On the heels of PopCap’s billion dollar acquisition comes some interesting news from the social games front: Game developer Storm8 is today announcing a few impressive stats.

Nearly a year ago, I wrote a post titled “ Is Android Surging Only Because Apple Is Letting It?

After seven years of lawsuits! … After reaching a $65 million dollar settlement with Facebook in 2008 which they then tried to rescind on the argument that Facebook gave them misleading information! … After vowing that they would challenge an April 2011 ruling by the 9th Circuit Court and take their case all the way to the Supreme Court, (!) the Winklevosses have just  given up  on their fight against Facebook. In a statement made to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco today, the twins and friend Divya Narendra said that they have dropped the legal appeal of the most recent court ruling (in favor of Facebook) after “careful consideration.” The Harvard students filed their original suit against the social network in 2004 accusing Facebook CEO and fellow student Mark Zuckerberg of ripping off their CONNECTU idea, and subsequently creating Facebook. The best part about the entire fight, which has seen the twins through their young adulthood? Facebook’s reaction to the news, “We’ve considered this case closed for a long time, and we’re pleased to see the other party now agrees.” Fin

Huge news in the gaming world: PopCap Games , the company behind such hits as Plants vs Zombies and Bejeweled, is in the process of being acquired — and we’re hearing from multiple sources that the price is over $1 billion. The question now is who the buyer is.

Groupon has just announced in a press release the addition of Ariel Investments president Mellody Hobson to the company’s Board of Directors. In addition to the president position Hobson is also Chairman of the Board of of trustees for Ariel’s no-load mutual funds

Over three years ago, we reported that AOL had acquired the New Jersey-based fantasy sports site Fleaflicker . It seemed like a touchdown for 26-year-old founder Ori Schwartz

Page management company Involver today announced a partnership with influence scoring service Klout .

For all the talk of cord-cutting , the cable/satellite/fiber optic TV companies are not going anywhere anytime soon. I put Verizon FIOS in that camp

A month and about 10,000 emails into its beta, MorningPics , the latest project by ArtistData founder Brenden Mulligan has opened to the public. Previously invite only, the service is now available to anyone who has more than 20 photos on Instagram and wants to try it out. The concept is simple enough: Users who sign up for MorningPics will receive a different Instagram picture that they’ve taken in the past via email every morning, with the all the social accoutrements like comments and likes included

According to an official company blog post today, Google is increasing its investment into California’s Alta Wind Energy Center (AWEC) by $102 million, bringing its total investment in the renewable energy facility to $157 million. The AWEC is being developed by Terra-Gen Power, primarily.