Even better, Amazon gives some of that money to charities! Thanks to their "Gift Wrap Your Holidays with a Smile" program, Amazon will donate between 60 and 75 cents per item to a nonprofit organization.

There's a catch, though: your nonprofit has to send volunteers to Amazon to do the gift wrapping! For up to ten hours at a time, while standing up.

Wow, that's a pretty good deal for Jeff Bezos. Charge between $2.99 and $5.99 for gift wrapping, and only pay labor 60 to 75 cents — and do it all in the name of charity! As our tipster says, "Amazon Xmas Fund-Raiser Does Ebenezer Proud."

Press Release [BusinessWire]

Well, they definitely have the whole video thing down, but SixApart may still have to work on that whole funny part.

Happy Holidays from the LJ Team [Livejournal]

• For a quarter-million partiers from in and out of San Francisco, it's Halloween in the Castro!!! Um, or maybe not. Beware, the SFPD will be cracking down on revelers tonight, so don't, don't, drunkenly hit on that sexy cop.
• Stay home and geek out — carve a Mac O'Lantern. Pictured: more Woz than you can handle.
• Enjoy one of the greatest horror films ever made. Evil Dead 2 plays tonight at the Red Vic Movie House (1727 Haight Street, SF). Showtimes are 7:15 and 9:15.
• The Zend/PHP Conference and Expo is overpriced at $1195 (one day for $650) but we think you should try to crash the Facebook After Hours party anyway. It's Halloween — go in costume. Wear footie pajamas and bring a teddy bear. Tell everyone you're founder Mark Zuckerberg and refuse to budge until someone offers you $2 billion.

By Megan McCarthy

Olé, Olé, the Fifth of May.

Nothing on the American site...

...or on Google Mexico. ¿Dónde está el amor, Google?

This despite Google's previous celebration of Canada Day, the Chinese New Year, the Persian New Year, Bastille Day, Korean Liberation Day, Swiss National Day, and St. George's Day. So of course, someone started a boycott. Sensationalistic AP article in 5...4...3...2...

Yahoo [Home page]
Google [Home page]
Google Holiday Logos [Google]
Cinco de Mayo [Google Groups]

In two weeks, Google will launch an Easter Egg hunt with more Ajax. Inexplicably, everyone will love it, even though it's late and thus useless. Yahoo exec Susan Decker will say, "We don't want to be number one in egg search."

Yahoo! Egg Search [meandmybadself on Flickr]

¬ PR bloggers Steve Rubel (East Coast) and Jeremy Pepper (West Coast) teamed up to to form PR PR.
¬ Big sister Deathhacker battled the Z-words.
¬ Future AOL CEO Jason Calacanis ("We're also annoucing that we're buying Gawker Media") and Microsoft evangelist Robert Scoble ("the free food rocks for a fat guy like me!") joined the Plex.
¬ Google blogger Matt Cutts and Yahoo blogger Jeremy Zawodny swapped Kool-Aid.
¬ Yahoo bought Web 2.0.
¬ Three Frenchmen wished Apple a happy 30th. I blame the wine.

This year's Google prank: Google Romance. It's actually witty.

Profile Upload Rejected

You gave it your best shot, but things don't always turn out how you expected. This is because you either:

1. Fell for our April Fool's joke, in which case ha ha, wasn't that amusing and harmless and mostly in good taste and not all psychologically damaging under various and sundry aspects of contemporary tort law, please don't sue us...

Google Romance: Tour [Google]

Ah, yes, you're here for the April Fool's gags.

¬ Gizmodo Gizombo shepherds you through the night of the living dead.
¬ MAKE rebrands as BUY.
¬ WEBringr is a joke, right? RIGHT?
¬ Google WTF search: It'd be funnier if Bruce Sterling didn't already believe in it. See, Bruce, this is why we can't have nice jokes.
¬ China buys Google; searches now done by hand in Beijing sweatshops.
¬ Google buys the French National Library. Confused Parisian Muslims revolt.
¬ Simply Hired has an opening for Guy Kawasaki.

And after the jump, Meetro buys Friendster. Ha! How impossible and humorous! Everyone knows Friendster's free to tow.

Press Release: Meetro Acquires Friendster

San Francisco, Calif. - April 1, 2006 - Meetro, the world leader in Instant Messaging software announced today it has entered into an agreement to acquire Friendster, one of many social software sites for keeping in touch with friends and hooking up with new people.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"We're excited to be acquiring Friendster because we can leverage their web 2.0 technology," said Paul Bragiel, CEO of Meetro. "This acquisition gives Meetro another brand name in its warchest, similar to Infogrames purchasing Atari a few years back."

Friendster will provide Meetro users the ability to see who's looked at their profile to encourage a greater number of 'random hookups' without the need for alcohol. Leveraging Meetro's location-based technology will allow users to see other members in 'real-life' and avoid a common photo profile pitfall known as "the angles."

Bragiel finally remarks, "If you're still reading this and believe this, then you aren't good at spotting April Fool's jokes."

For more information, please visit http://www.meetro.com

About Meetro
Meetro is a location-aware Instant Messenger turning traditional IM on it's side. It's photo and profile driven around your location, designed to facilitate real-time meetings with people locally. Meetro bridges the gap between traditional instant messengers and the next-generation local meeting place. Meetro works with AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and ICQ protocols.

About Friendster
Friendster is the leading social site for keeping in touch with friends, and meeting new people. Friendster is a privately-held company based in San Francisco, California, backed by the venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

¬ Lowenstein's Lens on Wireless does a full write-up of a Google worldwide wifi plan. The concept, not spectacular. The execution, pretty good. Scroll down to better jokes like a Google MySpace killer named "Gaggle."
¬ China-and-gaming blog billsdue builds an army of Google-run Chinese cyborgs.
¬ Major search blog Google Blogoscoped does a bang-up job faking a Google prank. A bit edgier than any actual Google pranks, this one has a photo of Larry Page's room, with an old photo of Marissa Mayer and a couple of Playboys (the issue where Larry and Sergey were interviewed) on the floor.

All in all? Not that I'm one to talk, but couldn't the Valley be a touch wittier?