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FCC Chairman Ajit Pai cancels CES appearance
For the second year in a row, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has cancelled his appearance at CES, though this time around, it's under very different circumstances. According to Politico Pro, both he and Commissioner Brendan Carr have had to cancel their CES plans due to the partial government shutdown that's still ongoing. Pai was supposed to discuss FCC plans with the Consumer Technology Association's Gary Shapiro while Carr was scheduled to take part in a roundtable discussion.
FCC to suspend operations January 3rd unless funding resumes
It looks like the FCC will be joining the list of government offices that will shut down in light of the ongoing funding lapse. The commission released a statement today saying that if the partial funding lapse continues into January 3rd, it will initiate an "orderly shutdown of operations." The majority of the FCC's operations will be put on hold by mid-day Thursday if funding isn't resumed and employees will have four hours to complete the shutdown.
Google's chat plans: Kill Allo, upgrade Duo and invest in Messages
Confirming the latest rumors, Google has formally announced a shakeup in its increasingly-splintered messaging strategy. As we'd heard earlier today, Allo is done and will go away after March 2019 (users can export their conversation history until then). It launched a little over two years ago and incubated a number of messaging features with AI, but now it's focusing on its RCS-enabled Messages app, which has already absorbed Allo features like Smart Reply, GIFs and desktop support.
Collaborative robot maker Rethink Robotics shuts down
For a while, it looked like Rethink Robotics would shake up the world with its collaborative robots: rather than having to write code, workers could teach bots to perform tasks by guiding them through the process. However, the market doesn't appear to have shared its vision. Rethink has suddenly shut down after a potential buyer backed out of a deal. Sales of Baxter and Sawyer robots weren't meeting expectations, Rethink chief Scott Eckert said, leaving the company low on cash. It really needed this acquisition to go through, in other words.
The original 'H1Z1' survival game shuts down October 24th
With all the hoopla over battle royale games, it's easy to forget that H1Z1 didn't start out as a competitive shooter. It launched as an online zombie survival title, split into two experiences and eventually saw the battle royale side take the H1Z1 name -- the original experience evolved under the Just Survive banner. And now, that initial game is going away. Daybreak has unveiled plans to shut down Just Survive on October 24th at 2PM Eastern, pinning the move on a low player count that made support impractical.
Say goodbye to the company that made the cute Kuri robot
It's a sad day if you're fond of robotic assistants. Mayfield Robotics, the company behind the awww-inducing Kuri robot, is shutting down on October 31st, 2018. Simply put, the company had run out of options after cancelling Kuri. The company was "unable to reach an agreement" with other partners to help finance and develop its technology. Longtime partner Bosch will ease the burden for employees by offering severance packages and helping them find new jobs (including at Bosch).
Twitch nixes Communities, adds tags to improve content discovery
Video game streaming service Twitch launched Communities in February of last year. These were ostensibly hub page for specific games or topics that members could create to help people find content. Now the company will shut these pages down mid-September in favor of a new tagging system. Twitch will also add 10 new categories for streamers to help describe their content for better discovery.
Newton's subscription email service will shut down next month
Newton was the rare email app that worked well on mobile, Windows and Mac, but it really did cost too much. Note the past tense: The company announced today that the email service will shut down on September 25th. The service will not renew monthly subscriptions or allow new sign ups immediately and will offer pro-rated refunds for annual subscribers. Its parent company, CloudMagic, will continue to work on "new and innovative projects," according to CEO Rohit Nadhani.
Snapchat ends its peer-to-peer payment service on August 30th
Snap's one-time hope of becoming a major player in money transfers has come to an ignominious end. The company has confirmed to TechCrunch that it's discontinuing its Snapcash service on August 30th. While it didn't say what would happen to users' accounts, it promised that they'd receive notifications through both the Snapchat app itself as well as the support website. It's sad news if you're a frequent Snapchatter who used the feature to cover your share of restaurant bills, but you could see this coming given the competition and Snap's own fortunes.
Facebook shuts down tbh and other apps over 'low usage'
Some of Facebook's mobile app efforts fare better than others, and that's clearer than ever right now. The social network has announced that it's shutting down teen polling app tbh, caller ID tool Hello and fitness tracker Moves based on "low usage." It's scrubbing user data for all three within 90 days, but the apps will likely stop working before that. Facebook will deprecate Moves and its programming kit on July 31st, while Hello is facing a similar fate in "a few weeks."
