Gadgetory

at an event held at facebook headquarters CEO Mark Zuckerberg put an end to some persistent rumors today we're finally going to talk about that Facebook phone um or more accurately we're going to talk about how you can turn your Android phone into a great simple social device with its new product that's only available on certain Android phones the social network makes a grab at precious real estate on your mobile device the home screen is really the soul of your phone you look at it about a hundred times a day it sets the tone for your whole experience and we think that it should be deeply personal facebook home transforms your home screen even if your phone is locked into a slideshow of photos and status updates showing you your newsfeed without ever launching the facebook app if you're not a rabid facebook user then you might find that this experience kind of hijacks your phone and offers up a learning curve that you have to overcome in order to use it with another feature chat heads messaging also infiltrates your phone buttons with the sender's profile picture pop up no matter which app you're currently using just by tapping on this chat head it pops me into the conversation and think that's so cool and so special about this is that this is all happening right over the article I'm about to read and write over the app I'm using so no matter Facebook home isn't an operating system but it does change your phone enough to make you relearn what you know about using Android it still needs some work but if you want to get facebook home a shot here are five tips to help you navigate this new interface the Facebook home comes a new set of gestures you'll use to navigate the system let's start at the main screen the cover feed when you wake your phone up notifications will be stacked here you can swipe away a notification like this or if you have a bunch tap and hold one then swipe them all away chat heads are controlled with similar gestures by now you probably know you can move them around the screen but to get rid of a chat head tap and hold then drag it down to the X you can also do this for multiple chat heads now in the cover feed you'll notice that photos are cropped you never see the entire picture as you browse around to see the full crop of a photo just tap and hold it to make life easier facebook home combines your texts and your facebook messages into one central place here's how it works grab your profile pic and swipe left to get to messenger to send a new facebook message or an SMS tap the plus button as i type someone's name i have the option here to send them a facebook message but if i want to send a text i'll choose their name in this list down here if you're texting Facebook home will use whatever photo you upload it to their contact info on your phone in the chat head cover feat is great but when it's plastered all over your lockscreen it can be a little overkill thankfully there's an easy way to get your regular android lock screen back from home tap the Menu button hit settings and uncheck this option here exit that lock your phone and you're welcome you got your lock screen back in that same settings window there are a couple more things worth adjusting first know that you have the option here to show or hide the android status bar if you hide it you can still access it by swiping down from the top at any time but you won't always have a quick view of your phone status and the time most important though is this data use in image quality setting these options high medium and low let you control the image quality on the cover feed but it also determines the amount of data you use the high setting for example will pull more data refreshing the cover feed often and delivering high-quality photos so if you're worried about saving on data choose the medium or low option the best thing about facebook home is that it's not your operating system since it's a launcher you can enable and disable it whenever you want back in settings turn off facebook home and confirm now when you hit your phone's HOME button you'll get this warning basically your phone is asking you if you want to use the Facebook home interface or the regular Android one tap launcher the Android one hit always and Facebook home will disappear when you're ready to enable it again just launch facebook home but choose home as the option when you get this message here the most important thing to remember about facebook home is that it's brand new so as time goes on expect to see updates to this interface and hopefully some extra options for customizing it until then hit me up on twitter with any of your questions and check out how to sina com for more tips like this for cnet I'm Sharon Vaknin you Facebook you love it you hate it it's complicated but in spite of the wild popularity of Facebook I kind of feel bad for them aside from their disastrous IPO this company has released more dud products over the past few years than anyone I can think of I'm Donald Bell and today's show I'm here to refresh your memory with my list of the top five Facebook product flops features that set out to change the world but didn't at all starting things off at number five Facebook Lite now this was a stripped-down version of Facebook that was engineered to load more quickly for users on slow connections or slow hardware they tossed out the apps it toss out the games they be cluttered the whole interface oh and they also tossed out a bunch of those annoying flash based ads on the sidebar those are the crazy pre-ipo days of 2009 turns out that catering to poor people and serving less ads wasn't a project worth keeping around after less than a year Facebook Lite got switched off at number 4 Facebook questions with 1 billion users at your disposal why not put them to work solving life's great questions launched in 2010 and killed off in 2012 Facebook questions gave users a way to pull their friends for questions like where it's the best pizza in portland ore which planet eh sequel is the best or where the hell did Facebook questions go it's supposed to be a fatal blow to yahoo answers but instead of just kind of withered away at number 3 the ticker in 2011 Facebook that a major overhaul their news feed and gave us a terrifying and very annoying little window onto all of our friends likes and shares and comments it was