Video Calling on your TV? Yup, it’s a thing now.

Facebook has announced three new Portal models. You’ve now got the option of new models of ‘The Portal’ and the ‘Portal Mini’ ($179 and $129 respectively), as well as, in a new turn of events, ‘Portal TV’, which, for $149, will turn your TV into a giant smart display.

Which means, giant video calling. Which means, video call parties, obviously. Hi friends! What are you doing in my TV?

The two new standalone Portal models have a 10-inch HD display (1,280 x 800),  and an 8-inch HD display (also 1,280 x 800) for the Mini, with improved speakers.

The Portal TV is a camera that you attach to your television’s HDMI port that comes with a small remote control to navigate the Portal TV interface. Not only can you make video calls, you can also watch Facebook Watch tv shows with another Portal TV owner during a video call. Long distance relationships gold right there.

For privacy, all three new devices have a toggle switch that mutes the microphone and shuts off the camera simultaneously as well as a physical camera lens cover.

Pre-orders for all three Portals start today, the Portal and Portal Mini will start shipping on October 15th, while the Portal TV begins shipping November 5th.

If you want ALL the FaceBook things, you can also bundle any two Portal devices for $50 off.

Facebook releases it’s future on us all

At F8, Facebook’s developer conference, the social media company introduced the way that it wants you, the end user, to see the world.

How’s that? Well, augmented.

Facebook’s augmented reality camera, or camera platform as FB calls it, will place digital imagery on the world around you. Think Pokemon Go, except…useful, realistic, change the way we see the world type stuff.

From the Sauce, Mark Zuckerberg:

“Facebook is so much about marrying the physical world with online, when you can make it so that you can intermix digital and physical parts of the world, that’s going to make a lot of our experiences better and our lives richer. Facebook is so much about marrying the physical world with online.”

From now on (actually, for a while now, but here’s where the action really starts) the camera is no longer just a tool that you use to capture images.

Now, you can change the world with it, manipulate the images that you capture as well as the environment you see through it. You’ll be able to display and intake information, add digital objects, and enhance existing objects.

Again, from the Zuck:

“The camera needs to be more central than the text box in all of our apps,” he said. “We’re making the camera the first augmented reality platform.”

At F8, the demos were on an Oculus headset, but soon, the plan is that you’ll be able to create and interact with augmented reality right on your smartphone. Or whatever replaces the smartphone – which may well be lightweight glasses, according to Zuckerberg.

And so the race begins to see who wins on creating the end augmented reality platform. Will the end product be shaped more by  software, rather than hardware? What mix will we end up with?

Over the coming months Facebook plans to give developers a chance to use its tools to create their own filters and effects for Facebook’s cameras. Developers who want to build their own apps, games, and art will be able to do so, perhaps taking the Camera in unanticipated directions.

Hi Future! *Waves* We’re in you…almost!

Get a free Uber ride from Facebook Messenger!!

You can now book an Uber through Facebook Messenger! In promoting this new feature, Uber and Facebook are offering existing and new users a free Uber ride up to $20!

From the sauce:

“With the ability to request, track and pay for a ride in Messenger, we’re making transportation as simple as sending a message.”

Uber is the first of many transport services to be added to Messenger, but currently the feature is only in testing phase – available to select users in select locations – so you might not have access to it yet. If you do, simply download the latest version of Facebook Messenger and check out the instructions below.

To claim your free ride, link your existing Uber account or set up a new account within Messenger and request a ride! Simple as pie!

Mark Zuckerberg is giving away 99% of his FB Shares.

If you weren’t on Facebook yesterday/this morning, or talked to anyone who was on Facebook yesterday/this morning, we have news for you! Mark Zuckerberg, famed CEO of said Facebook, and his lovely wifey Priscilla  had a beautiful little baby girl they named Max.

In the spirit of new life and looking to the future, the new parents announced (on Facebook.. d’uh) that in their lifetime they will be giving away 99% their Facebook shares, creating a foundation called the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, in a mission to “advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation.”

The shares are worth $45 billion. Facebook announced to it’s shareholders that Mr Zuckerberg has committed to giving away no more than $1 billion of Facebook shares each year for the next three years. He will hold on to roughly $450 million worth of shares and enough voting shares that he remains in control of the company. His role at Facebook will not be changing anytime soon.

