Techmeme
February 28, 2017, 2:10 PM

Top News

Xbox Wire:
Xbox Game Pass subscription grants access to 100+ games for $9.99 per month, launches in spring; service works by downloading games, not streaming  —  At Xbox, we put gamers at the center of everything we do and remain committed to giving you the freedom to play the games you want, with the friends you want, on the devices you want.
Takashi Mochizuki / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Apple's next iPhones will have no physical home button, include one curved OLED model and two LCD models, and come with a USB-C power cord  —  Rival Samsung will be the initial supplier of OLED screens for Apple's 10th anniversary iPhones  —  TOKYO— Apple Inc. has decided to adopt …
Matt Brian / Engadget:
New $10 Raspberry Pi Zero W comes with 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0  —  Although major Raspberry Pi announcements are very few and far between, you know that when there is one, it's worth paying attention.  Take for example the Raspberry Pi Zero — the $5 (£4) board that apparently came …
Jordan Novet / VentureBeat:
AWS is investigating S3 issues in the major us-east-1 region of data centers in Northern Virginia affecting many sites including Quora, Trello, IFTTT, Coursera  —  BCloud infrastructure provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) today confirmed that it's looking into issues with its widely used S3 storage service …
Nat Levy / GeekWire:
Report: Amazon plans to bring Alexa and cloud-based deep learning tools to call centers; the new products could be announced as soon as mid-March  —  Amazon is gearing up to disrupt another industry, and this time it's call centers.  —  Amazon Web Services developing a suite of cloud-based tools …
More: The Information and CNETTweets: @mikeisaac
John Callaham / Android Authority:
Google updates Play Store algorithm so that games get promoted based on continued user engagement instead of installs  —  As this year's Game Developer Conference gets underway in San Francisco, Google says it is making some changes to its Play Store tools specifically to help game developers bring more attention to their titles.
Jordan Novet / VentureBeat:
Google adds its Keep note taking app to the G Suite portfolio of services and integrates it into Docs' interface via a side panel  —  Google today is announcing the addition of the Google Keep notetaking app to its G Suite portfolio of cloud services for organizations.
More: ZDNet and TechCrunch
Jack Nicas / Wall Street Journal:
YouTube viewers worldwide watch more than 1B hours of video a day, a 10-fold increase since 2012, threatening to eclipse US TV viewership  —  Google unit posts 10-fold increase in viewership since 2012, boosted by algorithms personalizing user lineups  —  YouTube viewers world-wide …
Jon Russell / TechCrunch:
SoundCloud debuts SoundCloud Go $4.99/month plan with 120M tracks ad free, will still offer its SoundCloud Go+ $9.99/month plan, which offers 150M tracks  —  SoundCloud has rebooted its paid membership plan with a new budget option less than a year after it launched.
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Porsche Design's Book One has specs similar to a Surface Book, but its hinge can bend all the way over and detach; device will launch in US in April for $2,495  —  Porsche Design has announced its new 2-in-1, called the Book One, today at Mobile World Congress and it sure reminds us of a Surface Book.
TechCrunch:
A look at Alibaba's cloud computing business, which generated $254M revenue from 765K customers last quarter, and is said to be China's leading cloud vendor  —  When you think of the biggest cloud players in the world, one company you might not consider is Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant …
TechCrunch:
Google SVP of hardware Rick Osterloh says the company has “no plans” to make another Pixel laptop “right now”, focusing instead on smartphones  —  In a small meeting with journalists at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today, Google's senior vice president …

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More News

Brad Linder / Liliputing:
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Earlier Picks

Casey Newton / The Verge:
Politico: