April is coming to a close this week, but the final weekend of the month kept everyone plenty busy, with Apple going on the offensive over in-app purchases, Draw Something 2, the end of AOL Music and new superpowers for Reeder for iPhone all hitting our radar over the last couple of days. Too busy enjoying the spring weather to be bothered? Get a snack-sized look at all this news in our weekend recap...
Apple Kicks Off Educational Campaign for In-App Purchases
As first noted by Cult of Mac on Friday, Apple has quietly launched a campaign to educate iTunes customers about in-app purchases. The move follows Apple's decision last month to single out apps which include IAP on the App Store, but goes much further by explaining the purpose of such purchases and where they can be found (i.e., only inside apps you've already installed). The new page, entitled "Learn More About In-App Purchases," also demonstrates how parents can block such purchases using the parental controls built into every iOS device.
Posterous Reminds Users It's Closing Up Shop April 30
Twitter-owned Posterous sent out an email to users just ahead of the weekend reminding them that the service is shutting its virtual doors on Tuesday, April 30. First announced back in mid-February, the shutdown marks the end of the socially minded blog website and mobile app. The service is offering a number of ways to move your Posterous blogs elsewhere, including WordPress and Squarespace, who both offer importers for this very purpose; Justmigrate also offers a path for moving to Tumblr. While the service is going dark tomorrow, you'll have until May 31 to actually download your Posterous Spaces -- so get on it, folks, the clock is ticking...
Draw Something 2 Now Available
Zynga may be shedding users, but it's not about to throw in the towel. Over the weekend, the company released Draw Something 2, the latest chapter in the social drawing game it inherited as part of its OMGPop acquisition. Available in both free and $2.99 "premium" versions, Draw Something offers all-new ways to share drawings with your friends -- and with more than 100 million players of the original version, there's a good chance you'll know somebody playing the game. Free users can upgrade to the premium version at any time, where you'll enjoy no ads between turns, plenty of new words and a free Sparkle pen for your hard-earned cash.
AOL Shutters Entire Music, Spinner Operations
AllThingsD reported Friday that AOL Music is no more, with the division's "few dozen" employees notified of layoffs just ahead of the weekend -- and many of them alerted the media with live tweets during the corporate meeting! AOL's effort follows similar moves by Microsoft and Yahoo, whose respective MSN Music and Yahoo Music services both shut down in 2006. AOL declined to comment on the move, but new brand group CEO Susan Lyne made it clear in previous interviews that she would be "looking hard" at the company's content properties -- and apparently is now ready to take action with those not living up to their full potential.
Reeder for iPhone 3.1 Updated with Feedbin, Standalone RSS Support
With Google Reader's demise fast approaching on July 1, developer Silvio Rizzi released an update to Reeder for iPhone over the weekend, which breaks some of the app's reliance upon Mountain View's sync API. Version 3.1 now allows Reeder to add standalone RSS feeds with no sync support, a limitation for some users since the app's inception. Feedbin subscribers can also finally use the third-party sync service as a full replacement for Google Reader. The iPhone app also introduces pull-to-refresh as well as bug fixes, and the same changes are on deck for version 2.0 of the Mac and iPad versions, which are presumably coming ahead of the Reader shutdown this summer.
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
