FocuSoft Tech Blog

More information about Moleskines than you require
Get Ready For The Firehose. Search Is About To Get Realtime, Real Fast.
Lexar announces new 600x Compact Flash cards
Microsoft makes a funny with Marketplace ‘apps lab’
DIY: Gear clock
AppsFire Launches App Star Awards To Find The Next Great iPhone App
Graphs and Charts Prove iPhone to Be the Most Successful Gadget Ever (Sort of) [Graphs]
Google Co-Founder’s Lessons In Cellphone Etiquette [Cellphone Etiquette]
i.Tech SolarVoice 908 is another first
First White Spaces Broadband Trial Spreads Wi-Fi Via Broadcast TV [WiFi]

More information about Moleskines than you require

Posted: 21 Oct 2009 07:33 PM PDT

3807664010_2725d43b4e

There are some men who pride themselves in their prowess at the gaming table or in bed and there are others who brag about being able to pick the winning horse at a racetrack. But how many men can write long, detailed posts about Moleskine notebooks, offering advice to the other Moleskine fans about how to best handle your Moleskine experience.

There is only one man who does that. His name is some dude who runs InkyJournal.

That's right. InkyJournal. The site seems to be dedicated to Moleskin hacks including how to decide on the best notebook for the best activity and how to add tabs to tabless notebooks. He even reviews a pen holder for Moleskins.

I fell in love with Moleskine in Paris (where else?) when I bought my first one from a stationary store right by Breguet's old workshop. While I love using them, I haven't gone to the lengths we find on this dude's site. However, that shouldn't stop us from trying.

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More information about Moleskines than you require

Get Ready For The Firehose. Search Is About To Get Realtime, Real Fast.

Posted: 21 Oct 2009 07:31 PM PDT

b736c67aa8rehose.png Get Ready For The Firehose. Search Is About To Get Realtime, Real Fast. After months of negotiations and holding both off at bay, Twitter now has agreements with both Bing and Google to give them access to its full feed of public Tweets. Both search engines have been yearning to drink directly from Twitter's the realtime firehose of micro-messages and all that they carry. A rudimentary version of Bing's Twitter search is already live, and it will soon add public Facebook updates to its search results as well.

While financial terms of the deals were not disclosed, full access to Twitter's data stream is very valuable to both search engines. Depending on how much Twitter was able squeeze out of Google and Bing for these licensing deals, they are likely to provide its first major source of revenue. (Imagine, if they have to pay by the Tweet).

Tweets and other realtime data streams are valuable to Google and Bing because for many types of searches (news, events, sports, stocks, shopping, etc.), the most recent information is often the most relevant. And it's hard to beat millions of people Tweetng out their thoughts—the "pulse of the planet," if you will—for realtime information about every subject imaginable. Google and Bing need access to this stream of data if they want to keep their results fresh and relevant.

Up until now, they had to try to index Twitter's site selectively by concentrating on high-profile Twitterers like celebrities. Twitter wouldn't let their robots gobble up and index every Tweet because its servers wouldn't be able to take that kind of pounding. But Twitter didn't just want to hand over the feed of all of its public Tweets (the firehose) to the search engines without getting paid for it either.

Now that Google and Bing are getting the firehose, it could have a big impact on search results. For the search engines, the firehose is much more valuable than any single Tweet. They can index it and sift it, looking for patterns and spikes in keywords and shared links to get a better sense of what people across the Web are paying attention to at any given moment. This data can then be folded back into regular search results, even if the top result isn't a Tweet.

For example, if a link to a post about healthcare reform on an obscure blog suddenly gains currency and is retweeted hundreds of times, that is a signal to perhaps rank that link higher in searches about "healthcare reform." If people stop Tweeting about it, then maybe it goes down in the ranking. But Google and Bing can use the firehose as a rich source of signals to mine and then blend back into regular search results.

Of course, Tweets and other micro-messages will become part of results. And how the search engines display them and rank them will also determine how relevant their results are. Here is where it gets interesting because realtime search is a hard problem that has not yet been solved. Do you show the most recent, random Tweets first, or the ones with the most authority? And how do you rank a Tweet? We already have PageRank, but what we now need is StreamRank.

Many startups are tackling this problem, as is Twitter itself. And now Google and Bing can try their hand at finding the most important bits of data in the firehose. The results should be a more relevant, faster feedback loop between data appearing on the Internet and the search engines finding it.

Photo credit: Flickr/ZeroOne

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Get Ready For The Firehose. Search Is About To Get Realtime, Real Fast.

Lexar announces new 600x Compact Flash cards

Posted: 21 Oct 2009 07:30 PM PDT

PRO_CF_32GB Lexar announced their new 600x compact flash cards today. It’s not unexpected that the faster speed memory cards are coming out, given the UDMA requirements of cameras like the Canon 7D.

The new Lexar cards have a amazing 90MB/s transfer rate when used in a device that supports the new UDMA 6 protocol. This is particularly important for the generation of cameras that shoot video, since the write speed is critical when you are shooting in HD.

The new cards are available in 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB sizes. The 8GB and 16GB cards are available now, the 32GB should be available in November. The 8GB version sells for $149, the 16GB version sells for $249. There isn’t any pricing available for 32GB version, but you can safely assume it will not be cheap.

You can read the press release here.

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Lexar announces new 600x Compact Flash cards

Microsoft makes a funny with Marketplace ‘apps lab’

Posted: 21 Oct 2009 07:30 PM PDT

It’s another Microsoft video, another few minutes of hilarious, unintentional pain. This time Microsoft is tackling the topic of apps, riffing on the abundance of gimmick apps for the iPhone. Unfortunately for Microsoft, we’d think the last thing it would want to do is draw comparisons between Apple’s App Store and the company’s freshly minted Windows Marketplace for Mobile. Video is after the break.

