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Tuesday, October 09, 2018

Facebook Hatches a Portal

Not so much an assistant, but multi person video chat.  Still an incomplete idea, the review says, but with hints it can be enhanced from the hardware.   No attempts at skills yet, but basic music too.  Not quite sure why Facebook is attempting this,  but it does complete the experience, for those that like Facebook, and for those that need family chat, why not.   As the name suggests, a portal.

Facebook tries its hand at hardware with Portal
The teleconferencing device comes in 10 and 15 inch models
By Brian Heater @bheater in TechCrunch

Facebook Portal

Portal is not Facebook’s Echo Show. Call it a case of convergent evolution, wherein two companies arrived at similar looking products after approaching hardware from different angles. The problem Facebook sought to solve is one of face to face communication. It’s an attempt to remove the device from the act of video chatting.

That Facebook, Amazon and Google’s smart display partners all ended up at a similar place is no coincidence, of course. Like those smart displays, the home teleconferencing device is essentially a propped up tablet. With Portal, however, the system takes two distinct form factors.

There’s the standard Portal, which looks quite a bit like Lenovo’s recently released Google Assistant Smart Display, and the more compelling Portal Plus. That larger model, with a 15 inch display (1920 x 1080) brings to mind recent enterprise attempts at telepresence robotics. The base is stationary here, but the display orientation can be swiveled into landscape or portrait mode.  ,,, " 

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