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Friday, 17 January 2020

First Season of Critically Acclaimed Show 'Little America' Now Available to Stream on Apple TV+

The entire first season of "Little America," an immigrant anthology series created by Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon, is now available to stream on Apple TV+.

The show features eight half hour episodes that each focus on a different story, from a 12-year-old who has to run a Utah motel on his own after his parents are deported back to India, to a Nigerian grad student who becomes a cowboy.

Zachary Quinto, known for "Star Trek," stars in the fourth episode, and other cast members include Jearnest Corchado, John Ortiz, Angela Lin, Kai To, Sophia Xu, Shaun Toub, Shila Vosough Ommi, Eshan Inamdar, Priyanka Bose, and Conphidance.

Show creators Nanjiani and Gordon are best known for "The Big Sick," and each story in the series they've created is based on a real-life tale pulled from Epic Magazine.

Lee Eisenberg, known for his work on "The Office," is writing and executive producing the show alongside Nanjiani and Gordon. Eisenberg this week signed a multi-year content deal with Apple.

The series has received largely positive reviews from critics, who have called it the best ‌‌Apple TV‌‌+ show yet. "Little America" has already been renewed for season 2.

‌Apple TV‌+ is available through the ‌Apple TV‌ app on iPhone, iPad, ‌Apple TV‌, Mac, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and select smart TVs from Samsung, LG, Sony, and Vizio, as well as online at tv.apple.com. The streaming service costs $4.99 per month in the United States, with a seven-day free trial available.

Tags: Apple TV Shows, Apple TV Plus

This article, "First Season of Critically Acclaimed Show 'Little America' Now Available to Stream on Apple TV+" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Facebook Shelves Controversial Plan to Insert Ads into WhatsApp

Facebook's controversial plan to sell ads in WhatsApp has been put on the back-burner, according to a new report today from The Wall Street Journal.

WhatsApp in recent months disbanded a team that had been established to find the best ways to integrate ads into the service, according to people familiar with the matter. The team's work was then deleted from WhatsApp's code, the people said.

Plans to monetize WhatsApp were floated no longer after Facebook acquired the messaging service in February 2014 for $22 billion. WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum and Brian Acton continually pushed back against the plans, which were a factor that ultimately led both men to quit the company.

Prior to leaving, Koum and Acton changed WhatsApp's terms of service to explicitly forbid displaying ads in the app, which complicated Facebook's future efforts to do so, according to WSJ's sources.

Facebook has changed its platforms' terms of service in the past, but introducing ads on WhatsApp would have required a formal notification of users, creating a potential public-relations problem for Facebook.

Still, Facebook hasn't completely given up on inserting ads into WhatsApp, and reportedly plans to add them to the app's Status feature "at some point." Status allows users to create short-lived posts similar to Instagram's Stories.

However, for now the focus is said to be on developing money-making features that enable businesses to communicate with customers and better manage those interactions.

Before the acquisition, WhatsApp was initially a paid-for app and later transitioned to a $0.99 annual subscription service. Facebook made the service free after buying it and later unveiled its own revenue-generating plans for the platform, which has 1.5 billion users globally.

Tags: Facebook, WhatsApp

This article, "Facebook Shelves Controversial Plan to Insert Ads into WhatsApp" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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from MacRumors: Mac News and Rumors - All Stories https://ift.tt/2RpQ17T

Thursday, 16 January 2020

Maybe We Shouldn't Go Bananas Over Smart Contacts Just Yet

Imagine plopping a contact lens in your eye, and instead of just seeing better, you could see an enhanced view of your environment. That’s what Mojo Vision is saying their new prototype smart contact lens could do. Eventually. It sounds like a concept straight out of a sci-fi movie. But whereas anything is possible in…

Asking the Tough Questions: Here's What All the 2020 Democrats Would Look Like If They Had No Eyebrows

No one wants to believe that a person without eyebrows can’t be elected as president. But there are certain political realities we have to face in the run-up to the 2020 presidential elections.

Four Sleep Trackers to Keep You Bright Eyed and Bushytailed

Welcome to the 21st century where our social media is tracking our habits, our watches count our daily steps, and various gadgets monitor our every single move we make while sleeping. Next thing you know, cars will be self-driving and we won’t even need to touch the steering wheel!