Year: 2019

Enterprise search tools have always suffered from the success of Google. Users wanted to find the content they needed internally in the same way they found it on the web. Enterprise search has never been able to meet those lofty expectations, but today Salesforce announced Einstein Search, an AI-powered search tool for Salesforce users that is designed to point them to the exact information they are looking for.

Will Breetz, VP of product management at Salesforce says that enterprise search has suffered over the years for a variety of reasons. “Enterprise search has gotten a bad rap, but deservedly so. Part of that is because in many ways it is more difficult than consumer search, and there’s a lot of headwinds,” Breetz explained.

To solve these issues, the company decided to put the power of its Einstein artificial intelligence engine to bear on the problem. For starters, it might not know the popularity of a given topic like Google, but it can learn the behaviors of an individual and deliver the right answer based on a person’s profile including geography and past activity to deliver a more meaningful answer.

Next, it allows you to enter natural language search phrasing to find the exact information you need, and the search tool understands and delivers the results. For instance, you could enter, “my open opportunities in Boston” and using natural language understanding, the tool can translate that into the exact set of results you are looking for –your open opportunities in Boston. You could use conventional search to click a series of check boxes to narrow the list of results to only Boston, but this is faster and more efficient.

Finally, based on what the intelligence engine knows about you, and on your search parameters, it can predict the most likely actions you want to take and provide quick action buttons in the results to help you do that, reducing the time to action. It may not seem like much, but each reduced workflow adds up throughout a day, and the idea is to anticipate your requirements and help you get your work done more quickly.

Salesforce appears to have flipped the enterprise search problem. Instead of having a limited set of data being a handicap for enterprise search, it is taking advantage of that, and applying AI to help deliver more meaningful results. It’s for a limited set of findings for now such as accounts, contacts and opportunities, but the company plans to additional options over time.

India’s government has announced an immediate ban on e-cigarettes — citing youth-focused public health concerns.

In a news statement following a cabinet meeting today finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the ban covers production, manufacturing, import, export, transport, sale, distribution, storage and advertising of e-cigarettes.

Sitharaman suggested India’s youth are viewing e-cigarettes as a “style statement”, implying it’s encouraging them to get hooked on nicotine — whereas she noted that companies behind the vaping trend have pitched their products as a way to ween existing smokers off cigarettes.

“This decision is taken keeping in mind the impact that [e-cigarettes are] having on the youth of today,” she said of the ban order. “The data that we have largely is derived from the US’ experience and it the US the latest stats that I have before me states that there has been a 77.8% growth among school students who are at the 10th and 12th level.”

She also pointed to “surprising” growth in e-cigarette use among US middle school students — up 48.5%, per stats she cited. 

India has some 106M adult smokers, making it a major market for cigarette companies of all stripes. But with the e-cigarette ban, vaping startups like Juul are set to be shut out entirely — even as traditional tobacco giants are allowed to continue to operate.

According to the World Health Organization the use of tobacco in Indian, which includes both smoked and smokeless products, kills close to 1M people per year.

The ban on e-cigarettes will need formal approval when India’s parliament returns this fall, though this step is typically considered a formality.

Penalties for breaching the ban order include up to one year in jail and a fine of 100,000 rupees ($1,405) for first-time offenders, per Reuters. Repeat violation risks up to three years and a penalty of up to 500,000 rupees. It’s not clear whether users of e-cigarettes will risk any penalties for the act of vaping itself.

India’s ban comes at a time when the US is also preparing to tighten regulation in response to concerns around youth vaping. This month the Trump administration said it’s working on a compliance policy for flavored e-cigarettes that are especially appealing to children.

The US’ CDC public health agency also recently warned against using e-cigarettes — as it investigates a lung condition associated with vaping, following hundreds of cases and a suspected death in August.

Amazon is making it easier for customers to pay with cash for their online purchases. The retailer today announced the U.S. arrival of Amazon PayCode, a new checkout option that will allow online shoppers to pay for Amazon.com purchases at one of 15,000 Western Union locations. Separately from this, Amazon said that its Amazon Cash service, which lets you load cash into an Amazon account, is now offered at over 100,000 cash-loading locations across the U.S.

Prior to today, PayCode was available in 19 countries around the world, including emerging markets where paying with cash is more common and bank account penetration is lower than in the U.S. or Europe.

The service itself launched earlier this year in partnership with Western Union, and was initially available in 10 markets: Chile, Colombia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Peru, Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand. It has since expanded to Barbados, Costa Rica, Federated States of Micronesia, Kazakhstan, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Palau, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uruguay.