like peering into the naked soul of Facebook and seeing its neuroses for what it really was and people hated that thing so Facebook quickly saw the error of their ways and gave us a way to hide it please hide it do yourself a favor awful coming in at number two Facebook deals oh this is a time when Mark Zuckerberg had the huevos to take on groupon and livingsocial I have to admit it kind of seemed like a good idea who better than Facebook to know where you live what you like and where you like to travel but maybe it was a little too perfect a little too perfect not to be creepy after four months Google deals got slashed now before we get to number one let's stop picking on Facebook for a minute you know another internet giant makes a ton of mistakes Google here are my favorite five Google flops all of which are really just as embarrassing as anything Facebook is done that said at least google has that whole don't be evil mission statement thing Facebook could have used that to help prevent them from thinking up number one beacon hey here's an idea let's make it so that Facebook can keep track of all the sites you browse outside of Facebook so that I can share that information with all of your friends what could go wrong not creepy at all the idea was such an affront to privacy that resulted in the class action lawsuit and even Mark Zuckerberg later admitted it was a mistake which is not to say that he won't try it again so there you have it five ideas launched by the king of social networks that will end up right in the gutter more top fives like this head over to top five cnet com Donald Bell thanks for watching today we began rolling out some new controls to make it simpler for you to control what you share on Facebook these changes are a direct result of the feedback many of you have shared with us about our recent product launches I wanted to share some of my thoughts with you about how Facebook is evolved and how what we're doing now gives you more control when I started Facebook it was built around a few simple ideas people want to share and stay connected with their friends and the people around them when people have control over what they share they're comfortable sharing more when people share more the world becomes more open and connected and in a more open world many of the biggest problems we face together will become easier to solve a lot has changed on Facebook since then but these core principles remain true today we started Facebook in a college dorm more than six years ago and over time Facebook has become less about colleges and more about sharing lots of content with different groups of people along the way we needed new privacy controls and features to make that possible a little more than a year ago we began work on a big set of changes to have sharing and privacy work on Facebook we recognize that we've changed a lot of things so we've spent a lot of time reviewing your feedback so we could address your concerns the number one thing we've heard is that there just needs to be simpler ways to control your information we agree so today we started rolling out three new things to address this first we built one simple master control that you can use to set who can see all of the content you share on Facebook and one click you can set all the content that you've ever posted to everyone friends of your friends or just your friends no need to go through multiple settings anymore once you set the master control it will apply to all new products through release going forward and if you prefer more granular controls for specific types of content you can still use those settings we haven't removed anything in this update we've just added a simple master switch to control all of your content at once second we've reduced the amount of information that has to be visible to everyone in oh to use Facebook you no longer have to have your friends and your pages open to everyone you can set those fields to be visible to whoever you want third we've made it simple to control whether applications and websites can access any of your information many people enjoy playing games and using applications but for those of you that don't we've added the ability to turn off platform applications completely so none of your information is ever accessible to applications or websites we've also simplified the control for turning off instant personalization on our partner sites you can read more details about my thoughts on this topic in a blog post that I wrote today most importantly though please check out the new privacy page yourself when it launches for you note that the new controls will be going live gradually so you may not see them right away when you do play around and find the settings that feel right for you on a personal note I just turned 26 a few days ago as I look back to when I started Facebook I'm amazed at how its evolved and have so many of you are using it to stay connected all around the world we've been through a lot of changes together and we'll keep learning and we'll keep working hard to build the best service for you and for the world so I just want to say thanks you've all made facebook what it is today at an event held at facebook headquarters CEO mark zuckerberg put an end to some persistent rumors today we're finally going to talk about that Facebook phone um or more accurately we're going to talk about how you can turn your Android phone into a great simple social device with its new product that's only available on certain Android phones the social network makes a grab at precious real estate on your mobile device the home screen is really the soul of your phone you look at it about a hundred times a day it sets the tone for your whole experience and we think that it should be deeply personal facebook home transforms your home screen even if your phone is locked into a slideshow of photos and status updates showing you your newsfeed without ever launched the facebook app if you're not a rabid Facebook user then you might find that this experience kind of hijacks your phone and offers up a learning curve that you have to overcome in order to use it with another feature chat heads messaging also infiltrates your phone buttons with the sender's profile picture pop-up no matter which app you're currently using just by tapping on this chat head it pops me into the