Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

How did it go again, “Hello, boss! Can I work from home today? My cat climbed on my lap and is purring. – Well, if that’s the case, then yes, of course!”. It’s different with our Yuki. Several times a day he approaches with one of his toys, places them next to me, and looks alternately at the toy and at me. And if I ignore him for too long (which is very hard), he places it on my desk. And it all repeats. Until I throw it. Then the heels flash. And half a minute later, again. Eyes, toy, sitting, waiting. Don’t rush, owner, I’ll wait, but persistently.

If he’s sitting looking out the window, and you approach to pet him, he’s like – oh, owner, you have some time. No need to waste it on idle chatter. I’ll bring the toy now. And he runs to another floor for it. Brings it. Well then, see point one

For the New Year, Santa brought a “smart speaker with a monitor” Facebook Portal.

Every time we go to our friends in New York, we sneak a peek at something of theirs. The time before last, we brought back the idea of a bicycle, last time—the idea of a robot vacuum, and this time—a little screen for the kitchen that can handle news, music, and calls.

Since there is not much information about Facebook Go online, I decided to drop it here. Maybe it will be useful to someone. The device was bought to listen to and watch news in the kitchen. We haven’t had a TV for many years, and using laptops in the kitchen isn’t really convenient. And out of all the talking assistants, the Facebook “Go” seemed most appealing.

Interesting features include:

* A movable wide-angle camera (125°), which follows your face or faces. For example, when you move closer or walk left-right, the camera turns with internal servomotors, so the face is almost always in the frame without wide-angle distortions. This is the coolest feature.

* portable

* very decent sound (5W + woofer 20W)

* good microphones

* photo-gallery for idle-mode (photo frame mode) — directly from Instagram and Facebook. A tap on the photos shows comments from Instagram

* calls to Messenger and WhatsApp in one click or one “say” (Call Rauf).

* supports Alexa. But there is also its own Hey Portal

* integration with Spotify and Pandora. I have a premium account on Spotify, works great.

* supports YouTube

* excellent screen with almost 180° viewing angle

* can call from the mobile app to the portal, but oddly, you can’t call from the portal to your own messenger.

Downsides:

* The app store exists but only has a couple dozen apps. For example, there are no messenger apps at all

* Supports multiple accounts, but switching them has to be done manually (with two taps), but the browser, for example, is shared across all accounts. In the end, if you switch from Nadya’s to my account, YouTube in the browser will still be logged in under Nadya. And Spotify is tied to all accounts (but this is not a problem).

* All searches in Spotify/Pandora are voice-only. You can’t type a band name, only speak it. Some you can hardly pronounce

* sadly, there’s no app for YouTube. Sadly, different accounts for YouTube are not supported

* oddly, there’s no app even for FB and Instagram. They could have been really cool. But anyway, you can still watch FB stories and posts, even scroll through them with voice (useless stuff)

* oddly, you can’t call from the portal to your own messenger or to the Portal app on mobile. In other words, to call Nadya from home, I need to change my profile to mine before calling (and then switch it back)

* no “auto pick-up” (drop-in) for calls from certain numbers. That would have been very convenient. Especially for elderly people. And to entertain a dog.

* does not support Netflix. Hard to explain why. Both FB and Netflix would benefit from it.

* the cradle is not very convenient. Put it slightly at the wrong angle – it doesn’t charge (and that needs to be noticed)

* if you’re watching YouTube on your phone, and then you want to continue watching on Portal, it’s not easy to do. You need to go into History on YouTube, and press on the last video. And if you watched from a different account on your phone, then it’s really unclear how to do it.

* no water protection at all. Kind of so-so for a kitchen, really

A very interesting video about how games are made – the complete process, with very good visualization. I regret that while working at Mail.ru, I never made it to the floor where games were developed. I’m not a gamer at all (haven’t played for about 20 years), but creating worlds is definitely my thing 🙂 I won’t make it into game design, but watching professionals do it is a pleasure.

Good, lots of new and interesting things

Yesterday was plus 19, today it’s minus and real winter. That’s how we live

Kwaki and Skipperich didn’t help 😦

This dude rocks out on buckets. Boston

Bingo!

The shark, by the way, has lips

On the way to the museum o’farts

What amazed me in the US was the sheer number of stores selling greeting cards for every taste and color – literally in every populated area along with the standard set of mattresses-zoo-gourmet-and-maybe-book store, there almost always was something to do with greeting cards. Mattresses in this group were surprising too.

Today I discovered that here before Christmas there are stores with roaming decorations, but – it’s not that simple. Decorations, baubles, come in any imaginable theme, and here these thousands, maybe tens of thousands, gather together. Because it’s a universal gift. You can buy just about anything. Even Bernie Sanders in mittens, or a dog of any breed. Here are athletes from all kinds of sports. And doctors with specialties. Probably, if you look hard enough, you can even find pathologists. It seems that for any somewhat frequent keyword there will be a sale, and it needs a bauble on the shelf. And these are not just cheap plastic, but something much heavier. Likely, the cost of manufacturing in small batches has been greatly reduced, and now the store impresses with its assortment. Ornament central – one of the major players. And here, balls with different patterns are somewhat tucked away in the corner. They are bought too, but the store was not built for them.