Zuck had already signed the ‘Giving Pledge’ back in 2010, along with other richies like Warren Buffet and Bill & melinda Gates, pledging to give away the majority of his wealth to charity in his life or in his will.

Straight from the sauce:

“Priscilla and I are so happy to welcome our daughter Max into this world!
For her birth, we wrote a letter to her about the world we hope she grows up in.
It’s a world where our generation can advance human potential and promote equality — by curing disease, personalizing learning, harnessing clean energy, connecting people, building strong communities, reducing poverty, providing equal rights and spreading understanding across nations.

We are committed to doing our small part to help create this world for all children. We will give 99% of our Facebook shares — currently about $45 billion — during our lives to join many others in improving this world for the next generation.
Thank you to everyone in this community for all your love and support during the pregnancy. You’ve given us hope that together we can build this world for Max and all children.”

This is the letter: (Maybe get a cup of coffee – it’s a long – but worthy read)

Dear Max,

Your mother and I don’t yet have the words to describe the hope you give us for the future. Your new life is full of promise, and we hope you will be happy and healthy so you can explore it fully. You’ve already given us a reason to reflect on the world we hope you live in.
Like all parents, we want you to grow up in a world better than ours today.

While headlines often focus on what’s wrong, in many ways the world is getting better. Health is improving. Poverty is shrinking. Knowledge is growing. People are connecting. Technological progress in every field means your life should be dramatically better than ours today.
We will do our part to make this happen, not only because we love you, but also because we have a moral responsibility to all children in the next generation.

We believe all lives have equal value, and that includes the many more people who will live in future generations than live today. Our society has an obligation to invest now to improve the lives of all those coming into this world, not just those already here.

But right now, we don’t always collectively direct our resources at the biggest opportunities and problems your generation will face.
Consider disease. Today we spend about 50 times more as a society treating people who are sick than we invest in research so you won’t get sick in the first place.

Medicine has only been a real science for less than 100 years, and we’ve already seen complete cures for some diseases and good progress for others. As technology accelerates, we have a real shot at preventing, curing or managing all or most of the rest in the next 100 years.
Today, most people die from five things — heart disease, cancer, stroke, neurodegenerative and infectious diseases — and we can make faster progress on these and other problems.

Once we recognize that your generation and your children’s generation may not have to suffer from disease, we collectively have a responsibility to tilt our investments a bit more towards the future to make this reality. Your mother and I want to do our part.

Curing disease will take time. Over short periods of five or ten years, it may not seem like we’re making much of a difference. But over the long term, seeds planted now will grow, and one day, you or your children will see what we can only imagine: a world without suffering from disease.

There are so many opportunities just like this. If society focuses more of its energy on these great challenges, we will leave your generation a much better world.

Our hopes for your generation focus on two ideas: advancing human potential and promoting equality.
Advancing human potential is about pushing the boundaries on how great a human life can be.
Can you learn and experience 100 times more than we do today?
Can our generation cure disease so you live much longer and healthier lives?

Can we connect the world so you have access to every idea, person and opportunity?
Can we harness more clean energy so you can invent things we can’t conceive of today while protecting the environment?

Can we cultivate entrepreneurship so you can build any business and solve any challenge to grow peace and prosperity?
Promoting equality is about making sure everyone has access to these opportunities — regardless of the nation, families or circumstances they are born into.

Our society must do this not only for justice or charity, but for the greatness of human progress.
Today we are robbed of the potential so many have to offer. The only way to achieve our full potential is to channel the talents, ideas and contributions of every person in the world.

Can our generation eliminate poverty and hunger?
Can we provide everyone with basic healthcare?
Can we build inclusive and welcoming communities?
Can we nurture peaceful and understanding relationships between people of all nations?

Can we truly empower everyone — women, children, underrepresented minorities, immigrants and the unconnected?
If our generation makes the right investments, the answer to each of these questions can be yes — and hopefully within your lifetime.

This mission — advancing human potential and promoting equality — will require a new approach for all working towards these goals.
We must make long term investments over 25, 50 or even 100 years. The greatest challenges require very long time horizons and cannot be solved by short term thinking.

We must engage directly with the people we serve. We can’t empower people if we don’t understand the needs and desires of their communities.
We must build technology to make change. Many institutions invest money in these challenges, but most progress comes from productivity gains through innovation.
We must participate in policy and advocacy to shape debates. Many institutions are unwilling to do this, but progress must be supported by movements to be sustainable.

