Techmeme
December 8, 2015, 1:15 PM

Top News

Mikey Campbell / AppleInsider:
Apple debuts $99 Smart Battery Case for iPhone 6/6S, extends talk time to 25 hours, LTE browsing to 18 hours, available to order online now  —  Apple debuts Smart Battery Case for iPhone 6s, extends life up to 25 hours  —  In a surprise release on Tuesday, Apple debuted the Smart Battery Case …
Joanna Stern / Wall Street Journal:
Apple Smart Battery Case review: extends battery by 80%, well behind competition and at higher cost, but uses lightning cable and lets phone show charge levels  —  Apple Smart Battery Case Review: iPhone Battery Life Nearly Doubled  —  Apple enters the battery case business with a funny-looking, iOS-integrated option
Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
Apple plans March Apple Watch 2 event, 4-inch ‘iPhone 6c’ possible  —  Apple is currently planning a March 2016 event to unveil the second-generation Apple Watch, according to sources with knowledge of the plans.  The second version of the Apple Watch would then ship by April, nearly a year after the original model first went on sale.
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Mozilla launches Focus by Firefox, a content blocker for iOS 9 aimed at stopping trackers  —  Mozilla launches Focus by Firefox, a content blocker for iOS 9  —  Mozilla today launched an iOS content blocker called Focus by Firefox.  We say “content blocker” because, although Focus is capable …
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Google wants to bring Fiber to Chicago and Los Angeles, the two largest metro areas Google has publicly considered  —  Google wants to bring Fiber to Chicago and Los Angeles  —  Google today announced Google Fiber could be coming to two of the biggest cities in the U.S.: Chicago and Los Angeles.
Anick Jesdanun / Associated Press:
Apple says Apple Maps is used 3X more often than its next leading competitor on iOS, now logging 5B requests per week  —  Apple Maps, once a laughingstock, now dominates iPhones  —  3 photos  —  NEW YORK (AP) — Apple Maps quickly became the butt of jokes when it debuted in 2012.
Janko Roettgers / Variety:
Amazon Brings Showtime, Starz and Other Video Services to Prime As Add-Ons  —  Amazon's Prime members just got a new perk: Showtime and Starz, unbundled and cheap.  The internet company launched a new initiative called “Streaming Partners Program” Tuesday that allows Prime members …
Matt Hamblen / Computerworld:
AT&T to expand its 1Gbps GigaPower service to 38 more cities including LA, San Francisco, Birmingham, Pensacola, Reno, Memphis, Charleston, Detroit, Tulsa  —  AT&T GigaPower fiber expanding to 38 more cities  —  AT&T announced Monday it will expand its 1Gbps GigaPower fiber optic broadband service …
Sydney Ember / New York Times:
Digital ad spending will overtake TV as biggest category by 2017 or 2018, forecasts say  —  Digital Ad Spending Expected to Soon Surpass TV  —  Television has lost its longtime grip on advertising budgets as digital ad spending continues to surge, according to some of the advertising industry's …
Pino Bonetti / HERE 360:
HERE wants to explore uses of anonymized sensor data from Audi, BMW, and Daimler vehicles for its next generation maps supporting autonomous driving  —  Starting today, it's a new world for HERE...  And we intend to map just about everything in it, for you and everyone else.
Rachel Pick / Motherboard:
Twitter Is Testing Timelines That Aren't in Chronological Order  —  Are you a loyal Twitter user?  Brace yourself, because your favorite social media platform might get turned on its head: Twitter is experimenting with a new way of sorting your timeline that breaks with the reverse-chronological format it has used since its inception.

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More News

Charles Piller / STAT:

Earlier Picks

Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Keach Hagey / Wall Street Journal:
Vijay Umapathy / Gmail Blog: