| Ford is investing in its own mobile future, Disney is taking its social network to where the kids are, and Toyota wants AI to help it find the best battery material. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for March 30, 2017. 1. Ford basically hires its own in-house smartphone company Ford is taking control of its own destiny in one crucial area for the focus of automobiles. The company is opening a new mobility and connectivity engineering center in Ottawa, and is hiring a bunch of BlackBerry engineers, along with some others, for 400 total new engineers in total. The move is indicative of where automakers see their business going: It's going to be about data, and it's going to be about in-car connectivity, and that'll impact everything from what your car's infotainment system looks like, to cars driving themselves. 
2. Disney goes mobile first for its new online community for kids Disney's Club Penguin is an online social network for kids, basically, and now the company has created a mobile version called Club Island Penguin. Makes sense, because not kids anywhere are using desktop computers. 3. Toyota invests in long-term materials science research, guided by AI Toyota wants to solve basic science problems around the materials used in fuel cell production, and battery tech. To do that, it's making a long-term, $35 million bet on fundamental research with a number of partners. This isn't going to be a quick fix for your iPhone running out of battery, though – expect the pay-off to happen on the scale of decades, not months. 4. Telegram debuts encrypted voice calls Secure messaging app Telegram has added voice calls to its platform, and the highlight feature it wants you to know about is end-to-end encryption for these calls. It could be a significant feature for the app's privacy-sensitive audience. 5. LeEco's $2 billion Vizio purchase is stalled out Chinese tech firm LeEco is hitting issues in its pursuit of a $2 billion deal to purchase U.S. TV maker Vizio. This is being held up because of limits on how much money can transfer overseas from China-based companies. 6. That GoFundMe to buy the browser history of Republicans is a bad idea Oh look another viral idea based on cool internet stuff is bad and wrong. Avoid this scam in the making. 7. Facebook is launching group chatbots Your group chats could soon get a robot companion. Facebook is going to debut bots that can do stuff like bring in breaking news among conversations with multiple users. I still think chatbots are over – for now. | 
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