previously. A staggering 46 million batteries in fact, all manufactured by Matsushita (aka, Panasonic) between December 2005 and November 2006, are said to be at risk of "dislodge." According to the release, "in very rare cases" the Nokia-branded BL-5C batteries could short circuit leading to an explosive burn. Nokia goes on to say that the danger only exists while charging the battery and of the 100 or so reported incidents, "no serious injuries or property damage have been reported." Oh really? So the loss of a leg no longer constitutes serious injury? The BL-5C is one of just 14 different batteries used in Nokia products so be sure to check the list below to see if your phone is one of the 52 Nokia handsets affected. If you're unlucky (or lucky, depending upon your viewpoint) enough to be affected, then Nokia will provide a replacement battery free of charge.

Update: We just received word from Nokia that the "overheating" referred to in their advisory will not result in an explosion or even a fire. At worst, batteries will "overheat, expand, and pop out of the phone (due to the expansion of the battery)." Of course, it states right on the battery that it "may explode if damaged" and "do not short circuit" so this little clarification likely won't make you feel any better now will it?

Read -- Product advisory for BL-5C battery
Read -- List of affected Nokia phones and Battery IDs

It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt, and unfortunately, the latest case of exploding battery syndrome led to something far worse than a minor injury. Reportedly, a 22-year old Chinese welder actually perished after a cellphone battery residing in his pocket exploded. The eruption was so violent, in fact, that it "broke a rib and drove the remnants of the pack into his heart," and while rescue crews were able to get him to a hospital, he passed away shortly thereafter. Currently, the manufacturer of the phone and battery are being withheld, but expects in Jinta were dispatched in order to conduct an investigation.

[Via Inquirer, image courtesy of ABC]

Sure, spontaneous combustion has occurred in a bevy of consumer electronics over the past year or so, but if there was one place even we thought you could count yourself safe, it'd be on the john. Apparently, this assumption is no longer valid for Toto toilet owners, as 180,000 of the company's Z-series units are now being recalled "after wiring problems caused three to catch fire over the past year." The electric bidet accessory is being shown the blame, as the faulty wiring not only torched a trio of units, but also caused smoke to come flowing out of 26 others. As expected, the firm will "repair the potentially fiery units manufactured between May 1996 and December 2001 for free," but we've no idea if Toto will be reimbursing the outhouse rentals for those sans a backup commode.

No doubt there's a few outfits at CeBIT doing little aside from blowing hot air, but a number of firms are seeking to extract all the warm oxygen it can from critical data centers. Oxygen-deprivation systems have seen a lot of interest in Germany, as both Wagner Alarm and Security Systems GmbH's OxyReduct and N2telligence GmbH's not-yet-named system remove a vast majority of the surrounding oxygen from rooms full of servers in an effort to greatly reduce the risk of overheating and fire. Although each company's approach had its own special twist, reducing the oxygen level within notoriously toasty data centers is certainly something enterprises and even medium-sized businesses will take note of, as just about everyone and their great-grandparents are now terrified of components spontaneously combusting. Unfortunately, neither outfit was willing to disclose general pricing information, as they seem to work on a per-job basis based on the area that needs do-oxygenated, but if you're studio apartment looks anything like this, you should definitely look into a consumer edition if it ends up on the market.

Just when you thought we were done with those sensational photos of burned out laptop husks and smoking keyboards, along comes an Australian MacBook to resuscitate this dying meme. Normally we wouldn't even bother posting yet another set of these pics -- after all, recalls have been issued, apologies have been offered, and we've all moved on to complaining about other stuff, right? -- but the fact that this particular Mac's battery was reportedly not on any recall list is just a little bit worrisome. According to MacTalk forum member mattyb, he and his girlfriend were awakened around 3:00 A.M. Sunday night by the smell of smoke, which they quickly traced to a smoldering MacBook and the magazines it had set ablaze. It's clear from the images who the culprit is here, and sure enough, Matty claims that his battery had been acting flaky and draining more quickly than usual for the past few weeks. As much as we hope that this is some isolated incident which won't force the lucky ones from Recall Round One to lose precious computing time, we'd rather transition to our desktop for a few weeks instead of waking up to an apartment full of flames and a crispy hard drive. Keep reading for a close up of the disconcerting damage from Down Under...