conversation and think that's so cool and so special about this is that this is all happening right over the article I'm about to read and write over the app I'm using so no matter what you're doing you can just quickly pop into these conversations a phone was unveiled but Facebook isn't jumping into hardware the new HTC first will be pre-loaded with Facebook home this is not a fancy phone it doesn't have whistles and bells it's not particularly pretty to see it doesn't have fancy accents or anything like that I think it's going to be a really tough sell the only nice thing is the price the phone will run a hundred dollars but Facebook addicts might consider the device priceless in San Francisco I'm Sumi das cnet.com for CBS News Facebook home isn't an operating system but it does change your phone enough to make you relearn what you know about using Android it still needs some work but if you want to get facebook home a shot here are five tips to help you navigate this new interface the Facebook home comes a new set of gestures you'll use to navigate the system let's start at the main screen the cover feed when you wake your phone up notifications will be stacked here you can swipe away a notification like this or if you have a bunch tap and hold one then swipe them all away chat heads are controlled with similar gestures by now you probably know you can move them around the screen but to get rid of a chat head tap and hold then drag it down to the X you can also do this for multiple chat heads now in the cover feed you'll notice that photos are cropped you never see the entire picture as you browse around to see the full crop of a photo just tap and hold it to make life easier facebook home combines your texts and your facebook messages into one central place here's how it works grab your profile pic and swipe left to get to messenger to send a new facebook message or an SMS tap the plus button as i type someone's name i have the option here to send them a facebook message but if i want to send a text i'll choose their name in this list down here if you're texting Facebook home will use whatever photo you uploaded to their contact info on your phone in the chat head cover feat is great but when it's plastered all over your lockscreen it can be a little overkill thankfully there's an easy way to get your regular android lock screen back from home tap the Menu button hit settings and uncheck this option here exit that lock your phone and you're welcome you got your lock screen back in that same settings window there are a couple more things worth adjusting first know that you have the option here to show or hide the android status bar if you hide it you can still access it by swiping down from the top at anytime but you won't always have a quick view of your phone status and the time most important though is this data use in image quality setting these options high medium and low let you control the image quality on the cover feed but it also determines the amount of data you use the high setting for example will pull more data refreshing the cover feed often and delivering high-quality photos so if you're worried about saving on data choose the medium or low option the best thing about facebook home is that it's not your operating system since it's a launcher you can enable and disable it whenever you want back in settings turn off facebook home and confirm now when you hit your phone's HOME button you'll get this warning basically your phone is asking you if you want to use the Facebook home interface or the regular Android one tap launcher the Android one hit always and Facebook home will disappear when you're ready to enable it again just launch facebook home but choose home as the option when you get this message here the most important thing to remember about facebook home is that it's brand new so as time goes on expect to see updates to this interface and hopefully some extra options for customizing it until then hit me up on twitter with any of your questions and check out how to sina com for more tips like this for cnet I'm Sharon Vaknin Facebook you love it you hate it it's complicated but in spite of the wild popularity of Facebook I kind of feel bad for them aside from their disastrous IPO this company has released more dud products over the past few years than anyone I can think of I'm Donald Bell and today's show I'm here to refresh your memory with my list of the top five Facebook product flops features that set out to change the world but didn't at all starting things off at number five Facebook Lite now this was a stripped-down version of Facebook that was engineered to load more quickly for users on slow connections or slow hardware they tossed out the apps they toss out the games they decluttered the whole interface oh and they also tossed out a bunch of those annoying flash based ads on the sidebar those are the crazy pre-ipo days of 2009 turns out that catering to poor people and serving less ads wasn't a project worth keeping around after less than a year Facebook Lite got switched off at number 4 Facebook questions with 1 billion users at your disposal why not put them to work solving life's great questions launched in 2010 and killed off in 2012 Facebook questions gave users a way to pull their friends for questions like where it's the best pizza in portland ore which plan of the Apes equal is the best or where the hell did Facebook questions go it's supposed to be a fatal blow to yahoo answers but instead of just kind of withered away at number 3 the ticker in 2011 Facebook did a major overhaul their news feed and gave us a terrifying and very annoying little window onto all of our friends likes and shares and comments it was like peering into the naked soul of Facebook and seeing its neuroses for what it really was and people hated that thing so Facebook quickly saw the error of their ways and gave us a way to hide it please hide it do yourself a favor awful coming in at number 2 facebook deals oh this is a time when Mark Zuckerberg had the huevos to take on groupon and livingsocial I have to admit kind of seemed like a good idea who better than Facebook to know where you live what you like and where you like and causes that move the world forward in a significant way it's a place to be inspired by the boundaries that we thought existed but don't