Techmeme
April 1, 2012, 4:30 PM

Top News

Zee / The Next Web:
A Round Up of ALL of Google's April Fools Jokes.  Fair play, they really make an effort...  If there's one thing Google clearly does better than its competing tech giants, it's April Fools.  We were honestly having difficulty writing up pieces on each of Google's announcements as they flew …
Tom Cook / Quora:
What are some of the best 2012 April Fools Day jokes?  —  Tom Cook's answer: * Virgin and Richard Branson announced a expedition to the center of the earth: Virgin Volcanic. http://virginvolcanic.com/  —  * Google Maps announced a new 8-bit version for the NES/Famicom, usable in a beta form at http://maps.google.com under “Quest”
More: The Windows Blog and Pocket-lintTweets: @antoniogm
Jeff Grubb / VentureBeat:
OMGPOP CEO responds to criticisim of his tweets about former employee  —  Early this morning, GamesBeat reported that Dan Porter, chief executive officer of OMGPOP (developer of the Pictrionary-clone Draw Something), publicly called out the only employee not to join Zynga after the $210 million buyout.
More: KotakuTweets: @tfadp and @thekevindent
VentureBeat:
OMGPOP CEO tweets that only employee not to transition to Zynga was the “weakest” one  —  As reported last week, Shay Pierce was the only OMGPOP employee to decline a position with Zynga after it bought the Draw Something developer for $180 million.  Pierce wrote an editorial for Gamasutra …
Scott Austin / Digits:
‘Girls Around Me’ Developer Defends App After Foursquare Dismissal  —  The developer of a controversial mobile app that used data from Facebook and Foursquare to reveal the location of nearby women defended its intentions Saturday after drawing a firestorm of criticism over privacy concerns.
Eric Lichtblau / New York Times:
Police Are Using Phone Tracking as a Routine Tool  —  WASHINGTON — Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small …
More: ACLU and Pulse2 Technology …Tweets: @jeffjarvis
Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:
Apple activates increase in share of iAd revenue to developers from 60% to 70%  —  Apple has sent out a notice to participants in its iAd program that it will now be giving 70% of the revenue earned from an ad displayed in an app to the developer.  This is an increase from the previous 60%.
William Moss / Rectified.name:
Facebook's China Playbook  —  As you have undoubtedly heard by now, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his girlfriend* were spotted in Shanghai on Wednesday.  This has lead to a completely predictable round of speculation as to whether this signals some new development in Facebook + China.
David Kravets / Wired:
Megaupload User Demands Return of Seized Content  —  An Ohio man is asking a federal judge to preserve data of the 66.6 million users of Megaupload, the file-sharing service that was shuttered in January following federal criminal copyright-infringement indictments that targeted its operators.

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