Technology

Facebook made two announcements about ad transparency today — one around the ads purchased by any Page and another around expanding its recently announced archive of political ads.

It seems like ad transparency is a big focus today, as Twitter just launched its own Ads Transparency Center, allowing anyone to see ads bought by any account.

In terms of bringing more transparency to Facebook Pages, the company says there will be a new section in Pages allowing users to bring up general information about Pages (like recent name changes and date of creation), and another where anyone can view all the active ads the Page is currently running.

As with any ad on Facebook, you&ll be able to flag ads viewed this way if you think they violate Facebook policies, and they will then be reviewed. Speaking to journalists via videoconference, Rob Leathern, a director of product management on the Facebook advertising team, noted that this is in addition to the &proactive& reviewing, performed both by humans and artificial intelligence, that Facebook already performs on every ad.

COO Sheryl Sandberg also said that Facebook is doing more to review political ads, which is resulting in more delays before those ads appear.

&We do not like the delays in the system [but] more manual review and more checks means more delays,& she said.

Now it might not seem like Facebook is sharing a tremendous amount of information here, especially since you only see the ad itself, not additional context like targeting, money spent or past advertising. When asked about this, Sandberg acknowledged that Facebook has more to do.

&There are lots of ways we can do more,& she said. &These are the first steps.&

Sandberg also said she doesn&t expect the additional transparency to affect ad spend on Facebook. She suggested that advertisers are aware of the changes, and while some of them have expressed concerns about competitors seeing their advertising, most of them are on-board.

&I think advertisers for most part stand behind the ads they&re running,& she said. &You actually can see a lot of your competitors& ads [already], you just have to catch them.&

Meanwhile, Facebook says it will be launching its political archive in Brazil next month start accepting registration from political advertisers in Brazil. These archives only start saving ads from the date that they launch (the one for the U.S. launched in May), but ultimately the plan is to store things for up seven years at a time.

As for why the archive will also include ads from news publishers that promote articles with political content, Sandberg said, &We decided that our goal is transparency. We are just erring on the side of being transparent.& She also noted that Facebook is now placing those ads in a separate section for &promoted news.&

Sandberg was also asked about recent leaks to Motherboard and other publications of Facebooktraining material around hate speech — specifically around how it views white supremacy and neo-Nazis. Why not just make that training material public

Sandberg argued that Facebook has already released extensive information about its policies, and she suggested that the leaked material is often taken out of context, outdated or just represents &bad training things.&

&I don&t think any other company has come close to the transparency we&ve put out,& she said.

NASA announced yesterday that its highly anticipated James Webb Space Telescope is delaying its launch — again.

It was announced in March that the mission would be delayed until 2020, which is already two years past its original launch date of October 2018. But after accepting the recommendations of an independent review board, NASA has announced that the launch has been rescheduled for early 2021.

According to the report, technical issues and human error have &greatly impacted the development schedule& and added $800 million to the already $8 billion budget approved by Congress.

For a mission thatbeen deemed NASA&next big telescope,&itnot surprising there&d be a few bumps in the road.

The telescopehoneycombed structure of (literally) gold-plated mirrors will help scientists see further into the history of our universe than has ever been possible before. Following in the footsteps of the Hubble Telescope, Webb will have improved &sight& thanks to its abilities to see longer wavelengths, like infrared. By peering beyond the visible spectrum of light, thereliterally no telling what Webb might learn about the birth of the universe. And thatkind of the reason NASAbuilding it.

&The more we learn more about our universe, the more we realize that Webb is critical to answering questions we didn&t even know how to ask when the spacecraft was first designed,& said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASAScience Mission Directorate, in a report yesterday.

If thatnot enough pressure, the Webb (unlike the Hubble) will be too far away from Earth to be serviceable by either manned or robotic missions. So, when Webb finally reaches its orbit and unfurls (another tricky maneuver), thereno going back.

While this mission represents an exciting new opportunity to explore deeper into space, NASA and other federally funded space agencies aren&t the only game in town any more. Billionaires like Yuri Milner, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are taking on the challenge in the private sector and designing new methods, crafts and rockets to explore this final frontier with a little more flexibility than NASA.

