Facebook Launches “Say Thanks,” A Personalized Video Creation Tool For Thanking Your Friends

Clearly, Facebook wants more users building and sharing videos on its service. Today, the company announced “Say Thanks,” a new tool that lets you quickly put together personalized video cards using a combination of pre-built themes and your own posts and photos. The end result is an easily shareable — if a bit cheesy — customized video you can post on yours and your friend’s Timelines.

To create the video, users visit facebook.com/thanks (note: the service is rolling out throughout the day, so check back if the URL is broken for you). They then select a friend, choose a theme, and pick out posts and photos that “represent your friendship,” explains Facebook in a blog post announcing the new tool.

The experience is somewhat reminiscent of using something like Flipagram, a mobile application that lets users put together short videos from their own photos and then share those creations to social networks. In fact, Flipagram hit the top of the Apple App Store over the 2013 holiday season thanks to its clever “Year in Review” feature that allowed users to make videos out of their Instagram photos. (Not too much later, word was that the startup was raising tens of millions at a $300 million valuation.)
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Facebook, having the mobile data about what works thanks to its Onavo acquisition, could have seen the potential in Flipagram and decided to try something similar. Except, instead of “Year in Review” videos, it’s rolling out “Thanks” videos…just before Thanksgiving here in the U.S., of course.

After users finish their video, they can click “Share” to post it to their own Timeline, and tag their friend. An option to add a personalized message will also be available.

The company says the service is rolling out today on desktop and mobile in English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document? That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the docum...

Boom, the startup that wants to build supersonic planes, just signed a massive deal with Virgin

Have you heard about Boom? Boom is a relatively new startup that’s aiming to build something pretty crazy. They’re not building an app… or a social network… or even some new gadget for the Kickstarter crowd. Boom wants to build planes. Really, really, really fast planes. Specifically, they’re trying to design and build a supersonic passenger plane that goes 2.2x the speed of sound. If all goes to plan, they’ll be able to shuttle people from New York to London in 3.5 hours, and SF to Tokyo in 4.5. Sound crazy? I wouldn’t disagree. It’s worth noting that the company is in the very early days for something as intensive, massive, and hugely expensive as designing and producing a passenger aircraft. They’re still working on their first prototype, and hope to fly it by late next year. But it’s also worth noting that the team behind the plane has some serious talent in its blood: the company’s 11 employees have collectively contributed to over 30 aircrafts — having worked on thin...

Fun Tools to Translate Your Name into Japanese Calligraphy

Japanese calligraphy is an artistic writing style of the Japanese language. Its Chinese origins can be traced back to the twenty-eighth century BCE. Calligraphy found its way into Japanese culture in 600 CE and is known as the karayo tradition. For Westerners, calligraphy is forever fascinating. However, it takes years to learn how to properly draw the signs. Two basic principles must be known to understand Japanese writing: there are different writing styles and different alphabets. Kaisho for example, is a writing style most commonly used in print media. Tensho on the other hand is used in signatures. Other writing styles are Reisho, Gyosho and Sousho. The alphabets include Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. Katakana is used for writing foreign words. It can also serve to highlight words, in analogy to capital letters as we know them from the Roman / Latin alphabet (Romaji in Japanese). Each Kanji character has a meaning of its own, while Hiragana or Katakana characters merely repres...

Kiran Upadhyay

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