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Ever since rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z acquired high fidelity music streaming platform Tidal this year, there have been questions about whether the service can compete against heavy hitters like Spotify, Apple, and Google.

It appears that a few major executives from the company also agree with those questions.

CIO Vania Schlogel left the company over the summer, after leading the company's search for investments and heading PR, as well. Schlogel is the third high level executive to leave since Jay-Z's purchase, following former CEO Andy Chen and Chen's replacement Peter Tonstad.

Despite star-studded co-owners like Madonna, Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, Daft Punk, Rihanna and Jack White, most industry insiders see little chance of the company lasting another year.

UK carrier EE has announced a deal to add 25 channels to its new TV service, which will still cost just £4.99 a month.

Among the new channels include offerings from Discovery, National Geographic, Sony, Cartoon Network and UKTV channels like Alibi and Gold.

"EE TV customers have always loved being able to pick and choose premium channels without the commitment of a fixed contract or a hefty monthly fee," said Simeon Bird, director of EE Broadband and TV. "It's a great addition to EE TV's On Demand section, which already contains a huge range of movies, entertainment, music, kids and international content."

EE TV has all of Freeview's 64 TV channels, and also gives the option to subscribe to Sky Sports and Sky Movies.

A big part of your childhood is coming back.

Nintendo announced last night that the original Pokemon games; Red, Blue and Yellow will be headed to the Nintendo 3DS handheld.

The games will be exactly like the originals except that they will online functionality so you can trade Pokes or battle with friends without needing a physical cable link like you needed back in the 90s.

There was little else said, but we should know more about pricing and availability soon.

Apple has announced today that Beats Music will officially shut down on November 30th.

"Beats Music ends on November 30. Your subscription will be canceled, but you can move your picks and preferences over to Apple Music right now.

All the pros that curated music for you are still crafting more amazing experiences. Plus, on Apple Music, you'll get even better recommendations based on music you already listen to and love, 24/7 global radio with Beats 1, exciting material from your favorite artist, and more," says the company.

Apple Music costs $9.99 per month and gives you access to millions of tracks, curated playlists and Beats 1 radio.

According to a new report, Hulu is looking to sell a stake to Time Warner that will value the company at $5 billion and bring a ton of new content to the service.

If accurate, Time Warner would become an equal shareholder with Disney, Fox, and Comcast (NBC), each of which would bring their stakes down to 25 percent from the current 33.3 percent.

Time Warner, who owns HBO, Warner Bros., TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network and more, would add content to Hulu that would also have the double positive of taking content away from rivals like Netflix.

Hulu has been aggressively expanding their content catalog this year, outlaying over $1 billion to bring in a deal with Epix and an increasing amount of original content.

Massive taxi-hailing startup Uber has signed a new deal with navigation pioneer TomTom to use the company's digital maps and traffic data within its smartphone apps.

Uber says the new deal will not affect current traffic information it uses, which includes Google Maps and Apple Maps, but will compliment existing tech.

The app has been looking to bolster its digital maps and traffic info for some time and was an active bidder for Nokia's HERE maps service before it was eventually sold to a group of German carmakers for $2.7 billion.

Mozilla has taken its Firefox for iOS browser out of beta, making it available to all.

The company launched a public beta of the software in September and has been fixing bugs based off feedback ever since.

While Firefox is popular for desktop (by most accounts it is the #3 browser on the planet), it has some major competition in the mobile space. Apple pre-installs Safari on their iOS devices, Google's Chrome is incredibly popular, and other competitors like Opera also have market share due to interesting features like data compression and faster speeds.

If you are a Firefox desktop user, you can bring over all your bookmarks, history, saved tabs and more.

You must have iOS 8.2 or newer installed to use the app, which is available here.

Sony has announced today that the PlayStation Vue Internet TV service is now available via Amazon devices.

As of today, the service is available through the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV stick and Sony promises that Google's Chromecast will soon get in on the action.

Says Sony: "You can access PlayStation Vue on Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick using your existing PlayStation Vue account...from there, you can select individual channels from PlayStation Vue's nationwide offerings, such as SHOWTIME and Fox Soccer Plus, or purchase multi-channel packages available in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, San Francisco Bay Area, and Miami TV markets."

In addition, Amazon is offering a free Fire TV Stick for new users who sign up for PlayStation Vue Core or Elite subscriptions and pay one month. The Core package costs $54.99 per month and the Elite is $64.99.

Google has announced today that Android Wear now supports cellular connections, expanding the existing Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support.

"No more worrying about Bluetooth or Wi-Fi--your watch will automatically switch to a cellular connection when you're out of range. As long as your watch and phone are connected to a cellular network, you'll be able to use your watch to send and receive messages, track fitness, get answers from Google, and run your favorite apps. And yes, you'll even be able to make and take calls right from your watch, for when your hands are full, or your phone is elsewhere," says Google.