Instead of using a bank card to pay for online purchases, shoppers can instead choose the PayCode option at checkout on Amazon.com. They then receive a QR code they could take to a Western Union to pay for the items they wanted to buy.

At launch, Amazon said PayCode customers had 48 hours to make that payment. With its U.S. launch, that time frame narrows to 24 hours. This change is due to shorter delivery windows for U.S. customers versus cross-border customers, Amazon says, and the impact to the company’s delivery promises.

While the U.S. is a more developed market and less in need of supporting cash-based payments, cash still has a big foothold here. Amazon, citing data from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, noted that 39% of in-person payments continue to be made using cash, for example.

In the past, Amazon has addressed the un-banked (or under-banked) U.S. consumer through the Amazon Cash service. This lets shoppers load up funds on their Amazon account at places like CVS, Rite Aid, GameStop, and 7-Eleven, as well as, now, Western Union.

PayCode may be a more convenient option, as it allows you to shop first, then pay — not vice versa. Plus, Amazon notes that 80% of Americans live within 5 miles of a participating Western Union.

“We’re constantly innovating to improve the shopping experience on behalf of our customers, and are proud to expand Amazon Paycode to customers in the U.S.,” said Ben Volk, Director, Payments at Amazon, in a statement. “Customers have told us they love the convenience of paying in cash. Together with Western Union, we’re able to offer customers more shopping choices, enabling them to pay for their online purchases in a way that is convenient for them,” he added.

Cash payments are only one way Amazon is reaching a different class of online shopper.

It also in 2017 launched a low-cost version of its membership program Prime for customers on government assistance, and this year joined a USDA pilot program that lets SNAP (food stamp) recipients shop for groceries online.

The general thinking is that online shopping is no longer a luxury — it’s a system that can even benefit budget shoppers. People who have access to shop online may be able to find better deals than available at brick-and-mortar stores. In the case of Amazon Cash or now, Amazon PayCode, they may be able to eliminate multiple trips to different retailers to instead place a single Amazon.com order — saving themselves both time and gas money.

“As one of the world’s largest digital and physical money movers, we’re innovating our service to give customers more access and choice,” said Khalid Fellahi, President, Consumer Money Transfer for Western Union, in a statement. “We’re embracing the complexity of a world where cash and digital payments are likely to coexist far into the future. We are providing easy solutions for customers who want access to the convenience of online shopping but prefer to pay in-person.”

Amazon PayCode will roll out to U.S. shoppers over the next few weeks.

In cities across Russia, large boxes in locked rooms are directly connected to the networks of some of the country’s largest phone and internet companies.

These unsuspecting boxes, some the size of a washing machine, house equipment that gives the Russian security services access to the calls and messages of millions of citizens. This government surveillance system remains largely shrouded in secrecy, even though phone and web companies operating in Russia are forced by law to install these large devices on their networks.

But documents seen by TechCrunch offer new insight into the scope and scale of the Russian surveillance system — known as SORM (Russian: COPM) — and how Russian authorities gain access to the calls, messages and data of customers of the country’s largest phone provider, Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) .

The documents were found on an unprotected backup drive owned by an employee of Nokia Networks (formerly Nokia Siemens Networks), which through a decade-long relationship maintains and upgrades MTS’s network — and ensures its compliance with SORM.

Chris Vickery, director of cyber risk research at security firm UpGuard, found the exposed files and reported the security lapse to Nokia. In a report out Wednesday, UpGuard said Nokia secured the exposed drive four days later.

“A current employee connected a USB drive that contained old work documents to his home computer,” said Nokia spokesperson Katja Antila in a statement. “Due to a configuration mistake, his PC and the USB drive connected to it was accessible from the internet without authentication.”

“After this came to our attention, we contacted the employee and the machine was disconnected and brought to Nokia,” the spokesperson said.

Nokia said its investigation is ongoing.

‘Lawful intercept’

The exposed data — close to 2 terabytes in size — contain mostly internal Nokia files.

But a portion of the documents seen by TechCrunch reveals Nokia’s involvement in providing “lawful intercept” capabilities to phone and internet providers, which Russia mandates by law.

SORM, an acronym for “system for operative investigative activities,” was first developed in 1995 as a lawful intercept system to allow the Federal Security Services (FSB, formerly the KGB) to access telecoms data, including call logs and content of Russians. Changes to the law over the last decade saw the government’s surveillance powers expand to internet providers and web companies, which were compelled to install SORM equipment to allow the interception of web traffic and emails. Tech companies, including messaging apps like Telegram, also have to comply with the law. The state internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, has fined several companies for not installing SORM equipment.

