Chinese search engine Baidu plans to hire software engineers from the U.S. starting next month. Baidu plans to hire 30 mid to senior level software engineers at a job fair on July 10th in Silicon Valley.

[Windows 8 powered machine prototype]

Italian Microsoft-focused website Windowsette was able to get their hands on a secret Microsoft presentation that was on the Internet.  The slides look very real and I have no reason to believe that someone made a fake Windows 8 presentation.  Here’s a list of some of the Windows 8 features mentioned in the leaked presentation.

A report created by Simmons New Media reveals that social media use is up 230% since 2007.  Now two-thirds of Americans use Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other social media websites every single day. This is up from 20% in 2007. Of the number of Americans visiting social media websites every day, 43% visit social media websites multiple times per day.  Multiple visits are up about 28% compared to last year.

Elevation Partners has made a huge investment in Facebook in a deal worth $120 million.  The $120 million investment gives Elevation Partners ownership of 5 million Facebook shares.  This past November, Elevation Partners spent $90 million to purchase 2.5 million shares of Facebook.  This means Elevation Partners owns 7.5 million shares of Facebook at a $14 billion valuation.

mSpot is a mobile entertainment company that has launched a music cloud service recently.  mSpot allows users to sync their music collection across Android phones, PCs, and Macs.  The Android service was launched publicly today.  mSpot’s application runs in the background of your computer and manages the uploading of your music library.  Libraries, cover art, and ratings can also be uploaded using iTunes.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has updated the Kindle application for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.  There are now audio and video clips embedded in books and magazines in the Kindle apps.  To find out which books and magazines are taking advantage of these new features can be found at: http://www.amazon.com/kindleaudiovideo.  Below is the full press release.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has sold about 1.7 million iPhone 4 devices between June 24th and through June 26th. “This is the most successful product launch in Apple’s history,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Even so, we apologize to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply.” The new iPhone features the FaceTime video calling, Retina display, high resolution, 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, HD 720p video recording, 3-axis gyro, and a 40% longer talk time. The full press release is below.

Heyzap is a social gaming company that has raised $3 million from Union Square Ventures, Naval Ravikant, and Chris Dixon. Heyzap essentially helps Facebook game developers port their games to other platforms. Currently Heyzap has about 30,000 games distributed to over 220,000 websites. The games are monetized from ads or virtual goods purchased through Heyzap technology. Heyzap will use the funding to expand from 10 employees to about 15 to 20 employees. Heyzap previously raised $650,000 from Union Square Ventures, Ravikant, and Joshua Schachter. [VentureBeat]