We must back the strongest and most independent leaders in each field. Partnering with experts is more effective for the mission than trying to lead efforts ourselves.
We must take risks today to learn lessons for tomorrow. We’re early in our learning and many things we try won’t work, but we’ll listen and learn and keep improving.

Our experience with personalized learning, internet access, and community education and health has shaped our philosophy.
Our generation grew up in classrooms where we all learned the same things at the same pace regardless of our interests or needs.
Your generation will set goals for what you want to become — like an engineer, health worker, writer or community leader.

You’ll have technology that understands how you learn best and where you need to focus. You’ll advance quickly in subjects that interest you most, and get as much help as you need in your most challenging areas. You’ll explore topics that aren’t even offered in schools today. Your teachers will also have better tools and data to help you achieve your goals.

Even better, students around the world will be able to use personalized learning tools over the internet, even if they don’t live near good schools. Of course it will take more than technology to give everyone a fair start in life, but personalized learning can be one scalable way to give all children a better education and more equal opportunity.

We’re starting to build this technology now, and the results are already promising. Not only do students perform better on tests, but they gain the skills and confidence to learn anything they want. And this journey is just beginning. The technology and teaching will rapidly improve every year you’re in school.

Your mother and I have both taught students and we’ve seen what it takes to make this work. It will take working with the strongest leaders in education to help schools around the world adopt personalized learning. It will take engaging with communities, which is why we’re starting in our San Francisco Bay Area community. It will take building new technology and trying new ideas. And it will take making mistakes and learning many lessons before achieving these goals.

But once we understand the world we can create for your generation, we have a responsibility as a society to focus our investments on the future to make this reality.
Together, we can do this. And when we do, personalized learning will not only help students in good schools, it will help provide more equal opportunity to anyone with an internet connection.

Many of the greatest opportunities for your generation will come from giving everyone access to the internet.
People often think of the internet as just for entertainment or communication. But for the majority of people in the world, the internet can be a lifeline.

It provides education if you don’t live near a good school. It provides health information on how to avoid diseases or raise healthy children if you don’t live near a doctor. It provides financial services if you don’t live near a bank. It provides access to jobs and opportunities if you don’t live in a good economy.
The internet is so important that for every 10 people who gain internet access, about one person is lifted out of poverty and about one new job is created.

Yet still more than half of the world’s population — more than 4 billion people — don’t have access to the internet.
If our generation connects them, we can lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. We can also help hundreds of millions of children get an education and save millions of lives by helping people avoid disease.

This is another long term effort that can be advanced by technology and partnership. It will take inventing new technology to make the internet more affordable and bring access to unconnected areas. It will take partnering with governments, non-profits and companies. It will take engaging with communities to understand what they need. Good people will have different views on the best path forward, and we will try many efforts before we succeed.
But together we can succeed and create a more equal world.

Technology can’t solve problems by itself. Building a better world starts with building strong and healthy communities.
Children have the best opportunities when they can learn. And they learn best when they’re healthy.
Health starts early — with loving family, good nutrition and a safe, stable environment.
Children who face traumatic experiences early in life often develop less healthy minds and bodies. Studies show physical changes in brain development leading to lower cognitive ability.

Your mother is a doctor and educator, and she has seen this firsthand.
If you have an unhealthy childhood, it’s difficult to reach your full potential.
If you have to wonder whether you’ll have food or rent, or worry about abuse or crime, then it’s difficult to reach your full potential.

If you fear you’ll go to prison rather than college because of the color of your skin, or that your family will be deported because of your legal status, or that you may be a victim of violence because of your religion, sexual orientation or gender identity, then it’s difficult to reach your full potential.

We need institutions that understand these issues are all connected. That’s the philosophy of the new type of school your mother is building.
By partnering with schools, health centers, parent groups and local governments, and by ensuring all children are well fed and cared for starting young, we can start to treat these inequities as connected. Only then can we collectively start to give everyone an equal opportunity.

It will take many years to fully develop this model. But it’s another example of how advancing human potential and promoting equality are tightly linked. If we want either, we must first build inclusive and healthy communities.

