Apple reveals App of the Year and Game of the Year as well as 2017 app charts

Apple has revealed its App of the Year and Game of the Year pick for 2017. Featuring the year's most popular apps, music, movies, TV shows, books and podcasts across the App Store, Apple Music, iTunes, iBooks and Apple Podcasts.

Editors and curators from Apple Music, App Store and iTunes highlight content from indie artists and developers from around the globe.

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Sources claim Disney and Fox are close to reaching a deal, might announce plans next week

WDWNT.com

We reported earlier last month that Disney and 21^st Century Fox have been in talks for the former to acquire Fox’s studio and television production assets, with Fox retaining its news and sports arms. And report has it the two are close to reaching an agreement, even with Comcast in the picture, and sources claim the deal could be announced as early as next week. The deal will have Disney owning entertainment assets like 20^th Century Fox film and TV studios, FX Networks and National Geographic Cannels cable groups, regional Fox Sports and 39% interest in Euro satcaster Sky, as well as international channels like Star India outlet. Disney is also supposedly buying out Fox’s 30% interest in Hulu, which is seen as Disney’s initial step to building its standalone streaming service. The deal is expected to be an all-stock transaction with Fox’s assets valued at around US$60 billion.

The move is also seen as a way to resolve Disney’s CEO succession issue. Bob Iger has had to extend his contract twice since setting his retirement back in 2015. But with the likes of 21^st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch and 21^st Century Fox President Peter Rice in the mix, they’re seen as possible candidates to replace Iger.

Source:  Variety + CNBC 

Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 845

Qualcomm’s newest chipset makes its appearance at the company’s second annual Snapdragon Technology Summit in Hawaii. Qualcomm’s Executive VP Cristiano Amon announced the Snapdragon 845 with Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun. Xiaomi’s boss was on hand to announce that the company’s next flagship, the Xiaomi Mi 7, will be one of the first smartphones to carry the new SoC. The Snapdragon 845 is built on the same 10nm processor technology of the Snapdragon 835 and it supports Gigabit LTE speeds with the X20 modem.

While detailed specs weren’t released just yet, the new chipset is expected to have a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU) similar to what Apple and Huawei have done with their A11 Bionic and Kirin 970 processors. The NPU allows for native artificial intelligence acceleration. Some of the other rumours surrounding the chipset suggest there will be four Cortex A-75 cores and four more Cortex-A53 for better efficiency. Rumours suggest this will be accompanied by a new Adreno 630 GPU as well.

Source: GSMArena

Review: Kindle Oasis (2017)

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

2017 marks the 10th year anniversary of the Kindle eBook reader which is truly one of the revolutionary inventions of our time.

Amazon's Kindle ushered in the era of eReaders, which have made it possible to simulate the visual quality of paper on an electronic device capable of carrying thousands of books and documents but which is thin and surprisingly light.

The early Kindle was a beast by today's standards. It tried to do too much. It came with a QWERTY keyboard, a web browser and probably an e-mail client. This was at a time when smartphones were BlackBerry devices and not iPhones, so you get the idea.

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