Since the system’s expansion in recent years, several government agencies and police departments can now access citizens’ private data with SORM.

Most countries, including the U.S. and the U.K., have laws to force telecom operators to install lawful intercept equipment so security services can access phone records in compliance with local laws. That’s enabled an entirely new industry of tech companies, primarily network equipment providers like Nokia, to build and install technologies on telecom networks that facilitate lawful intercepts.

Alexander Isavnin, an expert at Roskomsvoboda and the Internet Protection Society, told TechCrunch that work related to SORM, however, is “classified” and requires engineers to obtain special certifications for work. He added that it’s not uncommon for the FSB to demand telecom and internet companies buy and use SORM equipment from a pre-approved company of its choosing.

The documents show that between 2016 and 2017, Nokia planned and proposed changes to MTS’s network as part of the telecom giant’s “modernization” effort.

Nokia planned to improve a number of local MTS-owned phone exchanges in several Russian cities — including Belgorod, Kursk and Voronezh — to comply with the latest changes to the country’s surveillance laws.

TechCrunch reviewed the documents, which included several floor plans and network diagrams for the local exchanges. The documents also show that the installed SORM device on each phone network has direct access to the data that passes through each phone exchange, including calls, messages and data.

The plans contain the physical address — including floor number — of each phone exchange, as well as the location of each locked room with SORM equipment in large bold red font, labeled “COPM.” One document was titled “COPM equipment installation [at] MTS’ mobile switching center,” a core function for handling calls on a cell network.

One photo showed the inside of one of the SORM rooms, containing the sealed box containing intercept equipment with the letters “COPM” in large font on the metal cabinet next to an air-conditioning unit to keep the equipment cool.

Nokia says it provides — and its engineers install — the “port” in the network to allow lawful intercept equipment to plug in and intercept data pursuant to a court order, but denied storing, analyzing or processing intercepted data.

That’s where other companies come into play. Russian lawful intercept equipment maker Malvin Systems provides SORM-compatible technology that sits on top of the “port” created by Nokia. That compatible technology allows the collection and storage of citizens’ data.

“As it is a standard requirement for lawful interception in Russia and SORM providers must be approved by the appropriate authorities, we work with other companies to enable SORM capabilities in the networks that we provide,” said Nokia’s spokesperson, who confirmed Malvin as one of those companies.

Nokia’s logo was on Malvin’s website at the time of writing. A representative for Malvin did not return a request for comment.

Another set of documents shows that the “modernized” SORM capabilities on MTS’s network also allows the government access to the telecom’s home location register (HLR) database, which contains records on each subscriber allowed to use the cell network, including their international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) and SIM card details.

The documents also make reference to Signalling System 7 (SS7), a protocol critical to allowing cell networks to establish and route calls and text messages. The protocol has widely been shown not to be secure and has led to hacking.

MTS spokesperson Elena Kokhanovskaya did not respond to several emails requesting comment.

‘Bulk wiretapping’

Lawful intercept, as its name suggests, allows a government to lawfully acquire data for investigations and countering terrorism.

But as much as it’s recognized that it’s necessary and obligatory in most Western countries — including the U.S. — some have expressed concern at how Russia rolled out and interprets its lawful intercept powers.

Russia has long faced allegations of human rights abuses. In recent years, the Kremlin has cracked down on companies that don’t store citizens’ data within its borders — in some cases actively blocking Western companies like LinkedIn for failing to comply. The country also has limited freedom of speech, expression and dissidents, and activists are often arrested for speaking out.

“The companies will always say that with lawful interception, they’re complying with the rule of law,” said Adrian Shahbaz, research director for technology and democracy at Freedom House, a civil liberties and rights watchdog. “But it’s clear when you look at how Russian authorities are using this type of apparatus that it goes far beyond what is normal in a democratic society.”

For Nokia’s part, it says its lawful intercept technology allows telecom companies — like MTS — to “respond to interception requests on targeted individuals received from the legal authority through functionality in our solutions.”

But critics say Russia’s surveillance program is flawed and puts citizens at risk.

Isavnin, who reviewed and translated some of the files TechCrunch has seen, said Russia’s view of lawful intercept goes far beyond other Western nations with similar laws. He described SORM as “bulk wiretapping.”

He said in the U.S., the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) requires a company to verify the validity of a wiretap order. “In Russia, the operator installs it and have no control over what is being wiretapped,” he said. The law states that the telecom operation is “not able to determine what data is being wiretapped,” he said.

“Only the FSB knows what they collect,” he said. “There is no third-party scrutiny.

