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Facebook will soon let streamers charge for broadcasts
A bunch of livestreaming features are on the way to Facebook, Instagram and Portal.
Facebook Live and Amazon Prime Video are coming to Portal
Facebook has revealed a bunch of upcoming updates for its Portal devices. It's adding multiplayer augmented reality games and Instant Games this summer. You can play the likes of Words with Friends, Battleship and Yahtzee on the smart display. New AR effects will be available on Portal every month as well.
Facebook cuts its Portal smart display to $99 for Mother's Day
Mother's Day is less than a month away, and it seems Facebook is hoping you'll consider giving your Mom a Portal or Portal+ to keep in touch with you -- it's running a Mother's Day sale on the smart displays. Until May 12th, Portal will set you back $99 instead of $199. If you decide to pick up a pair of them (maybe, possibly one each for you and Mom), you'll get $200 off, as long at least one is the larger Portal+.
Facebook employees caught leaving five-star Amazon reviews for Portal
Facebook released its Portal and Portal+ smart displays two months ago, at the tail end of a scandal-ridden year in which data leaks and privacy incidents were abundant. So, the company faced a tough battle in convincing consumers to buy a smart display for their homes, no matter how well the camera tracking works. Still, Facebook does have some happy customers, judging by Portal's five-star reviews on Amazon. Or at least it seems that way until you take a closer look, and see that some of them were apparently left by Facebook employees.
Facebook’s confusion about its Portal camera is concerning
Facebook couldn't have picked a worse time to introduce Portal, a camera-equipped smart display designed to make video chatting in your home easier. And, if the rumors are true, the company is reportedly also preparing to launch a video chat camera for your TV, based on the same system as Portal. Not only does news of this hardware come at a time when when Facebook is under major scrutiny after suffering a massive data breach in September, which exposed private information of 29 million users, including usernames, birth date, gender, location, religion and the devices used to browse the site. But the most concerning part about Portal, is that Facebook's own executives don't seem to have a basic understanding of what types of data the company will be collecting or what it will be using it for.
Google Home Hub's best feature is not having a camera
Both Google and Facebook unveiled products for the growing "smart display" market this week. Facebook's Portal is meant to be the best way to make video calls; it also has Alexa built in, so it can do just about everything an Echo does as well. Meanwhile, Google's Home Hub can quickly answer questions and pull up info from services like YouTube, Google Maps, Calendar, Search and Photos. It also doubles as a command center for smart home devices and a pretty nice digital-photo frame. Essentially, it extends what the Google Assistant can already do by visually offering more information than you can get with voice alone -- similar to what Amazon already does with the Echo Show. But perhaps the most important feature of the Home Hub is what Google didn't include: a camera. That means video chat is off the table, and that's a design decision Google thinks will give it an edge over Amazon and Facebook.
