| Oculus makes a buy to track the eye, and it was a big holiday for all the big tech companies. That and more in The Daily Crunch for December 29, 2016. And if you broadcast a live video in 360-degrees and no one's watching, does anyone care? 1. Oculus acquires eye tracking startup The Eye Tribe has been around for a while now, creating eye-tracking tech that could either be built into computers by OEMs, or added via a $99 developer gadget. The company was sort of a solution in search of a problem, however, before VR came along. Now it's potentially game-changing. The Eye Tribe's tech could help Oculus build eye-tracking headsets that know where you're looking and can redirect processing power to that spot in real-time, optimizing resources and making it possible to create much higher frame rates when and where needed without requiring immensely powerful computers to do so. 
2. iPhone 7 got good holiday bump, but Apple Watch did not The iPhone 7 saw a good boost in purchases during the holiday, as it generally does. The Apple Watch also got a bump, but it was 10 percentage points down from the boost it experienced last year during the same time period. That's not good news for the overall ailing wearable category. 3. Facebook and Google top the app charts iPhone sales may be seeing their typical holiday bump, but the App Store spoils this could lead to will mostly be picked up by giants like Facebook and Google, whose apps dominated the App Store and Google Play charts in 2015. People have figured out what they use and what they don't on smartphones, and there's less room for that list to change these days. 4. Super Mario Run's Android launch looms Super Mario Run is coming to Android in 2017, and it looks like it'll be early in the new year, since Android users can now pre-register to get notified of when the app arrives. Apple had a timed exclusive on the game initially, but Nintendo always wanted to bring it to as many mobile players as possible. 5. Amazon warehouses in the sky sounds like a dystopian scenario Does anyone want to live in a world where blimp-based Amazon warehouses float over our heads, ready to spill forth drones lugging your toilet paper or crackers or whatever whenever you happen to get the urge to order some? Because that gets a hard pass from me. 6. Twitter tries a 360 Could 360-degree video help with Twitter's turnaround? Probably not, but it's an interesting thing for the company to ad to Periscope, its live video streaming product. Right now it's in limited launch with select partners, but it'll probably go wide if it works out. 7. Here and Mobileye make a mapping deal Autonomous driving requires detailed, accurate, constantly-updated maps. That's a tough thing to do well, which is probably why Here and Mobileye are partnering on the effort. One brings years of mapping expertise, the other brings a lot of active sensors feeding back into a real-time picture of roads where driving is actually taking place, so it makes a lot of sense to pool resources. | 
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