Nokia denied wrongdoing, and said it is “committed” to supporting human rights.

Nokia chief marketing officer David French told TechCrunch in a call that Nokia uses a list of countries that are considered “high-risk” on human rights before it sells equipment that could be used for surveillance.

“When we see a match between a technology that we think has potential risk and a country that has potential risk, we have a process where we review it internally and decide to go forward with the sale,” said French.

When pressed, French declined to say whether Russia was on that list. He added that any equipment that Nokia provides to MTS is covered under non-disclosure agreements.

A spokesperson for the Russian consulate in New York could not be reached by phone prior to publication.

This latest security lapse is the second involving SORM in recent months. In August, a developer found thousands of names, numbers, addresses and geolocations said to have leaked from SORM devices. Using open-source tools, Russian developer Leonid Evdokimov found dozens of “suspicious packet sniffers” in the networks of several Russian internet providers.

It took more than a year for the internet providers to patch those systems.

Ingrid Lunden contributed translations and reporting.

---

Got a tip? You can send tips securely over Signal and WhatsApp to +1 646-755-8849. You can also send PGP email with the fingerprint: 4D0E 92F2 E36A EC51 DAAE 5D97 CB8C 15FA EB6C EEA5.

Sonos has released their first ever portable speaker with a built-in battery: The $399 Sonos Move, which starts shipping to customers on September 24. After spending a few days with the Move, I can confidently say that it offers everything that’s great about the Sonos wireless audio system, but with all the added advantages of a speaker you can freely move around the house – or take with you on the road.

Size and sound

The Sonos Move is not a small speaker – it’s about 6.61 lbs, and nearly 10-inches tall by 6.3 inches wide and just under 5-inches deep. If you were maybe expecting it to be around the size of the Sonos One, you’re in for a shock because it’s quite a bit bigger, as you can see from the photo below.

Nor is the Sonos Move just a Sonos One stacked on a big battery and wrapped in a new exterior shell – the company tells me it’s a brand new design in terms of the internals, too. The company set about designing a different speaker because the Move will suit different uses vs. the One, since it’s designed to be used in all environments, including outside in open air.

The result is a speaker that can get a bit boomier than the Sonos One, with deeper lows that seem to anticipate it having to compete with a lot more ambient noise. The sound profile is also helped by a downward-firing tweeter which is used to create a wide sound stage for the Move, which in practice means it does a very good job of evenly blasting music at a spread out group at, say, a picnic or a camp fire.

Indoors and out, the Sonos Move provides the kind of quality audio you can expect from any Sonos device, and it seems nearly equally impressive on both Wifi and Bluetooth modes in my testing, though Wifi does seem to have the edge in terms of quality. You can also pair two of the Move together for true stereo sound, thought since I only had one review device on hand I wasn’t able to personally test this out.

Wireless and weather-resistance

The Move’s highlight feature is its ability to move around and operate on battery power, and that’s why it offers two different connection modes. You can use it as a standard Sonos Wifi speaker, connecting it to your Sonos account and having it show up in your Sonos app the same as any other speakers made by the company, which you can group and control as usual.

In Bluetooth mode, you pair it just like you would any Bluetooth speaker, directly to the device from which you want to play music. A button on the back switches modes, and the first time you switch to Bluetooth the Move will automatically enter pairing mode, making it super easy to connect your phone. I was set up on Bluetooth within just a couple of minutes.

A convenient built-in handle is located on the back of the Move just above the pair, power and Sonos system connect buttons. It’s one of the highlights of the design, and since it’s part of the exterior shell, it should be rock solid in terms of durability. Overall, the device feels like it’s incredibly sturdily built, also, and Sonos advertises it as weather and shock-resistant speaker that isn’t afraid to take a tumble or handle a little light rain.

In Bluetooth mode, you won’t have access to either Alexa or Google Assistant, even if you’ve set those up on the Move to work with your home system. Nor will it work in a stereo pair with another Sonos if you’d done that, or show up in the Sonos app for multi-room control. But at home, you can just use the Wifi mode as you move it around the house or to the backyard and still take advantage of all those. While you’re out and about, you’re much more likely to just want a basic wireless speaker anyway, so not having access to these features on Bluetooth really doesn’t have any impact on usability.

During my testing, wireless connectivity was solid on both Wifi and Bluetooth modes, with no dropouts or stutters. Even leaving aside the Sonos aspects of the speaker, it’s also likely the best-sounding Bluetooth weather-resistant speakers I’ve ever tried, at this or any other price range.