it's a place for laughter I love this slide to enjoy things the simple things in life and it's a place for love it's our collective belief that the world is better off captured and shared more permanently that's what Instagram is you see Instagram is no single thing it's a collection of ideas and inspiration best captured and share it and that's why I to us our mission is to capture and share the world's moments and we live that every single day we come to work because we believe by doing that we make the world a better place it's really important to us we've been at this now for a little over two and a half years and it's come a long way so right now I'd like to tell you a little bit about how far it's come first sixteen billion photos have been shared on instagram that's a lot of pictures of coffee and there's some other stuff too we have an active and engaged community with over a billion likes every single day that's billion with a be tons of engagement happening every single day across accounts like athletes aspiring chefs actors it's where people come together to engage with each other it's not just about photos it's about coming together and staying connected and now 130 million people use Instagram every single month that's amazing growth for service that's only been around for a couple of years and what's inspiring about this is that these are people just like you and me coming together to share the world in real time this is really significant so I've talked to you about what Instagram is where we were where we are but now we should discuss where we're going if we're about capturing and sharing the world's moments what's next what do we work on we've taken photos and made them beautiful we've connected people from all different countries around the world all different cultures what do we work on next I'm going to tell you a story and that story is sep tember of 2010 mike my co-founder and i were sitting in front of a white board pondering what's next to entrepreneurs not really sure knowing what to do what's next we were working on a small location sharing app called bourbon and as part of bourbon you could share your location and the two parts of sharing our location we're posting a photo and posting a video we decided that we needed to do something new so we created Instagram out of bourbon the one part that we brought was photos but we left video on the side why is that because we said the three things we want to be really good at our speed simplicity and beauty and i'll tell you at the time two years ago with the devices as they were speed simplicity and beauty we're definitely possible with photos but it was really hard with video today that all changes and instagram is going to be at the center of it i'd like to introduce video on instagram I'm really excited about this announcement not because of how hard the teams worked yes that's important not because of how awesome this product is yes that's important but because 130 million people day one are going to have access to video in the way that they have access to pictures so I want to talk to you about three things we focused on before actually showing you the product first is simplicity simplicity really matters in these products okay video is a complex medium we're used to seeing complex editing interfaces it's hard to edit it's hard to manage it's hard to upload so if it's going to work inside of Instagram that everyone knows for its simplicity it's got to be perfect I'm so proud of our team for working on an awesome product that gets there the second part is it wouldn't be Instagram without being beautiful that is it wouldn't be Instagram without allowing you to produce beautiful content we need to do to video what we did to photos and it's got to fit in I've got some really special stuff in store to show you the last part and I touched on this briefly before and the way that makes Instagram so different from anything else in the world is the community day 1 130 million people with access to recording the world's moments as they happen in real time that's staggering so let's take a look you'll notice Instagram hasn't changed we have our feed here I'm going to walk through a demo now what we've done is make Instagram better so first you tap on the capture button in the middle of the tab bar and let's say we were at blue bottle coffee in the city and we wanted to record a moment there now what you'll notice is it's the same screen but now you've got a video icon in the bottom right everyone's trying to see I love it we'll move that up next time so you tap the video icon and all of a sudden you go into video mode slide over you've got a separate capture button all you have to do is hold down the button to start recording video so let's do that so let's say we're at blue bottle coffee they're using a Japanese siphon machine to make some really beautiful coffee but I'll tell you you can capture a lot in 15 seconds which is what we did 15 seconds of video it's the right balance between not too short that constrains your creativity and not too long where you end up having to wait a lot of time for something to download it's 15 seconds of beautiful video that you can record very easily but not all the time can you fit a single scene into 15 seconds without going to multiple clips and we've heard loud and clear from the community that's what they want so let's go back and actually record our first clip so we're recording our first clip here of the bris tableau bottle now we want to add some color of pulling a shot of espresso this is making me thirsty so we see the next shot of pulling some espresso and then finally let's see the Bristol pouring a beautiful latte so here we are pouring the beautiful latte and I'm recording it by holding down that button but you know what his hands in the way and that's not good so what we've allowed you to do is very simply get rid of that last clip or frankly get rid of any clip all we got to do is touch the little delete button in the bottom left it highlights little bit last clip and deletes it so let's rerecord that last one to get a better collage here we are with the beautiful finished latte and let's just focus on the latte itself now we're done recording and this is a great video that I want to share with my friends so I click Next and this is where it gets exciting as of