[Via digg]

While we've seen quite a few toys pulling stunts that they should definitely be ashamed of, the latest edition ups the ante by doing its dirty deed in a Roman Catholic cathedral. Following the "if it blinks, obliterate it" mentality so well exemplified at various Boston transit arteries, a team of Santa Fe bomb squad experts were called onto the scene after three CD players were triggered to start blasting "sexually explicit language in the middle of an Ash Wednesday Mass" at the Roman Catholic Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. Reportedly, the players were "duct-taped to the bottoms of the pews," apparently causing the innocent church dwellers to assume the worse -- you know, like C4 explosives camouflaged as a mid-range driver. Nevertheless, the bomb squad removed the devices, took them outside, and probably had a thrilling experience whilst detonating two of the players as a safety measure. Once the crew realized the only explosive tendencies were captured in the inappropriate lyrics, they salvaged the third unit to comb for fingerprints and hopefully arrest the perpetrator(s). Now, which cop is going to cave in and post the fireworks on YouTube?

[Via BoingBoing]

Having an overheating laptop nestled on your legs isn't exactly the most comfortable way to work, but even if your Li-ion doesn't erupt on your mid-section, other forms of damage can still ruin your day life. In an effort to quell the scalding that so often occurs on today's lap-burners, Intel has issued a patent application "which uses light to sense when a computer casing is getting too hot, and automatically throttles back the power" to cool things off. Considering that hot spots emerge in various locales on the casing, a light sensor would be used to detect changes on an internal thermochromic coating, which would then relay a signal to the processor to clock down a bit in order to keep the temperatures within reason. Of course, we fully expect a taskbar icon to disable this CPU-limiting procedure for those rocking flame retardant pants, but this should work just fine for those who prefer not to dress accordingly while computing on the go.

[Via NewScientistTech]

Sending robotic creatures into space has become somewhat of a worldwide pastime, but sending explosive robots to take care of multiple acts of business is what Dennis Ebbets of Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado has on his mind. In a recent presentation given to the American Astronomical Society, Mr. Ebbets described a fleet of robotic probes small and cheap enough to "investigate a near-Earth asteroid's composition and structure." The devices would be battery-powered and would only be useful for a matter of days, but during the time it was on the asteroid, it would collect data of the surface, explode, and allow other still-in-tact siblings to "listen for vibrations that could reveal the object's inner structure." Considering that NASA has compiled a list of over 800 asteroids that could be potentially dangerous to our planet due to their orbit, these exploding bots would serve a dual purpose as they erupted on the surface to break up the asteroid or veer it off course, all while collecting precious data about the "inner structures" of these mysterious rocks. Although funding still isn't guaranteed for the volatile critters to take off just yet, as many as six of the 12-kilograms probes could loaded onto a single spacecraft and launched to its destination "relatively cheaply," and if things go as planned, we could see the first of these gizmos gettin' dirty by 2011.

Just when we thought things couldn't get any worse, and we actually believed (ever so slightly, mind you) that these battery recalls had reached their end, here's another 1.3 million that are being returned to sender. Japanese mobile giant NTT DoCoMo has recalled 1.3 million Sanyo-derived batteries due to multiple reports of the Li-ion cells generating "excessive heat" and causing "ruptures" in some instances. The batteries are reportedly found in claims made by Sony, but doesn't exactly provide for happy holidays when you consider that the company actually lost users (17,500 to be exactly) overall last month, which hasn't happened since the firm opened in July 1992.

[Thanks, kaztm]