Voice assistants and auto Trueplay

The Sonos Move also features built-in support for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, both the virtual assistants that are also available on the Sonos Beam and the Sonos One. Built-in farfield mics do a great job of picking up voice commands, and if you’ve used either of these assistants before on other Sonos hardware, you’ll get the same great experience here – provided you’re on Wifi and not Bluetooth, as mentioned above.

Sonos has added a new trick to the Sonos Move using the mics it includes for use with these voice assistants, too: Auto Trueplay. This is a version of its Trueplay sound tuning feature, which it includes in other Sonos speakers. Normally, however, you have to do the process manually using your smartphone’s mic to evaluate the sound. The Sonos Move uses its own mics to adjust automatically – and it does it constantly, changing the sound profile to match your space as you move it room to room, or even outside.

In actual use, the effect is subtle, which it should be since the sound is adapting over time. But I found that it undeniably made a difference, and that listening to the same song initially upon switching the Move’s location, and then after a period of time (I tried an hour or so) produced obvious benefits in terms of the sound of the second listening.

Charging and battery

Sonos has done a great job with all things related to their first battery-powered speaker. The built-in power source is rated for up to 10 hours of continuous playback according to the company, and in my testing, I actually got north of that, but of course your mileage will vary depending on what kind of connection you’re using and at what volume you’re playing music.

Charging is handled two ways, which is a very welcome bit of adaptability that suits the Move’s dual nature as both a Sonos network speaker and a portable audio device. There’s the charging base that comes in the box, which you can see above. This has metal contacts that provide power via connection points on the back of the Move, while providing an attractive and stable base for use in your Move’s more permanent ‘home’ location.

Then there’s a standard USB-C port located on the base above the charging contacts, which is perfect for use when you’re taking the Move on the road, or if you’re just using it outside but near an external outlet and don’t particularly feel like moving the charging base. It’s another example of how the Move can do double duty with smart design elements that don’t require any compromises on the user’s part.

Where it fits in the Sonos line

The Sonos Move is unlike any other speaker in the Sonos lineup. It plays nice with the rest, but only to a point: The Move can’t act as rear satellite speakers or pair with the Sonos Sub, for instance, something which the rest of the lineup can all manage. Sonos says this is because the speaker was designed to move around the house, so it doesn’t make sense for it to be tied to a more permanent installation, as in a home theater or sub-supplemented arrangement.

That said, it’s a solid choice as both an addition to an existing Sonos network, or as your first Sonos device. In the first case, it’s the best way to add a patio-friendly Sonos-compatible speaker to your setup without having to drill into your walls or call home installers; in the second, it’s a great all around wireless speaker if all you really need is one, since it can follow you around the house, adapt its sound, and even pack in the car for road trips or a day at the beach.

Bottom line

At $399, the Sonos Move is definitely expensive for either a Bluetooth speaker or a wireless home smart speaker. But when you consider that it’s both, and that it delivers all-day battery life on a single charge; intelligent adaptive sound to ensure it sounds best wherever you’re using it; and the ability to stereo pair and work with other Sonos devices if you want to expand your setup later, it starts to seem a lot more economical – especially when sized up against equally priced speakers that lack half those features, like Apple’s HomePod.

Anyone who wants to download the podcast app Pocket Casts can now do so for free.

Previously, you had to pay a one-time fee of $3.99 to access the Android or iOS apps, but CEO Owen Grover said this approach seemed increasingly at odds with Pocket Casts’ goals, and with the vision of the public radio organizations (NPR, WNYC Studios and WBEZ Chicago) that acquired it last year.

“We understood pretty clearly that we were limiting our reach and limiting the number of users that could enjoy the quality and power of the app and the platform,” Grover said. “It felt penny wise and pound foolish to continue to collect a few dollars at the top … We have the benefit of these owners who are supporting us in a way that allows us to grow our audience, habituate new listeners and deliver a pretty terrific user experience.”

So moving forward, he said the core features of the Pocket Casts app — including audio effects and cross-platform sync — will be available for free.

At the same time, Pocket Casts is launching a monthly subscription called Pocket Casts Plus, where he said “power users and super users” can pay 99 cents a month or $10 a year for access the desktop apps, cloud storage of their own audio and video files and exclusive app icons and themes.

Shifting from a one-time fee to a subscription model might seem like a move to make more money, but Grover said the company is really just charging a fee to cover the costs of the Plus features, particularly cloud storage.

“In the short term, we will make less money. It’s not about that,” he said. “It’s not about maximizing app revenue for us, it’s about maximizing the unique quality of the partnership [with] our wonderful public media partners.”

