Gadgetory

drones could be the future of same-day delivery I'm Bridget Carey and this is your cnet update what if you could buy something online and have it delivered to your door within 30 minutes amazon is working on doing just that with a service called amazon prime air once you place your order the item will be boxed up at the warehouse and picked up by a drone with eight propellers and in this perfect world the drone would fly off and land in front of your doorsteps dropping off your shoebox sized package it can handle up to five pounds of weight which covers about eighty-six percent of the items that amazon delivers the drone does this all on its own there is no human controlling this thing it's all automated with GPS coordinates and it would have to be delivered to a location within a 10-mile radius of the warehouse Amazon's chief executive Jeff Bezos said he doesn't expect this to actually take flight for several more years and he's hopeful that maybe he can happen in five years if the Federal Aviation Administration can approve rules for drone delivery there are many factors to be addressed before this happens like how do you keep it from landing on someone's head what if it hits a building or gets caught in power lines how does it avoid dropping your package off on the roof or in a tree and of course this does not help folks who live in an apartment or office building you don't want your package just abandoned on the sidewalk but when the FAA is ready to discuss rules and regulations on drone delivery you can bet amazon will be ready to lead the conversation but while amazon looks to the future facebook is tinkering with your past the social network confirmed to the blog AllThingsD ii that it is working on a newsfeed feature that lets you quickly pull up your old facebook posts so throwback thursday may be as easy as clicking a button to reflect on what happened a year ago people can do this now with an app called timehop it also pulls up old updates from other sites like twitter instagram flickr and Foursquare after spending spree of cyber monday comes giving Tuesday it's another marketing term made up for the season of shopping but this time it's about donating money to charitable causes and organizations if you haven't heard of it well it's only the second year of giving Tuesday and Google is raising awareness with a Google+ Hangout a thon with nonprofit organizations using video chat to explain their work and some celebrities will also be dropping by hangouts to encourage donations that's your tech news update but you can get more details at cnet com / update and be sure to follow along on Twitter from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey