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Facebook is selling ad spots in its Marketplace listings
Facebook is going to put ads in its Marketplace section for online classifieds. That's right, in addition to seeing posts for things like used couches and bed frames, you'll likely see advertisements for Bed, Bath & Beyond and Pier 1. In addition to that, now you'll be able to pay to "Boost" a listing, much like you would a News Feed post or event listing. As TechCrunch reports, these user-paid Boosts don't offer any sort of granularity to who they're targeting.
Watch a drone take off from a flying aircraft carrier
The Avengers would be proud. Not content with simply flying drones, enthusiasts at Flite Test have built a remote-controlled helicarrier that can serve as a runway for smaller unmanned aircraft -- yes, it's a drone launching other drones. The example you see in the brief video below is crude and won't handle more than modestly-sized vehicles, but it's enough to show that the concept works. It's easy to see well-heeled hobbyists (and the military, for that matter) refining the concept to boost the maximum altitudes and ranges of robotic vehicles that would normally have to take off from terra firma.
Socialmatic camera priced at $300, channels Sting for marketing tagline
Polaroid's second chance has a price, and it's $299. At that amount though, it's hard to tell how much the novelty of instant-printing is worth in comparison to less kitschy and more capable options. What's more, Socialmatic is confirmed to ship with Android. Just imagine what a sepia-tinged faded print will look like six months on. [Thanks, Christian]
Polaroid to make Socialmatic Camera a reality for fans of Instagram, recursion
Instagram owes its distinctive identity to Polaroid's OneStep cameras; it's now time to return the favor. Socialmatic has signed a deal for a production, Polaroid-branded version of its 2012 Socialmatic Camera concept you see above, which translates the mobile app's retro icon to a real-world, instant-print shooter. While technical details are scarce, the agreement will see accessory maker C&A Marketing build and sell the design sometime in the first quarter of 2014. If the finished Polaroid work is anything like the concept, it could be more than a novelty with its interchangeable lens system, 4.3-inch touchscreen, Bluetooth, WiFi and 16GB of storage. We don't know if the camera will ship with Android, but we hope it does -- there would be an appropriately Xzibit-like aspect to running Instagram on top of an Instagram-shaped camera.
Microsoft posts Dev Center app for Windows Phone, tops 130,000 total apps
Despite launching the Windows Phone Dev Center months ago, Microsoft hasn't provided an option to run the dashboard on Windows Phone itself. The company is at last introducing some logical consistency (and recursion) by launching a Windows Phone version of its Windows Phone developer console. The app lets registered creators track downloads, crashes and feedback without turning to a computer, and a Live Tile can sometimes save the trouble of launching the app in the first place. Having the Dev Center always on hand may be increasingly necessary, based on Microsoft's own figures -- the Windows Phone Store is up to about 130,000 apps, or 10,000 more than it had in December. That's not quite the breakneck pace of other mobile stores, but it's quick enough to justify hitting the download link.
Firefox browser add-on lets us try Firefox OS in an all-Mozilla universe
We've had the chance to experiment with early versions of Firefox OS for awhile -- just not in Firefox the browser, where you'd nearly expect it to have shown first. At least one person appreciates that seemingly natural fit. A new Firefox OS simulator add-on, r2d2b2g, lets us try Mozilla's upcoming mobile platform from within the company's own browser for everything that doesn't depend on native hardware, including the browser and Firefox Marketplace. The goal is ostensibly to let developers test truly optimized web apps, although the simulator is also a good excuse for the curious to try Firefox OS without the hassle of a dedicated client or a real smartphone. If you can get by the early state of the simulator and the Xzibit jokes that come with putting Firefox on your Firefox, the extension is already providing a glimpse of a web-focused mobile future to Linux, Mac and Windows users at the source below.
MooresCloud Light runs Linux, puts LAMP on your lamp (video)
Yes, we'll admit that we borrowed that pun in the title. MooresCloud founder Mark Pesce's Xzibit reference is still a very apt description of the Light, his company's Linux-based LED lamp. The Australian team's box-shaped illumination runs the open OS (including a LAMP web server stack) on an integrated mini PC with an accelerometer and WiFi. The relative power and networking provide obvious advantages for home automation that we've seen elsewhere, but it's the sheer flexibility of a generalized, web-oriented platform that makes the difference: the Light can change colors based on photos or movement, sync light pulses to music and exploit a myriad of other tricks that should result from a future, web-based app store. When and how the Light launches will depend on a Kickstarter campaign to raise $700,000 AUD ($717,621 US) starting on October 16th, although the $99 AUD ($101 US) cost is just low enough that we could see ourselves open-sourcing a little more of the living room. At least, as long as we don't have to recompile our lamp kernel before some evening reading.