That doesn’t mean Pocket Casts isn’t interested in making money. In fact, Grover said the team will have “more to share about how we think about sensible, sane, scalable business models moving forward.” (He also assured me that the model won’t focus on advertising.)

He painted this change as part of a broader strategy after last year’s acquisition, which was followed by upgrades to Pocket Casts’ backend and frontend.

“This is really the third pillar — now we’re off to the races,” Grover said.

Salesforce has always tried to be a socially responsible company, encouraging employees to work in the community, giving 1% of its profits to different causes and building and productizing the 1-1-1 philanthropic model. The company now wants to help other organizations be more sustainable to reduce their carbon footprint, and today it announced it is working on a product to help.

Patrick Flynn, VP of sustainability at Salesforce, says that it sees sustainability as a key issue, and one that requires action right now. The question was how Salesforce could help. As a highly successful software company, it decided to put that particular set of skills to work on the problem.

“We’ve been thinking about how can Salesforce really take action in the face of climate change. Climate change is the biggest, most important and most complex challenge humans have ever faced, and we know right now, every individual, every company needs to step forward and do everything it can,” Flynn told TechCrunch.

And to that end, the company is developing the Salesforce Sustainability Cloud, to help track a company’s sustainability efforts. The tool should look familiar to Salesforce customers, but instead of tracking customers or sales, this tool tracks carbon emissions, renewable energy usage and how well a company is meeting its sustainability goals.

The tool works with internal data and third-party data as needed, and is subject to both an internal audit by the Sustainability team and third-party organizations to be sure that Salesforce (and Sustainability Cloud customers) are meeting their goals.

Salesforce has been using this product internally to measure its own sustainability efforts, which Flynn leads. “We use the product to measure our footprint across all sorts of different aspects of our operations from data centers, public cloud, real estate — and we work with third-party providers everywhere we can to have them make their operations cleaner, and more powered by renewable energy and less carbon intensive,” he said. When there is carbon generated, the company uses carbon offsets to finance sustainability projects such as clean cookstoves or helping preserve the Amazon rainforest.

Flynn says increasingly the investor community is looking for proof that companies are building a real, verifiable sustainability program, and the Sustainability Cloud, is an effort to provide that information both for Salesforce and for other companies who are in a similar position.

The product is in Beta now and is expected to be ready next year. Flynn could not say how much they plan to charge for this service yet, but he said the goal of the product is positive social impact.

Facebook wants to take over your television with a clip-on camera for video calling, AR gaming, and content co-watching. If you can get past the creepiness, the new Portal TV let you hang out with friends on your home’s biggest screen. It’s a fresh product category that could give the social network a unique foothold in the living room where unlike on phones where it’s beholden to Apple and Google, Facebook owns the hardware and operating system.

Today Facebook unveiled a new line of Portal devices that bring its auto-zooming AI camera, in-house voice assistant speaker, Alexa, apps like Spotify and newly added  Amazon Prime Video, Messenger video chat, and now end-to-end encrypted WhatsApp video calls to smaller form factors.

The $149 Portal TV is the star of the show, turning most televisions with an HDMI connection into a video chat smart screen. And if you video call between two Portal TVs, you can use the new Watch Together feature to co-view Facebook Watch videos simultaneously while chilling together over picture-in-picture. The Portal TV is genius way for Facebook to make its hardware both cheaper yet more immersive by co-opting a screen you already own and have given a space in your life, thereby leapfrogging smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home.

There’s also the new pint-size 8-inch Portal Mini for just $129, which makes counter-top video chat exceedingly cheap. The 10-inch Portal that launched a year ago now has a sleeker, minimal bezel look with a price drop for $199 to $179. Both look more like digital picture frames, which they are, and can be stood on their side or end for optimal full-screen chatting. Lastly, the giant 15.6-inch Portal+ swivel screen falls to $279 instead of $349, and you still get $50 off if you buy any two Portal devices.

“The TV has been a staple of living rooms around the world, but to date it’s been primarily about people who are physically interacting with the device” says  Facebook’s VP of consumer hardware Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth. “We see the opportunity for people to use their TVs not just to do that but also to interact with other people.”

The new Portals all go on pre-sale today from Portal.facebook.com, Amazon, and Best Buy in the US and Canada plus new markets like the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Italy, and France (though the Hey Portal assistant only works in English). Portal and Portal Mini ship October 15th and Portal TV ships November 5th.

The whole Portal gang lack essential video apps like Netflix and HBO, and Boz claims he’s not trying to compete directly with Roku, Fire TV etc. Instead, Facebook is trying to compete where it’s strongest, on communication and video chat where rivals lack a scaled social network.

