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Last week Foxconn pushed its starting salaries up from 900 yuan ($143) to 1,800 yuan per month, the latest and biggest in wage upticks that began in 2010.

Ahead of the Mobile World Congress event next week dozens of new smartphones are being revealed or teased to stir up the tech press, get potential customers excited, and, of course, drum up sales.

So, you're smart.

iPad 3 Fatter NextMedia has gotten ahold of what they're saying is an iPad 3 rear shell, and photos of this thing are all over the web. It's consistent with previous rumored hardware, but for the first time it gives a true sense of what the iPad 3 will look and feel like.

It's easy, it lets you swipe away tasks, and you literally can't get too detailed while using it. And Clear might just be the thing you need to make knocking out tasks fun again. There’s a lot that’s interesting about Clear , an iPhone app that, at its core, makes gradient-colored lists of things

Barclays bank, which already intertwines NFC chips and antennas into its banking cards in the U.K., has just taken a page out of Apple's book and released a new mobile app that should shake up the U.K. financial game.

Those tiny plastic USB memory sticks you've got on your desk or skulking in your laptop bag's pocket are soon to be relegated to the past. Innovation, and the mobile tech revolution, is to blame

iPad 3 Arrival Date According to the usual wonderfully unreliable (and always anonymous) " sources ," Apple may be poised to reveal the iPad 3 during an early March event, with in-store availability just a handful of days later. If you look at the booking information for the Yerba Buena center in San Francisco, an Apple staple for this sort of event, it looks like Wednesday March 7th is being held open for an undisclosed booking (or at least this day is oddly empty among a cluster of other bookings).

A rather nerdy analysis of the typical iPhone and Android home screen setup, and how each could be made more efficient. The folks who designed your life-capturing, brain-augmenting smartphone did the best with what they had, which was a phone meant to appeal to everyone.

MasterCard has revealed it's finally pushing the EMV system (aka chip-and-PIN) across its U.S. credit card infrastructure. Developed well over 15 years ago, the technology is ubiquitous in Europe to the extent some card readers have issues with visiting American tourists' old-fashioned plastic.

Recognize any of these devices from your briefcase?

Breaking news from your editors at Fast Company, with updates all day. Jon Rubinstein Leaves HP . Rubinstein , formerly of Apple and then lead at Palm during its efforts to rival the iPhone, is leaving HP

We're living in a world of beta tests and products that are released and then improved.

Apple's

Today Apple has an earnings call for its first quarter results for the fiscal year. They'll cover the all-important holiday season sales window, and could be seen as the first real moment when new CEO Tim Cook expresses his leadership of the company that was Steve Jobs's baby until recently.