"...The USB chargers were sourced through a Chinese vendor. We paid to have the proper certification and safety tests performed here in the U.S. for the chargers. However, tonight we were informed by a customer of a safety incident with the black USB chargers..."

You think it is appropriate to say this in a recall notice...

and this is why you fail.

Sony has problems with their products, so does Apple. Neither of them blame their sourcing in communication to customers. Why? Because your problem is not Chinese manufacturers, or Stateside testing companies, your problem is YOU and YOUR PROCESSES. Take ownership and move forward.

I am reminded of how you handled getting a bad review, here -> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2029052

I think there is an attitude at your company that is incompatible with the relentless pursuit of perfection that is required to pull off a successful hardware startup. What you guys need is a 'Come To Jesus' talk, not more clumsy attempts at deflecting culpability.

It's likely that the chargers that were tested and the chargers that actually ended up shipping are quite different inside.

This seems to be a constant battle when going the Chinese route. You have to cut open a few from every shipment and check to see if inferior components have been subbed in since last time.

Sure. You can disrupt someone on the toilet, at the dinner table, in bed, etc, etc. Very disruptive indeed.

2010 was, for me, the year of JS-related technologies. (I'm actually rather disappointed I haven't had more time to check out Clojure and to use Haskell and Scala more--I was doing quite a lot of front-end web stuff.)

1. Socket.IO (http://socket.io/)

It lets you use websockets and automatically fall back to flash sockets, long polling, or several other real-time communication methods if websockets aren't supported by the client. There's a JS client and node-compatible server, as well as in-progress server implementations in a few other languages. Node is nice by itself, but it's with things like Socket.IO that it really shines.

2. Coffeescript (http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/)

Coffeescript is a nice-looking and nice-to-type syntax on top of JavaScript. It's made JS development a lot friendlier, and I now miss things about it every time I'm programming in Python and Ruby. I now use it whenever I'm doing any significant amount of coding in JS.

3. Node.js (http://nodejs.org/)

Node should, by this point, need no introduction. Server-side JS. Plays very nicely with websockets thanks to Socket.IO, making it very easy to write the server-side part of real-time webapps. I've also found it very useful when trying to quickly prototype simple non-webapp things that have to communicate over a network.

I haven't had a chance to check out Backbone.js (http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/) yet beyond a very quick look, but I expect to use it (or something like it) next time I'm developing something that uses a significant amount of client-side JS.

I'm also very excited by the continued development on (and Yehuda Katz's participation in) SproutCore (http://www.sproutcore.com/).

This is par for the course. I have friends who have had to manage manufacturing processes in China. You have to be very specific, to the point of utter paranoia, in the instructions that you provide. Wherever, and I mean absolutely wherever a corner can be cut, it will be cut at this level.

One friend had to get rubber household cleaning gloves made in China. He worked for a retailer and this would be for their store brand. If they specified something to be done, it would be done exactly the way they wanted. If something was unspecified, you could bet that the cheapest, shoddiest, most dangerous materials/processes would be used. For example, he never specified that the rubber used should actually be safe to be worn by humans. Prototypes came back with obscene levels of toxins in a glove that is meant to protect people from getting their hands dirty with household cleaning chemicals. There was just no common sense to fill in the blanks in the instructions here. Once they sorted out this issue, as another commenter mentioned, they would have to check each and every shipment because the manufacturer would try to sneak cheaper variants into the batches. Eventually my friend went and inspected the factory on a business trip only to find so many ethically questionable practices that he eventually decided to switch to another job.

If you choose to go the overseas route, I'd suggest that you find a consultant who has experience here. It will be well worth it. They'll be familiar with all the games that are played and will save you money.

As a westerner enjoying the luxuries of a western lifestyle, obviously I'd urge you to try to source/assemble locally. Cheap labour practices aside (i.e. I understand the argument that folks on that side of the world need work too and are willing to put up with cheap wages and long hours), a lot of the savings come from a complete disregard for the local environment. So these workers might benefit from the wages they earn, but they'll pay for it with their health. You probably wouldn't want heavy metals leeching into your community's drinking water, and you'd cease doing business with a factory doing so in your neck of the woods. But somehow folks seem to think it's acceptable if it's not in their backyard. That's an ethical question you'll have to answer for yourself.

All this said, quite frankly some of the manufacturing expertise simply no longer exists in North America. So your only choice is to get stuff done in China. I know a wealthy flag-waving patriotic ex-military businessman who confided in me as much about why he had to outsource overseas. He said it wasn't so much the cost but that the manufacturers overseas were simply better skilled. We like to think we've got superior technology/processes over here and that the only advantage of overseas manufacturing is the cheap price. But the more that manufacturing is done overseas, the less this will be true.

Man these guys can't catch a break. I really want to love WakeMate but they're making it hard.