“You’re kind of more hanging out. It isn’t as transactional. It’s not as urgent as when you sacrifice your left arm to the cause” explains Boz. Like how Fortnite created a way for people to just chill together while gaming remotely, Portal TV could do the same for watching television together, apart.

Battling The Creepiness

The original Portal launched a year ago to favorable reviews except for one sticking point: journalists all thought it was too sketchy to bring Facebook surveillance tech inside their homes. Whether the mainstream consumer feels the same way is still a mystery as the company has refused to share sales numbers. Though Boz told me “The engagement, the retention numbers are all really positive”, we haven’t seen developers like Netflix rush to bring their apps to the Portal platform.

To that end, privacy on Portal no longer feels clipped on like the old plastic removeable camera covers. “We have to always do more work to grow the number of people who have that level of comfort, and bring that technology into their home” says Boz. “We’ve done what we can in this latest generation of products, now with integrated camera covers that are hardware, indicator lights when the microphone is off, and form factors that are less obtrusive and blend more into the background of the home.”

One major change stems from a scandal that spread across the tech sector, with Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook all being criticized for quietly sending voice clips to human reviewers to improve speech recognition in what felt like a privacy violation. “Part of the Portal out-of-box experience is going to be a splash screen on data storage and it will literally walk through how . . . when we hear ‘hey Portal’ a voice recording and transcription is sent, it may be reviewed by humans, and people have the ability to opt out.”

But if Portal if battling the perception of creepiness, why make human reviews the default? Boz defended the call from the perspective of accessibility. “We say ‘oh they’re good enough” but for a lot of people that might have a mild speech impedentment, a subtle accent, who might use different words because they’re from a different region, these assistants aren’t inclusive.” He claims more voice data reviewed by humans means better products for everyone, though better sales for Facebook wouldn’t hurt.

Instead, Facebook is leaning on the evolution of the smart screen market in general to help its camera blend in. “The more value we can create, not just any one player but as an entire industry, that allows consumers to feel – ‘yeah, I both am comfortable with how the data is being used and why’.”

Hands-On With The New Portals

If you can get past Facebook’s toxic brand, the new Portals are quite pleasing. They’re remarkably polished products for a company just a year into selling consumer hardware. They all feel sturdy and elegant enough to place in your kitchen or living room. The Portal and Portal Mini work just like last year’s models, but without the big speaker bezel, they can be flipped on their side and look much more like picture frames while running Portal’s Smart Frame showing your Facebook, Instagram, or Camera roll photos.

Portal TV’s flexible form factor is a clever innovation. It has an integrated stand for placing on your TV console, but that stand also squeezes onto a front wing to let it clip onto both wide and extremely thin new flatscreen televisions. With just an HDMI connection it brings a 12.5 megapixel, 120-degree camera and 8 mic array to any tube. It also ships with a stubby remote control for basic browsing without having to shout across the room. TechCrunch

Portal TV includes an integrated smart speaker that can be used even when the TV is off or on a different input, and offers HDMI CEC for control through other remotes. The built-in camera cover gives users piece of mind and a switch conjures a red light to signal that all sensors are disabled. Overall, control felt a tad sluggish but passable.

Portal’s software is largely the same as before with a few key improvements, the addition of WhatsApp, and one big bonus feature for Portal TVs. The AI Smart Camera is the best part, automatically tracking multiple people to keep everyone in frame as zoomed in as possible. Improved adaptive background modeling and human pose estimation lets it keep faces in view without facial recognition, and all video processing is done locally on the device. A sharper Spotlight feature lets you select one person, like a child running around the room so you don’t miss the gymnastics routines.

Now in addition to Messenger video calling, the app platform with Spotify and more, and AR Storytime where you don related AR masks as you read aloud a children’s book, there AR games like Cats Catching Donuts With Their Mouths. Designed for kids and casual players, the games had some trouble with motion tracking and felt too thin for more than a few seconds of play. But if Facebook gave Portal TV a real controller or bought a better AR games studio, it could dive deeper into gaming as a selling point.

WhatsApp is the top new feature for all the Portals. Though you can’t use the voice assistant to call people, you can now WhatsApp video chat friends with end-to-end encryption rather than just Messenger’s encryption in transit. The two messaging apps combined give Portal a big advantage over Google and Amazon’s devices since their parents have screwed up or ignored chat over the years. Still, there’s no way to send text messages which would be exceedingly helpful.

