Isolation Day 58: Facebook has some tempting products

I bet you never thought you’d hear me say that

You heard me right… I know. Shocking! Jim Hope thinking about buying things from Facebook. 

For those of you who don’t know, I don’t like Facebook. The fact that they have so much data on everyone, whether they use their services or not, is terrifying, let alone the data breaches and political scandals.

I try to avoid Facebook where I can, as well as google for similar reasons. It’s part of the reason I’m an “Apple Fan Boy”. I like my data to be mine, and if someone else has it I’d like to be paid for it, why should other companies be making money from the things I do or say online.

All that aside though I seem to have had my head turned by two of their products recently. I can tell you now that if these products were created by anyone else you probably wouldn’t be reading this. It’d be a blog post about how this product is so cool I have to have it. Instead, you get this rant followed by “these products are actually quite good”.

Portal TV

For a while now I’ve been toying with the idea of moving my Mac mini into the Living room and using it as an overpowered Apple TV, attaching a microphone and webcam and using it to make our weekly video calls to our parents and such. The problem;em is I’m already moaned at for the rats nest of cables around and behind the TV.

Then the Portal TV toped up on my YouTube feed.

Aside

I know YouTube is owned by Google and they collect data too but, no matter how hard I look I just can’t find the content I enjoy on other platforms.

This little gadded sits onto of, or underneath, your TV and turns it into a massive video calling screen. It has some cool AI too. Even if your room is massive the camera will automatically zoom in and track you around the room, or zoom out to include someone else if they walk into the room. It also has Alex Built in. (I know Amazon just as bad, but I trust them more than google.)

The price isn’t bad either. It’s only £149. No that is more than it would cost me to buy a decent webcam and microphone, but it dose have Alexa and the AI stuff and a remote rather than a keyboard and mouse.

I think that this will most likely be one of the first products I buy when I get my first wage at Vodafone. It’ll make our weekly videos calls so much easier (one of us won’t have to hold the phone or tablet at the right angle so the person on the other end doesn’t see right up our noses), and it’ll be plugged in all the time to, though the camera can be covered and the mic disabled so we won’t be spied on all the time.

I like the Alexa integration especially as that will tie in nicely to the smart home as it get built. I just wish I could find a way to get Alex to work offline permanently, but that’s a post for another day.

Oculus Quest

For ages now I’ve wanted a VR headset, even before they came out I wanted a screen I could attach to my face. Originally it was so I could be in a virtual venue when I was programming lighting in WYSIWYG. Nowadays though, it’s so I can create 3D projects and see what they look like properly rather than relying on the screen of my MacBook Pro.

Then Oculus hit the scene and ever since I’ve wanted one of their headsets. Well until Facebook bought them, that really put me off. but lately, I’ve been trying to get over my hatred of everything Facebook.

I love how the quest can be used both with and without a computer. The fact that the Quest will track your head and body movement from the cameras on it, rather than the title cubes you attach to your walls, is also a big plus (fewer cables for the wife to complain about).

I’m not much of a gamer, as my Fortnite footage shows, but I would love to play Minecraft and a few racing games in VR to see what they are like. Having the opportunity to actually see the things I design in £D come to life infant of me too is absolutely amazing. It really would encourage me to take my 3d modelling to the next level.

There is one downside though. the price. It’s currently going for £499 at Argos. As much as I love technology, it’s still a bit of a steep price to pay. That doesn’t mean I won’t get one, at some point in the future, just that there will be a few months saving and begrudgingly handing over my card details.

Do you have the same concerns as me about companies having so much info about us? What do you think of the Portal TV and the Oculus Quest? Should I let my anger at Facebook & Google go? Let me know in the comments below.