MyTown Upgrades Again – Once again, Booyah is looking to improve its widely popular, location-based iPhone title, MyTown, with the release of MyTown 4.0. With the new version, users will not only gain a brand new user interface, but will be greeted with any number of new features such as creating items at properties, trading between friends, earning collectibles dubbed “Stamps,” new abilities, and 10 new levels. Moreover, check-ins will now have a recharge time, until players reach level 70, when they become unlimited.

Habbo Hotel Users Get Robbed – Popular teen-oriented virtual world, Habbo Hotel is seeing some crime trouble as Finnish police are investigating up to 400 cases in virtual goods theft. The virtual items vary in value, but some Habbo players are reporting losses of up to €1000, says BBC News. The scammers target users using fake web sites to steal usernames and passwords in what is known as a phishing scam, and thus far, police are treating the thefts as cyber-crimes and have already searched five homes in Finland. Similar in respect to the virtual currency extortain case in China a year ago, this is yet another demonstration on just how “real” the value of virtual goods are.

FreeAppADay Joins the iPhone Distribution Market – Rather than develop games themselves, FreeAppADay.com is helping iPhone developers distribute their titles. Similar to Aurora Feint’s recently created FreeGameoftheDay.com, FreeAppADay offers visitors links to a daily, free, Device titles. Now, the company is launching its service in the App Store with a new application, according to Pocket Gamer, and it will be available come June 8th. Moreover, the launch is said to include titles from “the biggest developer partner yet.”

AdMob Expands into iPad – After letting go nearly a tenth of its employees after its acquisition by Google, AdMob is expanding its advertising monetization network once again with an iPad SDK. Often used as a means to earn revenue for any number of social, casual, and mobile games, iPad developers will now be able to integrate the network’s ads within their apps. Moreover, the company states that the SDK is universal across all iPhone OS devices.

3Dchat Looks to Combine Facebook-Like Features & Virtual Worlds – Earlier this week, 3Dchat LLC and Golemlabs Studios announced the beta launch of a curious new “social” virtual world aptly named 3Dchat. The world is said to include features reminiscent of social networks such as Facebook in which players use their real identities. However, to keep things safe, the developer intends to limit access of users that do not go through its “proprietary advanced identity verification service;” a service that will use outside companies such as eBay or PayPal to confirm users are both over 18 and who they claim to be.

Moshi Monsters Reaches New Milestones – When we covered the kids-oriented virtual world, Moshi Monster, a few months ago we were impressed by most of what it had to offer, but developer Mind Candy has stated that the world is doing better than we expected, gaining around 150,000 new users every day. The current grand total: 20 million registered users. In fact, the game has become so popular with children, that Mind Candy is even signing a book series deal about the virtual world with the Penguin Group.

Foursquare Banned in China – A sea of tweets from Chinese location sharers are claiming that the location-based game Foursquare has been blocked by the Chinese government. According to TechCrunch, the ban is presumably due to users checking into Tiananmen Square on the sensitive dates of June 3rd and 4th where Chinese protesters were killed back in 1989.

Social Gold Partners With GASH & MyCard – Virtual goods monetization and payment platform Social Gold announced two new Asian partnerships this past week: Gamania’s GASH and Soft World’s MyCard. Users of these cards will be able to purchase virtual goods  in any game or virtual world supported by Social Gold payments. Moreover, the partnership will expand Social Gold’s currency support to the Malaysian ringgit as well as the Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore dollar.

GodFinger Gets Huge Update – We enjoyed the ngmoco iPad title, GodFinger, when it first came out. Now the iPhone rendition is getting a major upgrade with its latest 1.2 update. With the update, players will be able to further customize their planet, gain “Super Followers,” view a larger galaxy map of friends, and visit a larger, improved Awe Store (complete with pirates). Unfortunately, 1.2 is not yet global and only available within the Canadian App Store for iPhone.