Tech Roundup: Alphabet Drone Deliveries, Amazon Books & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

• Yemen hit by a second deadly cyclone in a span of one week in what's been labelled as an unprecedented occurrence; landfall expected this week.
• NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission (MAVEN) finds solar winds behind Red Planet's loss of atmosphere and water.
• After putting brick-and-mortar bookstores like Borders out of business, online retailer Amazon opens its first real bookstore in Seattle; uses data gathered from its online storefront to stock books.
• Social network Facebook shows no signs of stopping; now averages 1 billion users per day with 78% of its advertising revenue coming from mobile.

1 billion users browse the Internet on Facebook! (Image: Yahoo!)

• Alphabet Inc's balloon-powered internet service Project Loon gains Indian government approval for initial testing; plans to launch its commercial drone delivery business Project Wing in 2017.
• OnePlus X, the sexiest affordable smartphone from OnePlus, goes on sale in India for Rs. 16,999!
• Like Apple, Google reportedly discussing with chipset makers to develop chips based on its own designs in an attempt to control the ever-increasing fragmentation problem in Android, reports The Information (paywall).
• Facebook planning to unveil a new standalone news app called Notify (what happened to Paper?) to "alert users to new stories from professional media outlets", reports Financial Times.
• Microsoft goes back on its cloud-first approach?; downgrades OneDrive free storage limit from 15GB to 5GB, and removes unlimited cloud storage option for Office 365 subscribers after a small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings.
• Google brings AI-driven Smart Reply to Gmail (available only on Inbox); will suggest automated, intelligent responses to your incoming emails.
• Activation Blizzard, publisher of video games such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, buys Candy Crush Saga maker King Digital for $5.9 bn.
• Microsoft opens its personal voice assistant Cortana for iOS beta.
• Facebook working on artificial intelligence to understand what's in your photos a la Google; unveils a new type of light-weight photo-based video ads called Slideshow that consume less data and are bandwidth-friendly.
• Google acquires Fly Labs, maker of popular video editing apps for iOS; to fold its features into Google Photos.
• Trend of Facebook and Twitter looking alike continues; Twitter replaces Favourite button with Like (symbolised by a heart).