Pebble's woes and Product Hunt's win. It's The Daily Crunch.

THE DAILY CRUNCH THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1 2016 By Darrell Etherington The Daily Crunch 12/1/16 It's December! In-store background music is either incredibly grating or very welcome depending on your personal preferences. And there's news, which you can find in The Daily Crunch for December 1, 2016. Happy AngelHunting! Or ProductListing. Or something. 1. Pebble looking at a disappointing Fitbit exit Smartwatch pioneer Pebble is in advanced talks to be acquired by Fitbit, which seems more like it's a pairing of two wearable companies with uncertain futures than anything else.The asking price is reportedly somewhere around $40 million (another source suggests $53 million) but that's a far cry from prices offered previously by companies including watchmaker Citizen. Make no mistake, if this turns out to be true it's essentially a bailout. And part of the deal will include shuttering the Pebble brand, according to the report. Wearables as a category has seen a lot of trouble after early hype, and Pebble's end could be the biggest sign yet the wrist-based variety at least is a non-starter. 2. AngelList buys Product Hunt Product Hunt is a community for people who like to catch new tech products early, and AngelList is essentially the same for investors looking to get in on the ground floor with new startup ventures. So a union between the two makes sense. AngelList bought Hoover's PH today, with a reported price tag of around $20 million, which isn't a crazy amount but is in line with its last reported valuation and good considering its niche. SPONSORED CONTENT: Codebreaker Codebreaker is a podcast that dares to ask–and answer–the fundamental questions about technology that consume us every day. This season, we want to know: Can it save us? Codebreaker isn't just the name of our podcast, it's also a way to listen. Crack each code to unlock the next episode immediately. Listen, decode, and decide with host Ben Brock Johnson this November. Produced by Marketplace in partnership with Tech Insider. Learn More… 3. Nokia's return to smartphones coming in 2017 After exiting the smartphone game when it sold its handset business to Microsoft, Nokia has been talking a lot about returning to the category eventually. Now Nokia's saying it'll be back in biz with Android handsets starting in the first half of 2017. It'll be working with HMD Global, a new Finnish company that will be using the Nokia brand for its devices. This is a very different market than the one Nokia left, however. 4. Apple tapping drones for Maps? Apple is reportedly planning to use drones to make its Maps better, with more continuous updates over time. That could be great for keeping up with Google's fleet of mapping vehicles and other advantages. 5. Spotify's new Singles build on its own-content push I saw a whole bunch of "Single"-labeled cover art in my Spotify new releases earlier this week and I had no idea what it meant. Turns out it's a new original content push by Spotify, where they record at least a couple of tracks from artists, including one of their own pieces and then a cover tune. This should be updated weekly, and recordings take place at Spotify's New York studio. That's one way to try to build an edge in the streaming game. 6. Apple knows about that iCal spam Apple is aware of that iCal spam you're receiving and is working on a fix. I got a lot of it and did this temp fix but a real one would be preferable. Get more stories at techcrunch.com  Newest Jobs From CrunchBoard: Senior C# Developer at The Madison Square Garden Companies (New York, NY, United States) Senior Product Manager – MSG Ventures at The Madison Square Garden Companies (New York, NY, United States) Director - Product Engineering, Visualization (Display and Skinning Tech) at The Madison Square Garden Companies (New York, NY, United States) Principal – MSG Ventures Incubation and Investment at The Madison Square Garden Companies (New York, NY, United States) Engineer – MSG Ventures Product Engineering at The Madison Square Garden Companies (New York, NY, United States) SEE MORE JOBS ON CRUNCHBOARD Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month View this email online in your browser If you do not want to receive this email or you would like to update your preferences click here. 410 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 © 2016 AOL Inc. All rights reserved.   Privacy Policy   Terms of Service

                                                           

Netflix gets offline viewing. It's The Daily Crunch.

THE DAILY CRUNCH WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 30 2016 By Darrell Etherington The Daily Crunch 11/30/16 Netflix has an offline mode. Netflix has an offline mode. Netflix has an offline mode. Also other things in The Daily Crunch for November 30, 2016. And if you're a Prisma fan, shed a tear for Facebook Live integration. 1. Netflix finally gets an offline mode Today is a historic day: Netflix now lets you store content offline for viewing when you're not connected to the Internet. Amazon Prime has offered this previously, but this is Netflix we're talking about. Let's declare a national holiday. If you're looking for pointers, here's how it works. 2. GoPro to cut 15% of global workforce GoPro tried to bury the lede in a press release about Black Friday sales today, but the real metric to watch is that its cutting 15 percent of its workforce, or around 200 jobs. Also its president, Tony Bates, is stepping down at the end of the year. GoPro is on a streak of bad luck, including its drone recall, so it really needs to chug the Mountain Dew and get amped on a turnaround quick. SPONSORED CONTENT: Worldpay Join our webinar on December 7 where our expert panel will be looking at key markets we see digital companies operating in outside of their home countries, how to setup in those markets the right way to maximize payment authorization rates and reduce cost, and how to use payment data to derive those answers. Register for the webinar now to attend live or get it later on-demand. Learn More… 3. Eric Schmidt-backed data science startup gets more funding Civis sounds like a game I'd like to play about city-building, but it's actually a data science startup founded by Barack Obama's 2012 campaign analytics guru. Civis has customers including the 2020 US Census, so it must be doing something right. 4. Facebook shuts the gate Facebook why? Prisma just launched the ability to add its art filters to FB Live streams earlier this month but the social networking giant says "no more" now that it's doing its own. Facebook says it's because the API isn't being used as intended, but really it just wants to greedily own all your attention on mobile. 5. Lucid is going to make EVs in Arizona in 2017 More electric carmakers is better for everyone, and Lucid Motors looks ready to enter the fray with a manufacturing facility set to open in 2017 in Arizona. Lucid's first car is a four-door sedan, with a max 400-mile range. Hopefully this one makes it past the hype phase. 6. xHamster login dump Logins and passwords are sensitive things – perhaps more sensitive when they're for membership to a porn website. About 380,000 xHamster users might have cause for embarrassment after a dump of credentials was posted to LeakBase. There's a cache you can't clear. 7. Spark gets a desktop client Email! Still no good way to deal with it. But Spark comes close, and now the mobile-first client is available on macOS. Email still sucks though. Get more stories at techcrunch.com  Newest Jobs From CrunchBoard: Principal Big Data Architect at Carbon Black, Inc. (United States) Principal Software Engineer, Backend Developer at Carbon Black, Inc. (United States) UI Engineer, Growth Engineering at New Relic (San Francisco, CA, United States) Social Media Manager at Northeastern University (Boston, MA, United States) Front End Developer at Geocaching (Seattle, WA, United States) SEE MORE JOBS ON CRUNCHBOARD Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month View this email online in your browser If you do not want to receive this email or you would like to update your preferences click here. 410 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 © 2016 AOL Inc. All rights reserved.   Privacy Policy   Terms of Service