Say Hello To M, Facebook's New Personal Assistant

It seems that every piece of technology needs an "assistant" these days. I mean Apple has Siri, Windows 10 has Cortana, even Google has Now. And now, it seems, that Facebook is jumping on this bandwagon. There have been rumors that Facebook was working on an assistant within the Messenger app, but details have finally surfaced that bring it all together. This means that Apple, Microsoft, and Google will have yet another company to compete with.

In a post on Facebook (of course), Facebook Messenger Lead David Marcus wrote, "Today we're beginning to test a new service called M. M is a personal digital assistant inside of Messenger that completes tasks and finds information on your behalf. It's powered by artificial intelligence that's trained and supervised by people."

Marcus went on to say, "Unlike other AI-based services in the market, M can actually complete tasks on your behalf. It can purchase items, get gifts delivered to your loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments, and way more. This is early in the journey to build M into an at-scale service. But it's an exciting step towards enabling people on Messenger to get things done across a variety of things, so they can get more time to focus on what's important in their lives."

Ever since Marcus joined with Facebook the Messenger product has been churning like crazy in terms of development. Regardless if it's payments or a standalone site, the product seems like it is getting a lot more attention than it ever has before.

Siri, Now, and Cortana, and M are now one big happy family! Basically what these companies are doing is they are taking the data that you've put into the service and are using it to help you out or suggest different things based off of what it knows about you. Putting M inside of Messenger is a quite a brilliant move due to the fact that people are used to tapping out messages to people as opposed to speaking out commands like other assistants sometimes require.

Facebook acquiring Wit.ai back in January provided the human side of the project, meaning the "trained and supervised by people" part that Marcus mentioned. Google and Apple have focused primarily on the science of Artificial Intelligence whereas Facebook has decided to power through the development of a personal assistant with more human hands.

This means that it won't be cheap for Facebook. Should the project scale out it will have to wait until the humans teach its AI to handle most requests automatically or it will have to spend a ton of money hiring a ton of people to assist the assistant. In addition to that, the launch of this tech will be very, very slow but as soon as it is released you can check back here for more information!

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What You Need to Know About Microsoft's Kin

On Monday of this week, Microsoft introduced the Kin One and Kin Two, but a lot of people are wondering what exactly they need to know about the new phones. Well, the Kin appears to be aimed a younger generation, (CNET specifies ages 15 to 30 and describes that age group as the "the folks posting their every thought, sight, and sound to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube" as well as "young parents looking to upload all those adorable pictures of their kids and/or puppies." That, alone, should tell you a lot about the phone. As a matter of fact, instead of having a menu, when you turn on your phone, you'll have three main screens: contacts, built-in programs, and status updates from your social networks. Contacts and status updates come from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Windows Live.

Also according to CNET, the Kin looks a little bit like the Sidekick but runs on Windows CE instead of the Java-based operating system the Sidekick used. And it's certainly nothing like an iPhone, Android or Blackberry. If you're dreaming of adding all kinds of apps to your phone, keep dreaming. Microsoft says they're hoping the phone will fit your needs without the need or any additions. With that in mind, Microsoft is calling it an entry-level smartphone.

Each phone comes with Zune built in, which allows you to transfer music and movies from your computer and stream music on demand. Pictures can be uploaded to all social media sites with the exception of Twitter. They have web-based email capabilities, Exchange for business email, and POP and IMAP services.

Both phones feature touchscreens, bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and slide-out keyboards. The Kin Two is a bit higher end than the Kin One. It has double the memory (8GB), a larger screen and keyboard, the ability to shoot HD video, a better camera, and a stereo speaker verses the mono speaker on the Kin One.

The software is not completely compatible with Mac, but it does allow you to transfer music and pictures from iTunes or iPhoto. Kin One and Kin Two are tentatively scheduled to be released in May, but an exact date has not yet been set, nor has an exact price.

For more details, check out CNET's 411 on Microsoft Kin.

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