The first device that will include cellular support is the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE (that's a mouthful) with a few more expected for the coming months. The Urbane 2 will be available through AT&T and Verizon.

Sony has announced their first batch of 4K (UHD) Blu-ray discs, although they are unlikely to make you upgrade in the near future.

The films don't have a set release date but are expected to be available in the Q1 2016. In addition to being built for your 4K-capable TV, the UHD titles will also support HDR for brighter and sharper picture.

Included in Sony's random first batch of films are The Amazing Spiderman 2; Chappie; Hancock; Pineapple Express; Salt and The Smurfs 2.

While most of the films have their fair share of fans, there is very little incentive to upgrade past your current DVD, Blu-ray or digital copy of most of these films. Luckily, Sony has announced more titles for the future, although most will not be worth upgrading to either.

In 2016, you can expect Fury, Captain Phillips, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Men In Black, Ghostbusters, The Fifth Element, Bad Boys, The Da Vinci Code, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Leon: The Professional, Lawrence Of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Guns of Navarone, Taxi Driver, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Third-party Instagram client 'InstaAgent' has been removed from both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store after it was discovered it was stealing passwords and posting photos without permission.

The app was found to be storing your Instagram username and password in unencrypted text, and the app was then sending the details to an unknown server.

InstaAgent was popular as it promised to let you see "who viewed your profile," a feature that is not included in the official app.

The app had over 100,000 downloads from the iOS App Store alone, so there is a good chance that hundreds of thousands of accounts have been compromised. If you ever used the app, it stands to reason that you should be changing your password before finishing this article.

Source:

"Who Viewed Your Profile" #Instaagent will send your Instagram Username and Password to an unknown server! pic.twitter.com/8uZJljJdtO

-- David L-R (@PeppersoftDev) November 10, 2015

Google has announced today that it will end support for the Chrome browser for many older operating systems in April 2016.

Windows XP and Vista users, as well as OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, OS X 10.7 Lion, and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion users will lose security updates and other support at that time.

Why the end of support? "Such older platforms are missing critical security updates and have a greater potential to be infected by viruses and malware," says Google, which is obviously true. Additionally, Google notes that "these platforms are no longer actively supported by Microsoft and Apple" which makes them even more vulnerable.

Google had initially stated they would end support for XP and Vista in April 2015 but has since delayed that move as it's clear that there are still millions of users on the old platforms.

Apple has released the beta version of Apple Music for Android this week, the first true user app Apple has created for the operating system.

In reality, the app is the third from Apple for Android but the first was an app to help users migrate to iOS and the second was a controller for their Beats hardware.

"We've obviously been really excited about the response we've gotten to Apple Music. People love the human curation aspects of it, discovery, radio," said Apple SVP Eddy Cue. "But from the moment we got into music, many, many years ago, we've always wanted to do things for everyone when it came down to music. Part of that was letting you enjoy your music no matter where you were and what products you were using."

Of course, that is a nice way of saying that Apple was tired of missing out on 1 billion Android users who can add to profits, but it will also help consumers who have moved from Apple to Android and don't want to lose their existing service (you can keep your Apple ID and downloaded music).

Apple Music for Android comes with a 3-month free trial, costs the same as its iOS counterpart afterward, and requires Android 4.3 or newer.

T-Mobile US has announced this week that many of their subscribers will soon be able to stream unlimited video without worrying about it counting towards their data caps.

"Video streams free," T-Mobile CEO John Legere said Tuesday. "Binge on. Start watching your shows, stop watching your data."

The deal applies to anyone who pays for at least 3GB of data per month and at launch the company has included 24 popular streaming services. Notably missing are YouTube and Facebook, but included are most of the biggest services in the world like Netflix, Hulu, Watch ESPN and HBO Go/Now.

As part of the new "Binge On" service, there is one huge caveat. If you enable it, T-Mobile will degrade the video quality from 1080p in many cases to "DVD quality" aka 480p.

Regardless, T-Mobile continues to make its service chock full of interesting and consumer-friendly features that other carriers have scrambled to add after the fact.

According to new reports, Pandora is preparing to expand internationally and has already tried to acquire rights to play songs outside of the U.S.

The company has targeted the UK as an important expansion point, and the entire move makes sense as Pandora has struggled recently with growth in the U.S.

Pandora's stock has fallen nearly 50 percent since September, following reports that rivals were taking major market share and over the costs of a legal settlement with the RIAA over royalties for tracks written before 1972. The settlement, as well as a deal to stop seeking lower royalty rates, seems to be working for Pandora as the major record labels finally seem open to working with them, a key motion for any type of expansion.

Any future plans, however, are likely on hold until the end of the year when the Copyright Royalty Board sets new rates. It is rumored that the RIAA wants Pandora to pay 78 percent of their entire revenue in royalties, compared to the current 44 percent they do now.