In addition to the obvious technical challenges of the Webb project, NASA has also run into problems with its primary contractor, Northrop Grumman . After encounteringproblems earlier this year successfully installing Webbsun shield, Northrop Grumman was also cited in yesterdayreport for &performance challenges& on the missionpropulsion systems.

With NASAgrowing to-do list before Webb finally launches,it might still be awhile before we get to see the universebaby pictures.

Moov, the wearable maker best known for its line of fitness trackers with their accompanying digital coaches, is today branching off into mindfulness. The company is the latest to join the self-care craze, with the launch of a new app focused on mindfulness and meditation, Sanity - Self. However, unlike most of todaymeditation apps, Sanity - Self is aimed only at women.

Explains Moov co-founder Meng Li, the idea to build a mindfulness app came to her after becoming a mother herself.

&Even with a wonderful and supportive partner, I found it incredibly challenging to find time to take care of myself after I had my first child,& she says. &I saw other women around me struggling as well, and wanted to build an app specifically geared toward helping women and moms find time to recharge themselves.&

Women — and especially mothers — often find themselves stressed, tired and with little or no time to themselves. And instead of fathers being told to step up already and take on their fair share of parenting duties, women are just chastised for not &leaning in& more at work.

&Studies show that half of us have lain awake at night within the last month because of stress,& notes Li. &Women are more stressed than men, and moms often bear more of the burden of childcare than fathers. In fact, moms have as little as 17 minutes a day to themselves.&

Then there are the general stressors associated with our always-on culture. Technology, in particular, has enabled a blurring of lines between work and personal time to the point that many people feel they&re never really &off the clock.& (Until some point at which they burn out and quit, that is.)

Mindfulness apps have more recently stepped in to help address the problems that, ironically, technology helped to create.

The Sanity - Self app initially starts you off in a chatbot-style interface, though therea way to exit this experience to use the app normally. Itan interesting idea in terms of not overwhelming new users with content, but italso frustrating — as chatbots are — because you can&t fully explore the app through back and forth texting.

However, once you bypass the bot (and you should), the app itself has a variety of sessions from which to choose. These are organized as colorful photo thumbnails under categories like Breathe, Meditate, Listen-Grow, Journal, and more.

There are also sessions related to massage and beauty, which is unusual for a mindfulness app, but features its female audience may like; as well as a section with audio cues for fitness training.

We asked Moov if it had repurposed materials from its existing digital coaching platforms for the new app. The company replied that some of the fitness content appeared briefly in an experimental Moov Studio app, but thatbeen discontinued. The rest is new.

The app also organizes sessions to focus on specific needs, like feeling in control, managing time, sleeping better, de-stressing, feeling loved, setting healthy boundaries and more, which appear below the category listings.

The sessions are led by experts certified in wellness practices, includingAyurveda yoga, massage therapy, neuro linguistic programming, NASM, TRX, naturopathic aesthetics and more.

The app features an in-app community page, too, which is an interesting idea in terms of building up a social network for women. The questions and answers have been clearly pre-seeded ahead of the applaunch, with a focus on beauty, self-care, stress reduction, fitness and other related topics to help set the tone.

Of course, if the app scales to support a larger number of users, Moov will need to concern itself with content moderation and managing spam. For now, the feeling is one of supportive communication, however.

The app itself is a freemium product. Upgrading to the $9.99/month Premium subscription gives you access to the full Premium session library, new sessions weekly and support for offline access. While therea good amount of content for the money, the pricing — nearly as much as Netflix — will require that you&re a regular user to get value for your money.

And with only 17 minutes a day to spare… well…

Sanity - Selflaunch is Moovfirst serious attempt at moving away from a devices business, supported by software, to a software-as-a-service business. But it says the other products remain unchanged; this is merely an expansion.

&We want this app to be more focused on overall wellness and self-care. We also want it to be accessible to everyone, whether or not they have a wearable,& says Li.

Sanity - Self is a free download on AppleApp Store.