Now That’s Embedding…

Facebook just announced that they will begin to roll out a new embedded post feature, giving users the ability to publish their status messages across the web.

With the new update, any post you make, including photos, and even posts with hashtags can be embedded on third-party sites completely unrelated to the social network. The new feature is an indication that Facebook is pushing more of their content out to other sites to increase both distribution and reach of their users’ conversations.

Facebook expects the embedded posts to roll out over the next few weeks, but there’s a slight catch: Websites that want to use the functionality will be required to add a few lines of code on their site to make it work.

An Unusual Alliance For Faster Internets

In a recently-formed partnership with Starbucks, Google has announced that they will be offering a free, faster Wi-Fi connection at all U.S. company-operated Starbucks locations over the next eighteen months.

According to the company’s blog, Google says that its speeds are ten times faster than Starbucks’ current WiFi hotspots that are provided by AT&T.

In Google Fiber cities, the speeds should increase one hundred fold.

The first Starbucks Wi-Fi hotspots will start rolling out in August, so you shouldn’t have to wait too long to enjoy the internet speed boost with your daily latte.

HP Blurring Device Lines

Hewlett-Packard’s first Android tablet-laptop hybrid, the SlateBook X2, is now available, and the specs are pretty impressive.

The ten-inch true HD display comes with a respectable two-hundred-twenty-four pixels per inch pixel density, and is powered by Nvidia’s latest ARM processor, the Tegra 4.

It comes with a sixteen giga-byte solid state drive and two gigs of onboard memory.

The tablet comes with a magnetic docking mechanism to switch from tablet to laptop mode, and a full-size keyboard. The HP SlateBook could be a serious competitor in the hybrid market. People who want to get their hands on the new Android device can place their orders on HP’s website.

The SlateBook retails for $480.

It Will Be Like A Microwave

Personal 3D printers may sound like a luxury item for geeks, but soon the niche product could become a household appliance that saves people thousands of dollars every year.

In order to find out how much a family might save by printing common items, a team of researchers at Michigan Tech set out to price-compare printed goods against how much they’d cost to buy online. The team of researchers could have saved enough money to pay for the cost of the printer, depending upon the quality of the retail products being compared, after printing only twenty items.

In other 3D printing news, The UPS Store announced its plan to bring 3D printing services to the masses. San Diego will be the first city in America to test the new service, with six new printers being spread across the city.

Each of the printers are said to cost a little under twenty-one-thousand dollars, so their availability at UPS stores is a pretty major step towards making high quality 3D printing an accessible option for the average consumer.

Though the company is starting out small, UPS hopes to take the printers nationwide, given the experiment in San Diego proves to be a success.

A 3D Scanner Darkly

A new Kickstarter campaign was recently launched to fund a new 3D project, but unlike most 3D companies, the British based Fuel3D has no interest in printing.

Instead, they want to focus on 3D scanning. The current cost of a good 3D scanner is about fifteen thousand dollars, but for Fuel3D, the goal is to put 3D scanners into the hands of users at a more affordable one-thousand dollar price point.

The Kickstarter page describes the cost-saving cameras, saying, “Fuel3D handheld scanner, a point-and-shoot 3D imaging system that captures extremely high resolution mesh and color information of objects.

Fuel3D is the world’s first 3D scanner to combine pre-calibrated stereo cameras with photometric imaging to capture and process files in seconds.” Since launching the project yesterday, Fuel3D’s kickstarter campaign has already managed to raise nearly $55,000 of its seventy-five-thousand dollar goal, which means there’s a good chance the fundraiser will succeed before its cutoff date a month from now.

Building An Ark

The fifteen-story Ark Hotel in Changsha, China was built in a mere six days. No you didn’t mishear me, not six weeks, six days!

The project was completed, from start to finish, in only one hundred and forty-four hours and it’s not a cheap building. The Ark Hotel is level nine earthquake resistant, sound-proofed and thermal-insulated. Thanks to pre-made construction modules and modern construction techniques, Chinese building construction on the project was lightening fast.

And that’s all the news we have for today. If you want to keep up with these stories and more, be sure to join us every morning on NewsDesk with Kristin Feledy.

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