Facebook joins Youtube, Twitter and Instagram in allowing news organizations to embed public Facebook posts within their websites and blogs. At this point the feature is only available to select news sites including Bleacher Report, CNN, Huffington Post, Mashable and PEOPLE, but the feature will be more widely available soon.

To figure out if a post is sharable, reporters at these companies can hover over a post and the drop down will give you the option to embed if the post is public. Then it’s as simple as cutting and pasting code, as you would with a tweet. Here is more about the new feature from the Facebook blog:

Embedded Posts display just like they do on Facebook, with the ability to show pictures, videos, hashtags, and other content. People can interact with Embedded Posts by:

• Liking or sharing the post directly from your web page
• Liking the Page or following other posts from the author using the top right button
• Visiting the post’s comments, photos, hashtags and other content on Facebook

Facebook recently added embedding to Instagram, allowing users to take public Instagram photos and videos and share them on their sites through an embed code.

App downloads from Google Play passed downloads from Apple’s App Store for the first time. According to App Annie, Google’s app downloads were 10% higher than those from iTunes during Q2 2013.

Here is more from the App Annie blog: “Games continued to dominate the share of revenue for both app stores, and still accounted for a greater share in Google Play where it comprised over 80% of revenues vs. roughly 75% in the iOS App Store.”

Google may have the most downloads, but downloads from Apple are still bringing in the most revenue. According to the report, apps from the Apple App store generate 2.3x that of Google Play. But Apple’s market share is shrinking, as apps in Apple’s App Store generated 2.6x the revenue of Google Play apps in the prior quarter.

In a truly progressive shift, the developers at Globacore combined the Oculus Rift with Atari’s Paperboy and Kickr’s stationary bike fitness regimen into a fun and experimental exercise routine. When Atari created Paperboy in the 80′s, they didn’t have access to Oculus Rift or Kickr’s fitness app or we would all be world class cyclists by now since newspaper delivery jobs are pretty obsolete.

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Many writers and other media professionals focus on Apple’s iOS devices when creating apps and other mobile content.

In a recent Copyright Clearance Center interview, Wattpad co-founder Allen Lau explained why writers need to pay attention to Android readers. Currently, 15 million users spend 3.5 billion minutes on the community writing site and  80 percent of that traffic comes from mobile devices. Lau concluded:

Android launched in 2008 and became a really popular platform in ’09 and 2010, at that time, Wattpad was really taking off, because, using Android as an example, it’s a free operating system. The Android device that you can buy in developing countries today, the lowest high price point is approaching $50 right now. It’s very affordable. And in many cases, the Android phone is the gateway for people living in those countries to the Internet. That’s their only connection to the Internet. They skipped the desktop era.

The internet is getting faster at Starbucks now that Google is replacing AT&T at the nation’s largest coffee chain and home away from home workstation. Google is promising a 10x boost in speed with up to 100x boost in speed in Google Fiber cities like Austin. The transition will start in August and take about eighteen months to complete. Just look for the “Google Starbucks” SSID.

Official announcement:

Coffee shop + Internet—it’s a pairing that many of us have come to rely on. WiFi access makes work time, downtime, travel time and lots of in-between times more enjoyable and productive. That’s why we’re teaming up with Starbucks to bring faster, free WiFi connections to all 7,000 company-operated Starbucks stores in the United States over the next 18 months. When your local Starbucks WiFi network goes Google, you’ll be able to surf the web at speeds up to 10x faster than before. If you’re in a Google Fiber city, we’re hoping to get you a connection that’s up to 100x faster.

It’s one thing to build a soapbox car in your backyard, but what about building your own plane? The engineers at MakerPlane hope to raise $75,000 on IndieGogo to finance the building of MakerPlane, an open source aviation project that would allow people to build their own planes using CNC mills and 3D printers.

The money would allow the organization to build an aircraft and then provide free open source plans, build instructions and electronic files to the public. Here is more about the project: “Basically we are designing an aircraft that can be built on a computer controlled mill at home, or at a makerspace which is easy to assemble and quick to build.  The plans and instructions will be available for free to anyone that wants them!”

Follow this link to check out a video demonstration of the plane. (Via Wired).

Microsoft has released Microsoft Office Mobile 365 app for Android users. The app lets MS subscribers access, view and edit Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint documents on their phone. The release follows the release of a Microsoft Office app for iPhone which launched last month.

The app lets you access and work on MS documents from your Android phone. Once you are done editing a document, you can save it to the Microsoft cloud SkyDrive or email it to yourself. Here is more from the Microsoft blog:

Office Mobile has been optimized for the small screen of your phone so you can get things done efficiently.  When reviewing Word documents, the Resume Reading feature takes you to the exact point in the document where you left off on your PC so you don’t waste time searching. The new Slide Navigator lets you browse through PowerPoint presentations fast while Speaker Notes help you practice on the run.

The app is free, but requires an Office 365 subscription to work. You can sign up for a free 30 day Office 365 trial here.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal that would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant to access the location data records of individuals from phone companies. The court found that court orders authorized by the Stored Communications Act that make cell phone providers share the historical location data of customers are not unconstitutional as the The ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation had argued.

According to the court, cell phone location records are not protected under the Fourth Amendment because they are not the private records of individuals but rather the business records of cell phone companies. The ACLU was disappointed with the decision. ACLU staff attorney Catherine Crump wrote on the ACLU blog:

Cell phone companies store records on where each of us have been, often stretching back for years. That location information is sensitive and can reveal a great deal—what doctors people visit, where they spend the night, who their friends are, and where they worship.

Pet Rescue Saga has joined the top free Android app this week at No. 10, according to research from Google Play. The game app from King.com challenges players to solve puzzles in order to rescue their kidnapped pets.

Below, we’ve listed the top free Android apps of the week. The list links to Google Play’s research about the individual apps, including user reviews.

As part of Mediabistro’s Media App Summit which took place last year, we spotlight the top free apps every week–helping our readers discover, enjoy and analyze successful content. Read more

The makers of the Myo armband at Thalmic Labs are using wearables to simple gesture interfaces. Unlike other software that requires light for infrared sensors, the armband attaches to the user’s skin and can detect electrical impulses to power electronics and computers. According to the founders, a small movement of a finger is as easy to detect as a wave of the hand. The best part about the interface is walking around and opening window blinds and controlling UAVs like Darth Vader.
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