For your generation to live in a better world, there is so much more our generation can do.
Today your mother and I are committing to spend our lives doing our small part to help solve these challenges. I will continue to serve as Facebook’s CEO for many, many years to come, but these issues are too important to wait until you or we are older to begin this work. By starting at a young age, we hope to see compounding benefits throughout our lives.

As you begin the next generation of the Chan Zuckerberg family, we also begin the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to join people across the world to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation. Our initial areas of focus will be personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities.

We will give 99% of our Facebook shares — currently about $45 billion — during our lives to advance this mission. We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others.

We’ll share more details in the coming months once we settle into our new family rhythm and return from our maternity and paternity leaves. We understand you’ll have many questions about why and how we’re doing this.

As we become parents and enter this next chapter of our lives, we want to share our deep appreciation for everyone who makes this possible.
We can do this work only because we have a strong global community behind us. Building Facebook has created resources to improve the world for the next generation. Every member of the Facebook community is playing a part in this work.

We can make progress towards these opportunities only by standing on the shoulders of experts — our mentors, partners and many incredible people whose contributions built these fields.

And we can only focus on serving this community and this mission because we are surrounded by loving family, supportive friends and amazing colleagues. We hope you will have such deep and inspiring relationships in your life too.

Max, we love you and feel a great responsibility to leave the world a better place for you and all children. We wish you a life filled with the same love, hope and joy you give us. We can’t wait to see what you bring to this world.
Love,
Mom and Dad

New Facebook feature

Apparently everyone’s all about helping people break up this time of year.

This could be to due to the ‘turkey drop’ myth. You know, before thanksgiving, when everyone realizes that they’re going to have to spend all that quality romantic time with that special someone over the holidays… and that perhaps they’re not so keen.

More keen on being single under the work party mistletoe, right?

Well, here’s another way to ease the pain of breaking up, this time brought to you by Facebook.

Once you indicate on Facebook that you have ended a relationship, or are now ‘single’, you now have a bunch of options that will limit the posts you see of your ex. You can make it so they don’t see any of your posts, and vice versa, unless you specifically go to their page. You also have the  ability to edit your photos. Edit that crabface  out… or at least their tag.

All this without having to block or unfriend them, because you guys still want to be friends, right? Right? Guys?

Facebook’s new app Notify is here.

The new Notify App from Facebook has begun rolling out, so what it is exactly and should you get it?

The Notify App is designed to deliver news from publications and websites you care about, specific to you. For example, if you like to know local weather, plus any new Thrillist articles that are specific to your city, as well as news/scores from your football team, then this app has you covered.

Some examples of notifications, straight from the sauce:

-The Final Scores station from FOX Sports provides end-of-game summaries for your favorite teams.
-The Daily AM Forecast station from The Weather Channel sends a local weather forecast at the start of your day.
-Hot New Trailers from Fandango gets you the newest trailers for the hottest movies as they drop.
-Breaking News from CNN and Top Stories from Fox News deliver the day’s news headlines.
-The 10 Best Dressed station from Vogue is your weekly digest of the best-dressed celebs.
-Daily Meditation from Headspace brings bite-sized guided meditation exercises into your day.
-The Flashback station from Getty Images delivers iconic imagery from this day in history.

‘Stations’ are the sources of the notifications, and they are distributed into interests such as entertainment, news, games, weather, etc.

The updates will appear as notifications on your lock screen, so if you’re interested in reading more or getting more detail, you swipe and through to open the link in the app’s browser. If you’re busy at, we don’t know, work or something when all this news is happening, then you can save for reading later. The list of notifications will also be collated in a 24-hour in app feed.

You can also share whatever news it is that you’re interested in through social media, email, and all the usual sharing suspects.

Notify from Facebook is available today for iPhone.

Check it out below! Or check it out here. And download it right here if want to be notified! (See what we did there?)

Did you know you could do this Facebook trick?

Remember the good ‘ol days? You know the ones… the ones before the good current days?

If you’re having trouble remembering or just want a fresh face of blast from the past, Facebook have got you! Simple type in www.facebook.com/onthisday.

A feature they’ve been rolling out since the end of March, it’ll show you exactly what you were posting/checking in to/being photographed doing on this day on every year previous since the beginning of time(/beginning of Facebook).

You can also choose to subscribe to notifications so you’ll be alerted when you have memories to look back on.

