This week in Tech

Facebook ‘teleportation’

MANILA, Philippines - Facebook’s acquisition of Virtual Reality company Oculus Rift is making a lot more sense. In a press event at the Dublin Web Summit, Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer says the company is looking to bridge more gaps through teleportation, or at least something like it.

“Facebook wants to build a device that allows you to be anywhere you want, with anyone, regardless of geographic boundaries,” said Schroepfer.

The idea is to make your senses believe the virtual world real. Facebook believes it can do this with the help of the Oculus Touch controllers, and they’re also in talks with film studios for the creation of virtual environments. Sounds like something straight out of a sci-fi flick.

It is a gargantuan task but Facebook aims to make it happen by 2025.

Office 2016 launches in Philippines

Microsoft launched Office 2016 back in October 29 and like Windows 10, it’s quite promising. Some of the new features already exist but the value-add of course is the array of things you can do with MS Office. For instance, the Co-Author feature lets you share a document you’re working on so you and a colleague can work on a single document at the same time.

There’s also an improved search functionality that scours all your documents to help you find what you’re looking and a ‘Tell Me’ feature which is basically a smarter Office Assistant (smarter than the Paper Clip guy, if you remember him), which helps you make the most of Office’s tools and features.

You can get a physical box copy of Office 2016 but Microsoft suggests you do it through an over-the-air update via Office 365. They say it’s faster and lets you skip the part where you have to buy a new physical copy year after year.

Twitter moves on from stars to hearts

Twitter ditches Favorites (Stars) in favor of Likes (Hearts) in its latest update throughout all of its platforms. Twitter explains the change in its official blog saying “at times the star could be confusing, especially to newcomers. You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favorite.”

It adds, the heart is a more universal symbol. The update matches their live streaming platform Periscope where you can send as many hearts to a live stream as you want.

The reactions to the change have been mixed but we all might as well just get used to it since it’s probably here to stay. If you’re on Twitter, give our tweets a ? , just follow us @gadgetmatch.

Samsung great giveaways

In time for the holidays Samsung has just launched its “biggest and merriest holiday offer”. Dubbed Samsung Great Giveaways, the Christmas Bundles include gifts from iFlix, Zalora, Uber, and Zing plus a range of accessories like battery packs, memory cards, and pocket WiFi. On top of that, starting Dec. 1, Samsung is raffling off daily prizes including the latest Samsung devices, a trip to Korea and a Volkswagen Beetle. Gadgets Included in the device bundles are the Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Note 5 smartphones, and the Tab S2 and Tab E tablets. For a complete list, and promo mechanics log-on to samsung.com/ph.