today 13 brand-new custom filters designed for video only what we realized very early on is that the filters we had for photos were great for photos they really make her photos look beautiful but we needed something new for video we wanted to evolve so we partnered with an artist who specializes in video filters and we created 13 brand-new gorgeous filters to turn your video into something beautiful this is really special so let's show you as we go through you can select from any one of the filters all new names we choose one and then all of a sudden we can see the effect and decide what we want to do based on the playback I'm scrolling through here and I'm trying to decide what looks best and you know what the Vesper looks awesome I really like the look of this latte let's just go with that so I'm going to click Next one other innovation that happened here and I want to talk to you about a problem with mobile video is that when you see a mobile video and a feed often the frame you see is the first frame of the video we think that's silly it should be the frame you want to show your friends because if I see this frame and a feed I might not want to tap and watch but as we scroll through we can decide you know what my friends are going to be way more excited about watching this video if they get to see the really cool latte so when I click Next you'll see the preview this is what people are going to see in the feed it's a beautiful cover frame that I've decided and it's a little touch it's an Instagram touch these are the little details that make all the difference so as per normal I can fill out my my caption that I want my friends to see hashtags work just the same way this is the same Instagram we all know and love but it moves you can add to a photo map you can name your location or share it to your favorite social network it's as simple as that and with that we upload in the background and before you know it it's available for all your friends to see 130 million people everywhere today are going to be working on this taking videos of everyday moments and sharing them with their friends that's really powerful so let's go through the feed and take a look for a second about what it might look like to see a video and feed you'll notice this is the Instagram we all know and love or scrolling through and we come upon a video the video is marked by an icon in the top right my friend Josh was at a beach this weekend and took a really beautiful video with a filter of some surfers going into the water this is what we love and expect from Instagram is just beautiful content in the feed and then we're going to scroll down here and we see Josh's dog at the beach it's a cute everyone thinks it's cute it is really cute and actually this is the moon filter aptly named after the dog moon we love naming our filters so it plays once it doesn't loop it doesn't get in the way it fits right into Instagram all the details are right as you scroll down and you lift up your finger it starts playing immediately we've worked a ton on making it fast simple and beautiful I'm really excited about this product and I think the world is going to be as well so to recap 15 seconds a beautiful video clip by clip 13 custom designed filters that make your videos gorgeous what we did to photos we just did to video select a cover frame to make sure that everyone in the world can see what you're trying to show them and finally it shows up on your profile just like photos it's as easy and simple as that and day one Android as well this means that all of our users can access Instagram and it's on the web so no more pointing people at the mobile app to see or videos you can simply show them your profile on the web and it's easy to access there as well so that's video on Instagram everything we know and love about Instagram but it moves and you know had we gotten this far my team all of us here would be really proud it would have been really exciting because everyone has the power of video in their hands but I don't think we wanted to give up just there I have some really cool stuff to show you filters certainly help make your videos more beautiful but we needed to go an extra step how many of us take videos on our camera and think about well I remember that beautiful sunset or I remember that beautiful time with my friends but you know what's all shaky and wobbly and doesn't look that great what if you could take video just like the pros what if you could produce a video that you were really proud of let's show you what i mean by video that we wouldn't be proud of this is a meaningful video we're at the park you know taking videos of our kids this is the type of video we would all take we're sitting there and we're trying to keep track of a kid on a bike and it's moving but you see it's wobbling all over the place that's not what we want this is what we all have grown to expect from video and that's a sad state of affairs why because we can do better and we did better we teamed up with a handful of the world's leading video scientists and created something really awesome we call it cinema cinematic stabilization for your videos that will change video forever let me show you what I mean this is us recording our video in the park this is the normal video and this is cinema gorgeous stabilized video for your iphone go this is the original and this is with Instagram it's completely mind-blowing when you're running chasing your kid trying to get a beautiful video now you have the power of cinema in your pocket this changes everything and I'm excited to bring you cinema I'm really proud of this team because we've gone above and beyond to bring you products that you're going to love let's recap today video on Instagram available for iOS and Android 15 seconds of beautiful video 13 custom filters select a cover frame to show the world what you recorded and groundbreaking technology for video the changes video for ever and makes your video beautiful cinema so now I'd like to go to a beautiful video that we actually compiled with footage from our community because it really is all about the community so let's roll that video you so thanks to everyone on the live stream for watching we can't see we can't wait to see what videos every one produces we're really excited about this announcement and thank you so much thank you so much