With the end of the year comes the cavalcade of best and worst lists, just in case you didn't know what was best and what was worst over the course of the year.

Apple made glassdoor.com's list of "50 Best Places to Work," placing 19th. It scored a 3.8 out of five, and 90 percent of employees approved of the job that CEO Steve Jobs was doing. 303 employees completed reviews at the site, contributing to its score. (The reviews themselves are interesting to read, incidentally, if you have a few minutes to kill.)

On the other hand, Apple made Fortune magazine's list of 21 Dumbest Moments in Business for the year, twice -- but the second time really wasn't its fault.

The first head-smacker, at number six, was for the approval (and subsequent removal) of the "I Am Rich" iPhone application. "The real losers?" Fortune asks: "The eight suckers who bought it."

The second blooper, number 19, actually goes to CNN and Bloomberg for two false stories about Steve Jobs' health. Bloomberg accidentally released an obituary on August 28, and retracted it the same day. In a similar gaffe, a post on CNN's iReport site falsely claimed that Jobs had suffered a heart attack. CNN took down the post -- but not after Apple's stock dipped 10 percent in 10 minutes. Ouch.

[Via Macsimum News and MacNN.]

The Zune might not be the most popular topic here at TUAW, but this video from CNN is too good not to share. The New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin was on to show off the Zune and give his opinion of it (he thinks it has potential, but isn't up to the iPod yet), however, watch until the end to see the real star of the segment, the new iPod shuffle. One of the anchors says, while holding her shuffle, 'Why would I buy that [meaning the Zune]?'

Probably not the reaction our friends in Redmond are hoping for. This is the last Zune related post from me for a week.

[via TUG]

Several people have emailed us to point out that CNN is featuring an AP story about the 'first Mac virus' on their front page. It looks like CNN is a little late to the party, since the Mac web already reported about this way back in February. Damien wrote that, 'The bottom line is that this really seems to be a proof-of-concept trojan more than an actual "in the wild, self-propagating" virus. So yeah, it's certainly very interesting, but I'm not about to start watching for the sky to fall.'

The virus detailed in the CNN story is (though they never call it by name) Oompa-Loompa, as coined by Andrew Welch. You get this trojan (it isn't really a virus) by downloading a file that promises to give you a sneak peek at Leopard. You must then decompress the file, and then click on the resulting decompressed file. At that point an application runs that does a variety of things that Andrew details much better than I can.

I wonder what took the AP so long to sensationalize this little 'virus'?

Macworld UK is reporting that CNN has begun using iChat AV to conduct face-to-face interviews. A new show called Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer is testing the technology for the network. CNN describes the show as using "...the newest innovative online resources, making the entire process of newsgathering more transparent and placing the latest news and information at the viewers' fingertips." Joi Ito was one of the first iChat interviewees, and he blogged his experience.

I hate to say it, because I'm sure I'm going to jinx the whole works, but is Apple finally being taken seriously as a technology company? We've got an international news network using Apple technology to conduct interviews, people buying iPods like their lives literally depend on the little devices, gushing praise for Tiger coming from outside the network of fanboys and the word "podcast" showing up everywhere, from cable news outlets to NASA. Ten or fifteen years ago, having a website was the epitome of cool. Today, websites are a dime a dozen, and it's having a podcast that gets you on the A-list. It's all very strange. I'm almost afraid to say anything, lest the other shoe will drop.

[Via Macworld UK]