Weekly Wrap-up: Why Some Bosses are Asking for Your Facebook Password and More Top Stories

With unemployment hovering at 8.3%, some employers feel they can ask for the unreasonable. All of this and more in the ReadWriteWeb Weekly Wrap-up.

After the jump you’ll find more of this week’s top news stories on some of the key topics that are shaping the Web – Location, App Stores and Real-Time Web – plus highlights from some of our six channels. Read on for more.

What Should You Do If Your Employer Asks For Your Facebook Password?HOT TOPIC

Sure, you sacrifice some of your rights to privacy when you enter the workforce, but asking for social passwords seems to be an extreme request. Employees are advised to be proactive and ask about social media policies and, of course, assert their rights to privacy in non-work activities.

What would you say if your boss asked for your Facebook password?

From our readers:

Christiaan Conover — An employer asking for your Facebook credentials is tantamount to asking for permission to read your personal (delivered to your house) mail, read your personal email or listen to your personal voicemail messages. They have no business gaining access to something that has no connection to the employer and violates another company’s terms in the process.

More Top Posts:

New York City Subpoenas Twitter For Occupy Wall Street Protester Data

U.S. activists who thought Twitter was a secure way to communicate during demonstrations may have another thing coming. The New York District Attorney’s Office has begun sending subpoenas to Twitter seeking data on protesters arrested during the Occupy Wall Street protests last year. More

Best Wiki Ever? Hackpad Just Might Be

After catching a note about the wiki for SXSW being edited with Hackpad, I thought it might be worth a look. Then I caught the tagline, “best wiki ever.” Well, that’s a bold statement. Then I noticed that Tomboy creator Alex Graveley was part of the team behind it and thought maybe it really is. After a short test drive, I’m even more impressed. Hackpad combines the simplicity of Tomboy with real-time collaboration features that make it a great lightweight tool for teams. More

Google Semantic Search: Bad for SEO, Good for You

The Wall Street Journal reported today on some changes coming to Google search, but the article seems a bit confused about what they are. The lead item is that “[o]ver the next few months,” Google “will begin spitting out more than a list of blue Web links,” providing direct answers to questions instead. That’s not new at all. More

How Windows 8 Succeeds From Here: A Prognosis

We live in a post-something era. This much, Microsoft is willing to concede; the iPad’s thundering success changed the landscape. It has shown that the buyer is willing to imagine a different form factor than the PC commanding her principal information delivery platform. Apple has yet to conquer that platform, but it has fired its third round of volleys and the castle walls have been breached. More

[Poll] What Company Provides the Best HTML5 Framework and Toolset?

HTML5 and the mobile Web is starting to catch up with native apps, at least in terms of developer attention. Many developers are rushing to create HTML5-ready mobile websites or hybrid apps and need the proper tools to create dynamic apps that will function across platforms. As such, there is an arms race in the HTML5 ecosystem to create tools that developers will need to produce quality apps and content for the mobile Web, Android and iOS. More

Death By Wikipedia: Encyclopedia Britannica Stops Printing

So many things about printed encyclopedias seem insane now. The space that dozens of volumes takes up. How much an entire set weighs (well over 100 pounds). The fact that many middle class families used to have to pay for them in regular installments. How slowly they are updated with new information.

Today, we have a reservoir of infinite knowledge, most of which is virtually free to access. It takes up no more physical space than the tiny devices we use to view it. More

Stephen Wolfram Thinks Instagram is “Completely Nuts” For Writing Its Own Photo Filters

The easy news at South by Southwest yesterday was that Instagram has reached 27 million users and has indeed built the expected Android version. The hard news is that it may have wasted lots of time and effort along the way.

In a talk today entitled “Computation and Its Impact on the Future”, Stephen Wolfram took a rapt audience on a tour of Wolfram Alpha and the Mathematica kernel that underlies it. To demonstrate Mathematica’s capabilities, he wrote some software right in front of us to upload and filter photos. It took 10 seconds and two lines of code. More

5 Things I Learned About the Future from Stephen Wolfram

Lots of the knowledge dropped at South By Southwest Interactive is vertical. In the sense that tech people use that word, “vertical” means focused on a particular market or problem and all its implications from top to bottom. Talks tend to be about the business of this or that, or the makers of one app will talk about how they did it. More

[STUDY] Why Do People Use Instagram?

Instagram is the iPhone photographer’s app of choice, and it’s not just because of those slice and dice filters. Are Instagram users hasty and lazy, or do they actually take time to craft the photos before uploading them? A study done back when Instagram was fairly new suggests that the hardcore users of the Instagram app are anything but lazy. In fact, they might be using this tiny app to create art and build beautiful new communites. Before Zachary McCune joined @piictu as a community manager, he found himself in the UK on a fellowship studying the software users of Instagram. More

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