Hello guys,
We are back with the Big 5 Daily, your number one stop for the overview and goings on of the day.
We open today’s big 5 with double news from Facebook.
First off, Facebook Video Chat devices — the Portal and the Portal Plus would be launching today on platforms like Best Buy and Amazon. Although the devices have the ability to play music, display photos and access some video platforms, its features are extremely limited — they can’t even access Facebook. They can, however chat over the Facebook Messenger. As regards features, they have inbuilt camera tricks to make video calls easier, the camera can follow you around as you chat making it possible to move around while video calling. The Portal will be on sale for $199 and the Portal Plus for $349.
Facebook also announced the opening of their Pop-up Store in partnership with Macy —a first for any social media platform. In these stores, they will be showcasing products from their 100 “most loved” small and digital native brands on both Instagram and Platform. The Pop Ups will occur at nine Macy locations which include New York, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, San Antonio, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
Moving to Africa, CTA, in partnership with Farm Africa just kicked off a new initiative aimed at alleviating the effects of climate change for 20,000 smallholder farms in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR). This initiative, named ‘Accelerating the Uptake of Climate-Smart Agriculture in Ethiopia’ will integrate technology with farming practices and in so doing, help scale and improve productivity. This follows past successes in Jamaica and Mali — Ethiopia is the final stage of this CTA initiative.
In East Africa, the Habitat for Humanity’s Terwillinger Center for Innovation in Shelter announced the launch of its first Kenya based ShelterTech Accelerator program. This is an initiative that projects better facilitation of housing to low income earning families. It also aims to support and assist budding startups that aim to solve and improve the housing situation in Kenya.
In the spirit of Innovation, Oracle renews its commitment to the South African startup scene by establishing its first Innovation Hub in Johannesburg— it is a first in Africa. Oracle, one of the world’s foremost Cloud service providing companies created this Innovation Hub to further all kinds of Digital Transformation in the Country, breaking grounds in emerging technology like Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Blockchain Technology.