Reserved for Portal TV-to-Portal TV Messenger chats is the new Watch Together feature we broke the news of a year ago after Ananay Arora spotted it in Messenger’s code. This lets you do a picture-in-picture video chat with friends while you simultaneously view a Facebook Watch video. It even smartly ducks down the video’s audio while friends are talking so you can share reactions. While it doesn’t work with other Portal content apps like Prime Video, Watch Together shows the true potential of the device: passive hang out time.

“Have you ever thought about how weird bowling is, Josh? Bowling is a weird thing to go do. I enjoy bowling, I don’t enjoy bowling by myself that much. I enjoy going with other people” Boz tells me. “It’s just a pretext, it’s some  reason for us to get together and have some beers and to have time and have conversation. Whether it’s video calling or the AR games . . . those are a pre-text, to have an excuse to go be together.”

Sure, you could take Apple’s word for it that the new iPhone’s cameras are amazing — or you could let some obsessive pixel-peepers perform some (mostly) objective tests and really get into the nitty-gritty. Pixel peepers in extraordinary DxOMark are here to help, with new tests focused on evaluating the latest gadgets’ night modes and ultra-wide-angle lenses.

The site’s already extensive image quality tests cover the usual aspects of a smartphone camera — color representation, exposure, noise, all that. But the latest devices are making advances in new directions that aren’t adequately covered by those tests; Namely the emergence of “night mode” shooting and multi-lens setups like the iPhone 11 Pro and its hulking rear camera assembly.

Therefore the tests must change! And DxOMark has begun including extremely nitpicky breakdowns of camera performance in the particularly difficult circumstances of extreme low light and extreme wide angle photography.

Night shots are graded on detail, noise, color reproduction — the kinds of things that tend to be lost in low light. Wide angle shots are graded on distortion, detail throughout the frame, and chromatic aberration — all difficult to correct for.

Some devices may be great in one area but poor in another, for example trading too much detail for lower noise in a night shot but getting great color. A higher score may indicate a better overall camera, but if you care about your phone photography you should look into what goes into that score as well. I for one never plan to use these ultra-wide cameras, so I can ignore that category altogether!

Now, this is an interesting area to grade such cameras in, and difficult one, because so much of the work is being done in software. As I’ve noted, the future (and of course the present) of photography is code, and without code there would be no night mode or ultra-wide angle shots.

The image stacking and denoising that allow low-light photography, and the speed of things like perspective correction and other tricks that allow a nearly fisheye lens to look relatively normal, are consequences of massive improvements in image processing efficiency and huge jumps in processing power. And they’ll only get better, even for a given camera-sensor-processor combo.

So DxOMark may find itself revising these scores — which are themselves being mapped retroactively onto reviews already posted: Low light performance is replacing the flash performance category, and wide angle is a new score.

The first phones to get the new treatment are the Samsung Galaxy S10 and Note 10+, the Huawei P30 Pro, a handful of others, and of course the new iPhones. No doubt the upcoming Pixel 4 will be a contender as well, especially in the night mode category.

It’s good to know someone is systematically testing these aspects of phones with a critical eye. Watch for the updated tests and listings on DxOMark starting today.

IBM continues to push its quantum computing efforts forward and today announced that it will soon make a 53-qubit quantum computer available to clients of its IBM Q Network. The new system, which is scheduled to go online in the middle of next month, will be the largest universal quantum computer available for external use yet.

The new machine will be part of IBM’s new Quantum Computation Center in New York State, which the company also announced today. The new center, which is essentially a data center for IBM’s quantum machines, will also feature five 20-qubit machines, but that number will grow to 14 within the next month. IBM promises a 95 percent service availability for its quantum machines.

IBM notes that the new 53-qubit system introduces a number of new techniques that enable the company to launch larger, more reliable systems for cloud deployments. It features more compact custom electronics for improves scaling and lower error rates, as well as a new processor design.

“Our global momentum has been extraordinary since we put the very first quantum computer on the cloud in 2016, with the goal of moving quantum computing beyond isolated lab experiments that only a handful organizations could do, into the hands of tens of thousands of users,” said Dario Gil, the director of IBM Research. “The single goal of this passionate community is to achieve what we call Quantum Advantage, producing powerful quantum systems that can ultimately solve real problems facing our clients that are not viable using today’s classical methods alone, and by making even more IBM Quantum systems available we believe that goal is achievable.”

The fact that IBM is now opening this Quantum Computation itself, of course, is a pretty good indication about how serious the company is about its quantum efforts. The company’s quantum program also now supports 80 partnerships with commercial clients, academic institutions and research laboratories. Some of these have started to use the available machines to work on real-world problems, though the current state of the art in quantum computing is still now quite ready for solving anything but toy problems and testing basic algorithms.