Just an awful story coming out of Jacksonville, Florida: A woman named Alexandra V. Tobias has pled guilty to second-degree murder after killing her baby for interrupting her game of FarmVille with its cries.

The Florida Times-Union reports that Tobias, age 22, became angered when her 3-month old child, Dylan Lee Edmondson, cried when she was trying to play the Facebook-based social game.

“Tobias told investigators that she shook the baby, smoked a cigarette to compose herself and then shook him again. She said the baby may have hit his head during the shaking.”

Tobias’ crime could leave her with a sentence of life in prison; Florida’s state guidelines call for 25 to 50 years, however. Her sentencing hearing is scheduled for December.

(Florida Times-Union via Kotaku)

While Facebook’s many, many wall updates for games such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and the like have been good news for games publishers like Zynga, which effectively get free social advertising every time someone declares to all of their friends that they’ve grown a few tomatoes, these updates could be pretty annoying for said friends. While Facebook users could block game-specific updates, setting up the block was a bit of a pain.

At a recent media event, Mark Zuckerberg said that “One the one hand, games are a phenomenon — 200 million people or more are playing games on the site … on the other hand, game [notifications] are also one of the biggest complaints that we get.”

No longer! Facebook is changing their system so that nonplayers aren’t bombarded with game-related updates in their news feeds.

A former employee of Zynga, creator of the extremely popular Facebook game FarmVille, has spoken out against the company, claiming the company’s motto is “Do evil,” a parody of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto.

Usually the only wall that you could accuse Zynga, the makers of Farmville, of mucking up is a Facebook wall, a decidedly virtual piece of architecture. But the San Francisco City Attorney’s office has accused Zynga of committing “documented acts of sidewalk vandalism” by gluing fake $25,000 bills to sidewalks all over the city.

The dollar bills, in case you hadn’t guessed it by now, direct the finder to the Mafia Wars website.

Read on...

Frankly, we’re surprised that this infographic even got made. It was way behind schedule. We just know they spent the whole time on Scottrade, Farmville, and Techcrunch and then threw this together at the last minute. Those… those…

Procrastinators.

This isn’t quite as dramatic as the JetBlue flight attendant who recently quit his job by sliding down his plane’s emergency chute, but it’s still quite a feat: A young woman named Jenny quit her job by emailing her office of twenty people a series of photos of herself holding a dry erase board and explaining her predicament there. She claims to have put up with her assistant job for a temperamental boss with “bad breath” because she wanted to be a broker: However, the last straw was when she overheard her boss using sexist language to describe her:

TechCrunch is featuring an extensive article claiming that Google Games is closer than we think, and that Zynga will be highly involved. Their “multiple sources” confirm that Google has quietly invested $100-200 million in the social game company, forging a social media alliance.

Zynga will be the cornerstone of a new Google Games to launch later this year, say multiple sources. Not only will Zynga’s games give Google Games a solid base of social games to build on, but it will also give Google the beginning of a true social graph as users log into Google to play the games.

Woot acquired by Amazon (TechCrunch)

Grandfather performs Lady Gaga, hilarity ensues (Urlesque)

Craigslist “For Sale” ad hall of fame (Nerve)

Brace yourself: Mark Millar’s working on an Old Man Logan sequel (Robot6)

Jason Robert Brown wins the hearts and minds of copyright fraudsters (Jason Robert Brown)

Will Verizon’s 4G network be better than Sprint’s? (DVICE)

“People are playing Farmville because people are playing Farmville.” (A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz)

(title image via ComicsAlliance)

Not only has Zynga recently repaired ties with Facebook, but now it’s quickly accelerating its mission to conquer the world. Today, Zynga has announced a partnership with Yahoo. That’s right. In the coming months everyone’s favorite Zynga games, including the dark behemoth that is Farmville, will inundate the Yahoo network. TechCrunch estimates that Yahoo has about 600 million users. That means that almost ten percent of the global population will have to see when their friends adopt a cow or whatever the hell you do in that game.

Specifics aren’t in yet, so there’s no telling whether Zynga will make the Yahoo home page, but Yahoo is confirming that games and updates will be available through Yahoo Games, Yahoo Mail, and Yahoo Messenger. The gaming will begin in the U.S. before making its way to an international, unsuspecting audience.

Just a week ago, a Facebook-Zynga split seemed inevitable, with squabbles between the two, primarily over ad revenue, threatening to send the gaming giant behind the likes of FarmVille and Mafia Wars off in a huff. In some respects, it would’ve been a lose-lose for them both: Zynga is known for sending lots of advertising dollars to Facebook, and Facebook, for its part, provides a much bigger platform for Zynga than it could reasonably hope to achieve with a site of its own, at least anytime in the near future.

Then again, the healthy chunk of Facebook denizens who don’t enjoy being spammed by countless status updates and ads touting Zynga’s wares could well have benefited.

Whatever might have happened, it looks like the Facebook-Zynga rift isn’t coming anytime soon: The two have signed a deal committing to a “five-year strategic relationship.”