Spin Master buys Toca Boca and Sago Mini, makers of apps and games for young children

Spin Master announced that it has agreed to acquire the Toca Boca and Sago Mini companies from the Bonnier Group of Sweden.  

With offices in Stockholm, San Francisco and New York and over 80 employees, Toca Boca is a play studio that makes digital toys for kids aged 3-9.

Since its first product launch in 2011, Toca Boca has released 32 apps that have been downloaded in 215 countries worldwide. With over 140 million total downloads to date and growing, Toca Boca apps focus on stimulating kids' imagination so that they can play and have fun in a safe digital environment with no in-app purchases or external advertising.

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VW to buy back 500,000 Diesel cars in the US in $10 billion deal

VW is looking to buy back affected diesel Jetta, Golf and the Audi A3 cars sold since 2009 that were covered by the Dieselgate scandal involving the 'defeat device' that gamed emissions tests. VW's vehicles had software that made their cars pass emissions tests while generating up to 40 times the legally allowable emissions.

VW will pay cash compensation to owners who either sell their vehicles back or get them fixed, one of the people briefed on the matter said. Owners selling back their vehicles will get an additional cash payment on top of receiving the estimated value of the vehicles from before the emissions scandal became public in September 2015.

U.S. Judge Charles Breyer said the settlement is expected to include a buyback offer for 482,000 2.0-litre vehicles and a possible fix if regulators agree on it, or cancel an outstanding lease.

Source: Reuters

Owners are expected to have around two years to decide whether to sell back vehicles or get them repaired. It is not clear whether VW will be allowed to resell vehicles they buy back, the source said.

Google Search might soon include live TV listings

Today, I’m excited to announce that, coming soon, Google Search will have live TV listings. So now when you’re looking for The Big Bang Theory, we’ll not only show you the apps and sites where you can find the latest episode, but also show which channel you can turn your tv to later in the evening or week to catch it live.

Looks like Google Search will help solve one of the most infuriating things about live TV, which is how hard it is to sometimes find what you want to watch. Turning Google Search into an intelligent, high-tech and localized TV Guide, will enable viewers to find the shows they want on cable and live TV, apps and streaming services they subscribe to. Ther's no indication of when the feature will be enabled and if it will be made available outside of the USA, but it definitely holds promise as one of the features users will rely on a daily basis.

A feature like this could be the tip of the iceberg if enabled on devices like Chromecast or Nexus Player which can now act as conduits for searching and playing back a lot of this content on demand, which could be the revolution that set top boxes have been waiting for.

Source:Google via Android Authority

Google introduces new Chrome extension and hashtags for labels on Keep

Google released a new update for its Keep note-taking app to make it easier to look for notes and save directly from websites. All you need to do is add hashtags to your notes to create labels. You could place labels before but you needed to head into the menus, which for some was a bit cumbersome. The app also gets a new Chrome extension so you can save links right from your desktop. It’ll show some information about the site or you can select some text and save that with the note as well. If you’re using your Chrome on your mobile device, you just need to head to the “Share to” function and that’ll save the sites and information directly into the app. The update is rolling out for both Android and iOS now.

Source: The Next Web