Look! It’s you 9 years ago when you thought Facebook was just a weird thing that only your friends knew about! Wait.. what are you doing? Uh… you might want to take that down, bro. Just Sayin. And look! It’s you 2 years ago when you were having that party and everyone came and hey maybe you should have another party! And this day last year when you were so happy and in love.. good thing you’re still with whatsername.

Pretty cool and an excellent way to reminisce, but users beware, the past holds some tricky trapdoors amongst the good ‘ol day memories. The feature is still rolling out, so unfortunately it isn’t available to everyone yet.

Mark Zuckerberg cares about Ebola.

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Pricsilla Chan have given the Center for Disease Control Foundation a check for $25 MILLION dollars to help the fight against the spread of Ebola. Because Ebola be scary and is on the precipice of completely tearing apart and ruining parts of West Africa.

From the sauce direct:
“It has infected 8400 people so far, but it is spreading very quickly and projections suggest it could infect 1 million people or more over the next several months if not addressed,” he wrote. “We need to get Ebola under control in the near term so that it doesn’t spread further and become a long-term global health crisis that we end up fighting for decades at large scale, like HIV or polio.

“We believe our grant is the quickest way to empower the CDC and the experts in this field to prevent this outcome,” he continued. “Grants like this directly help the front-line responders in their heroic work. These people are on the ground setting up care centers, training local staff, identifying Ebola cases and much more.”

We, unlike other media, are not going to compare their $25 million gift to their current net worth or recent purchases, because these guys are being GOOD GUYS and any money you give to help others in need, no matter what, is not only admirable but amazing.

Rant over.

The donation will go to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Ebola response effort in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and in other spots in the world where Ebola is a threat.

If you want to give a donation, please head on over here – http://www.cdcfoundation.org/ –  then feel good about yourself for the rest of the day !

Facebook messenger to process payments?

SiliconValley have reported on some sneaky investigative work by Stanford computer science student Andrew Aude. He has discovered that Facebook messenger is now set up to process financial transactions between users.

The feature will function in a similar way to how we currently use the app to send photos with the added security of an in-app pin code. The  cards used can be added within the app or can be the card users already have on file with FaceBook ( i.e. for ads) The cards available currently are only Debit cards, it seems because they cost lower fees for transferring funds and are generally easier for customers to use.

There is no clue as of yet if Facebook will charge a fee for processing transections or if they will offer the feature for free (at least to begin with). There has been some recent backlash to the separation of the the FaceBook Mobile app and the FaceBook Messenger Mobile App that they may be seeking to rectify with a free service such as this. This will also allow them to compete in a whole new arena of peer-to-peer payments with companies such as Venmo and Square.

The guy deciding all of this is David Marcus, the new head of Messenger AND formerly the president of PayPal.We seem some kind of link there… Building up a payements processing feature within messenger could also build the acceptance as FB processing financial transactions, which could prove helpful, as Facebook is also working on a ‘Buy’ button for making eCommerce purchases straight from the News Feed.

Can you see yourself using FB to transfer funds to your Facebook friends or to process other financial transactions?

Facebook freeing the internet in Zambia

Some feel good news in the tech world today!

Internet.org, an organization founded in part by Facebook, has just launched an app allowing limited free internet to people in Zambia who are connected to the Airtel phone company.

In the interest of keeping a a channel of information open to those who would otherwise not be able to access it, Internet.org provides some basic internet to those for whom the data costs would otherwise be prohibitive.

Websites now accessible for free include AccuWeather, Wikipedia, job search sites as well as health information websites. Facebook is obviously included as well, making sure they get their daily dose of social networking and scrolling past other people’s politics and pictures of babies. All jokes aside, as much as people in western countries may go through their anti-social networking phases, there are those who would argue that social networking is pretty important as a free service to those who can’t afford it.

The service works as a standalone App on Android phones as well as being accessed through internet.org on iOS or the basic ‘feature’ phones that are popular in Zambia. If those using the app click outside one of the 13 predetermined services on the App, they will get a warning about data charges that apply.

What’s exciting is that according to those at Internet.org, Zambia currently only has about 15% internet penetration. With a population of 15 Million, the gift of free internet is a great one.

What’s greater is that the App is planned to spread to other countries in the future, making the world a little more connected. Time to find some new Zambian friends on Facebook?