Best of the Blogs: Fantastic News on Jobs

Felix Salmon
Link: Fantastic News on Jobs
What mean reversion? This is two fantastic jobs reports back-to-back, with the second even better than the first. You thought the December jobs report was great? I certainly did — but it’s been revised, now, and it’s even better than was first reported. And the January report is positively glowing. Unemployment was just 8.3% in January, marking three successive months where it fell by 0.2 percentage points. This time last year, there were 13.9 million unemployed; that figure has now dropped by 1.2 million people, or 8.3%. That’s really impressive for an economy which is hardly booming. And it’s a real decline, too: the employment-to-population ratio is just as high as it was a year ago, even as the total population has risen by 3.6 million people.

China Realtime Report
Link: Video: Will Facebook Ever Enter China?
Facebook mentioned China several times in its initial public offering filing document, as the company races to expand its footprint in Asia. What are the chances the soon-to-be public social networking giant can tap the world’s largest Internet population? WSJ’s Deborah Kan speaks to Dow Jones Asia tech editor Yun-Hee Kim. (For related content, see Decoding The Wall Street Journal: Facebook Frenzy.) 

All Things D
Link: A Look At Wal-Mart’s Plans For Making Commerce High-Tech (Video)
Wal-Mart is typically associated with it’s everyday low prices — not for its technology.
But the mega-retailer is trying to change that by building a tech center just south of San Francisco in San Bruno, Calif., where it houses both walmart.com and a growing team of researchers. At a headcount of about 200, @WalmartLabs’s mission is to study how mobile and social platforms are changing commerce, and how the line is increasingly blurring between online and offline. (Also Read After China, Walmart Will Now Conquer India.)

Epicenter
Link: With A New President and A New CEO, And a New Ethos, Sony Looks To The Future
This week has been big for Sony. First, the company announced that it would be replacing CEO and President Howard Stringer with Kazuo Hirai, and revealed its less-than-great Q3 earnings — reported simultaneously with Hirai’s drastic plans to revamp the faltering company. But that’s why he’s here in the first place. To fix things.

Bits
Link: RIM Offers Programmers Free Blackberry Tablets For Their Apps
Research in Motion wants Android programmers to make apps for the BlackBerry PlayBook so badly that it’s handing out the tablets for free. All an Android programmer has to do to get one is make a PlayBook app and submit it to RIM’s app store, BlackBerry App World, by Feb. 13, said Alec Saunders, vice president of developer relations at RIM, in a posting to Twitter. The reason RIM is seeking Android apps is because it made the PlayBook software system compatible with Android apps. (Also Read RIM CEO Backpedals on 'No Change Needed' Claims.)