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Tech News Today for December 7, 2016

Tech News for Wednesday December 7, 2016

The rumors are true. FitBit has swallowed up Pebble. Both companies have formally announced that Pebble will shut down and fitness company FitBit will buy Pebble's key assets. The acquisition Excludes hardware, but the companies talent, intellectual property, and presumably their debt will now belong to Pebble. According to an email this morning, Pebble Time 2, Pebble Core, and Pebble Time Round Kickstarter Editions will not go into final production and all backers will receive refunds. It was supposed to be $70 3G connected clip to free you from armbands and hip pouches and text messages while running. Read more at wearable.com.

Sony is getting more serious about mobile gaming with its announcement of a new take on table top card gameplay called Project Field. It’s a dedicated smart pad thats meant to pair with a smartphone or tablet that allows physical cards to interact with and trigger on-screen gameplay mechanics. NFC technology is used to detect card placement and movement throughout the game, and cards will be read/write ready meaning game progress and character growth can be saved to the cards themselves. Read more at bloomberg.com.

You can now search Google just by tweeting an emoji and you'll get results nearby. Which is great if you want to feed yourself some cookies and even greater if Google wants to pair your location with nearby locations to feed you ads. Read more at mashable.com.

Pandora’s new paid streaming service was shown to a small group of reporters and VIPs at an event in New York, and it's called Pandora Premium. CEO Tim Westergren said that Premium in this case means Personal. To that end, it integrates the many 'thumbs up' users have offered to the service over the years to tailor its experience, including taking orphaned playlists and suggesting additions based on the Music Genome Project. Read more at engadget.com.

Apple has announced its apps of the year, including the most downloaded app, which was Snapchat. Because this was the year that the old people discovered it. Apple also made a list of the favorite apps of this year, including filter app Prisma, Sketchbook Motion for iPad, Twitter for Apple TV, MySwimPro – Personal Swim Trainer for Apple Watch and Bear for Mac. Clash Royale was the best game this year for the iPhone, Severed was the best for the iPad, Riptide GP: Renegade for Apple TV, Field Day for Apple Watch and Life Is Strange for Mac. Read more at mashable.com.

Megan Morrone and Jason Howell are joined today by Kerry Davis from Engadget. Tech News Today streams live weekdays at 4PM Pacific, 7PM Eastern at twit.tv/live. You can subscribe to the show and download it on-demand at twit.tv/tnt.

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