Blizzard is trying to patent ‘Overwatch’ highlight replays
The Play of the Game highlight at the end of Overwatch is arguably one of the best bits of the game. Now, nearly two years after starting the application process, Blizzard has finally confirmed it wants to patent it. Submitted in December 2016 and made public just two weeks ago, the patent describes the algorithm behind the feature, which lead designer Jeff Kaplan described last year as being "about 70 percent of where we want Play of the Game to be."
Best Buy will close 250 phone-focused stores in the US
All those standalone Best Buy mobile phone outlets you see in malls will be gone by the end of May. According to various sources, the big box retailer is shutting down all the 250 mobile-focused shops it built across the US over the years, even during times it had to shut down some of its big box locations. It put up its first stores back in 2006 to capitalize on the growing mobile phone industry, but the phone biz is no longer as lucrative as it was back then. Best Buy chief Hubert Joly apparently told employees in a letter that those small outlets are now more expensive to run than a big box store.
White House temporarily shuts down 'We the People' petition site
The "We the People" site was launched back in 2011 as a way for the rank and file citizens to get a response from the Obama administration if they were able to get 100,000 signatures on any given petition. The site will now be unavailable until late January, and the Associated Press reports that all existing petitions and responses will be restored next year.
Google buys short-form audio startup to bolster its podcast efforts
60Db, the short-form podcast app, looks like it's shutting down. The app's developer Tiny Garage Labs has joined Google, according to a post on Medium. Haven't heard of it? Well, then you probably won't miss it much come November 10th. In the past year though, the team worked with some 80 editorial partners to produce "hundreds of audio stories." What they're up to next isn't clear. As Business Insider notes, Google Play Music already has a section for podcasts, so perhaps this is a move to help revamp a seemingly abandoned portion of the mostly abandoned app.
Augmented reality studio castAR reportedly closes its doors
When Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson left their engineering posts at Valve, they took their augmented reality research with them and built an ambitious company called castAR. They had big plans, including the general release of their AR glasses later this year. For a while, they also had the money to make them happen. Unfortunately, things might not have gone well for the duo: According to Polygon, the company has closed its doors and laid off around 70 people from its Palo Alto and Salt Lake City offices.
Coin shuts down its payment services on February 28th
You knew Coin's payment tech wasn't long for this world when Fitbit bought the company in 2016, and now the end is at hand: the Coin team is shutting down its payment services on February 28th. ITs signature universal credit card devices will keep working as long as they still have battery power, or about 2 years after activation. However, the mobile app will stop working after that date -- you can't change cards on the device if they're due to expire. Nearly all support is going away (outside of deleting accounts), and you're already out of luck if you need a warranty exchange.
Talkshow shuts down its chat-in-public app on December 1st
If you tried Talkshow's public-facing chatrooms but left wondering why they were necessary, you're not alone. The startup is shutting down its service after determining that it won't be "big enough" to have its intended effect. As of November 1st, Talkshow's iOS app is no longer available in the App Store. You can participate in conversations until November 8th, when everything will revert to a read-only mode. You'll have the option of exporting your chats after that, but you'll have to act quickly -- everything will turn off on December 1st.
Narrative shuts down its lifelogging camera business
Remember the Narrative Clip, that wearable camera that let you document your day with a steady stream of photos or video? It was a novel idea, but it doesn't look like many people embraced the concept. Narrative is telling customers that it's filing for "voluntary dissolution" following financial trouble that came to a head this summer, when it restructured in a bid to stay afloat. That will put an end to Clip sales and support (a Facebook group will offer help), but the company is promising a solution that prevents your lifelogging camera from becoming a paperweight.
Ubisoft is shutting down the free-to-play 'Ghost Recon'
Free-to-play games based on popular franchises were a huge trend for awhile. But, as Microsoft showed us this week by canceling Halo Online for Russia, there are no guarantees for success. Ubisoft is following suit and shutting down Ghost Recon Phantoms, formerly known as Ghost Recon Online. As Gamasutra writes, this was the publisher's maiden voyage into the market when it launched back in 2011.
Skully ends its dreams of making augmented reality helmets
If you thought that Skully's plan to crowdfund an augmented reality motorcycle helmet was overly ambitious... unfortunately, you were right. After years of delays and several weeks of grave financial trouble, the startup has informed backers that it's shutting down. Simply put, the company had run out of cash -- it had been scrambling to raise some temporary funding, but that fell through. TechCrunch sources claim that Skully had even been trying to sell itself to Chinese tech giant LeEco. However, it reportedly alienated investors following number of disputes over a possible sale, manufacturing hiccups and executive spending.