Gadgetory

a portal called Dave this is portal and it's the first hardware product from Facebook it aims to take messenger video chats and make them feel more like conversations to call someone with portal I simply say hey portal called Dave or whatever the name isn't the person you're calling someone the interesting features right up front is no matter where I am in my room it has a thing called 2d posts and what it does is it reframe to pitch here so right now it's frame nice and focused on my head to shoulders but if I move over here it will be my whole body you can see the whole room so if I'm doing something like cooking or maybe I'm playing with toys or playing a Mike dog or cat you could see that happen and I'm all the way back here and the camera just knows where to frame me and Here I am again and his friend Mimi pretty cool and when there are multiple people in the frame you can prompt portal to focus in on a specific person with a feature called spotlight the portal comes in two different models a 10-inch version and a 15 inch one called the portal plus and they look a bit different on the outside the portal plus has a larger speaker and can rotate its screen 90 degrees between portrait and landscape now on the inside they are identical running the same processors and software keen on privacy Facebook design portal to encrypt data locally on the device this is admirable but the question remains will people trust portal security after the controversy of the Cambridge analytical scandal other ways portal protects your privacy are with a physical mute button on the top and with a camera cap to cover up your lens when you're not counting but some of the real fun parts of portal are additions that you can add during the video conversation there are snap chat like effects that turn you into a rabbit wrap show marks or that put a cat on your head you can also share music you're listening to on Spotify and Pandora the song is synchronized for both you and the person you're chatting with and one of the coolest features is aimed at families and it's called story time it has five interactive story books that you can read Facebook is working with publishers to add even more mr. wolf was looking for our little piggies Oh oh here he comes oh I'm mr. wolf I smell someone new in my neighborhood I want to get those piggies on top of all this when you're not making calls portal can display Facebook photo albums that you choose and parts of your newsfeed and there's also Amazon Alexa built right in all right this is the portal plus at 3:49 there's also the portal that's $1.99 you can bundle them together and save $100 you can pre-order starting October 8th on Facebook Amazon or Best Buy and these will start shipping at early November that's the portal