A new Digg , a new school year, and a new weekly roundup of essential resources. In case you were too busy buying pencils and calculators for yourself or a young ‘un, we’ve pulled together our top posts from the past week or so. Check out our updates on Digg, or our infographic on the state of the Geosocial Universe in Social Media
After a string of suicides in Foxconn’s China factories, home to some 400,000 workers who manufacture electronic devices for giants such as HP, Dell, and Apple, the management announced it plans to raise workers’ salaries by 20%. Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision Industry, the anchor of Foxconn Technology Group, claims the salary increase has been planned for some time, but doesn’t say when the raise will be implemented. The timing of the announcement is most probably tied to the suicides at the Foxconn factory, as another employee jumped to his death on Wednesday, bringing the total suicide toll in 2010 to ten.
In response to mounting concern from users and the media, as well as a member of the Senate , Facebook unveiled simpler privacy options yesterday. Mashable Founder and CEO Pete Cashmore appeared on PBS today to discuss Facebook’s response to user backlash. While he agrees that Facebook’s decision to simplify privacy settings was a good one, he thinks the company should have gone a step further and made its Instant Personalization feature opt-in instead of opt-out.
Joe Raby is a co-founder of Sunshine Suites , a community-based shared office space with two locations in Manhattan, NY.
After a lengthy phase of beta testing , Microsoft finally unleashed its long-awaited update to the Office 2007 desktop productivity suite. Office 2010 includes a number of new features , among them a redesigned menu system, improved inline multimedia editing, real-time collaboration, improved security settings and — perhaps the biggest of them all — a cloud-based web apps component that aims to compete with Google Docs.
There was a veritable barrage of social media news this week — from various and sundry natural disasters to Steve Jobs’s face-off with Adobe to Conan’s return to TV to Pulitzers to taxes to a whole lotta Twittering. If you had trouble keeping up with all the latest SM-related news this week, never fear — Mashable has compiled a list of the top stories from the past seven days
Loic Le Meur, Seesmic founder and tech scene leader, was clearly bullish on the Twitter platform in this interview conducted yesterday at Chirp , the Twitter developer conference. Le Meur, whose company is launching its own platform, is a big believer in the opportunities for those who develop Twitter apps.
It’s 4/16 and for fans of the social network application Foursquare , it’s cause for celebration. All across the world, Foursquare users are celebrating Foursquare Day by gathering in swarms and taking advantage of Foursquare deals offered by bars, restaurants and other venues