[Via TUAW]

Continue reading Microsoft makes a funny with Marketplace ‘apps lab’

Filed under: Cellphones

Microsoft makes a funny with Marketplace ‘apps lab’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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DIY: Gear clock

Posted: 21 Oct 2009 07:00 PM PDT

So let’s say you need a new clock. Sure, you could go spend $19.99 (or less) and just go buy one, but wouldn’t it be more fun to bust out the CNC machine and build one yourself? Alan Parekh of Hacked Gadgets thought it would be, and he just happened to have a new CNC machine lying around.

Alan cut the gears on his CNC router, used a micro-controller and a step motor, and created a pretty cool wall clock. He explains how he did it fairly well in the video, but his site has even more detailed instructions.

[via Make]

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DIY: Gear clock

AppsFire Launches App Star Awards To Find The Next Great iPhone App

Posted: 21 Oct 2009 07:00 PM PDT

e7ccb8f8d150x250.jpg AppsFire Launches App Star Awards To Find The Next Great iPhone App

Appsfire, the service for sharing iPhone Apps with anyone, has announced that they are doing a contest called App Star Awards, in partnership with SFR/AppliStore and LeWeb.

The idea is very simple. Anyone that has a legit iPhone application that doesn’t require jailbreaking, can submit a 30 second video to the contest, even if the app is not totally finished. 30 clips will be preselected, 10 in each category — games, entertainment, utility and other. Those clips will be reviewed and rated by a jury (full list below). Three winners, one in each category, will get a check of $1,500 and a free ad campaign with participating partners.

The results will be announced on stage at LeWeb in Paris on December 9th. TechCrunch Europe is organizing the startup competition in partnership with LeWeb.

AppsFire is currently taking pre-registrations on the site, but submissions will open on November 23.

The full list of jury members:

Michael Arrington (TechCrunch)
Loic Le Meur (Seesmic.com)
Marshall Kirkpatrick (ReadWriteWeb.com)
Robert Scoble
Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC)
Jean Francois Caillard (SFR)
Eyal Magen (Gigya)
Rani Cohen (TuneWiki)
David Sifry (Offbeat Guides, Technorati)
David Marcus (Zong)
Zee M Kane (TheNextWeb, WeDoCreative)
Patrick Jordan, Just Another iPhone Blog
Yaron Samid (TechAviv.com)
Louis Gray
Daniel Brusilovsky

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AppsFire Launches App Star Awards To Find The Next Great iPhone App

Graphs and Charts Prove iPhone to Be the Most Successful Gadget Ever (Sort of) [Graphs]

Posted: 21 Oct 2009 07:00 PM PDT

These charts, from the Web 2.0 Summit, show the iPhone’s growth in both data usage and sheer sales compared to other blockbuster gadget releases—and (not without caveats, natch), it blows most of them out of the water.

Before I show these charts, created by Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker, I should mention the obvious: Comparing one gadget to another in a different category is messy and inconclusive. iPhone adoption is different than, say, Wii adoption for lots of reasons: The iPhone is a phone, a gadget which pretty much everybody has and needs, and it combined the capabilities of a phone with that of an established hit, the iPod. In contrast, the Wii is a videogame system, a category with a totally different demographic, requiring different kinds of software and accessories. They’re just not the same (and I only mentioned a couple reasons), and comparing unit shipments doesn’t necessarily prove anything. However, it is interesting to see exactly what an absolute blockbuster the iPhone has been over its first ten quarters, and while we can’t make any sweeping conclusions, we can say that the iPhone/iPod Touch is, as TechCrunch says, “the fastest-growing consumer electronics product of all time.”

This next chart is also inconclusive, but pretty interesting: It compares the rate of growth in mobile internet to the rate of growth in desktop internet, in the mid-90s. Caveats apply again, of course, as the adoption of mobile internet is much easier than going from no internet to desktop internet. But certainly the iPhone has introduced easy-to-use mobile internet to the masses in much the same way that Netscape and AOL brought it to the home user a decade and a half ago, and the iPhone is making way quicker work of it.

As I ~~said~~ repeated, these charts aren’t exactly ironclad evidence. But they do put the iPhone’s remarkable rise to the top of the smartphone game in perspective, and it’s hard to show in charts and graphs exactly how much it’s changed the game of mobile devices. Those sales records are pretty impressive, after all, and there’s no denying the impact it’s had on today’s gadget landscape. [TechCrunch via Twitter]

Graphs and Charts Prove iPhone to Be the Most Successful Gadget Ever (Sort of) [Graphs]

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Graphs and Charts Prove iPhone to Be the Most Successful Gadget Ever (Sort of) [Graphs]

Google Co-Founder’s Lessons In Cellphone Etiquette [Cellphone Etiquette]

Posted: 21 Oct 2009 06:43 PM PDT

Google’s Larry Page gives us a lesson in cellphone faux pas by ignoring poor onetime movie mogul, Barry Diller, for a PDA. Actually, he doesn’t just ignore the man, he flat-out lets him know that the gadget is more important.

While in a meeting with the Google boys, Diller had this exchange after questioning Page’s inattentiveness:

“I said to Larry, 'Is this boring?’ “

“No. I’m interested. I always do this,” Page said.

“Well, you can’t do this,” Diller said. “Choose.”

“I’ll do this,” Page said matter-of-factly, not lifting his eyes from his handheld device.

Youch. Wonder what app had Page’s attention. [New Yorker via Valleywag]

Google Co Founders Lessons In Cellphone Etiquette [Cellphone Etiquette]

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Google Co-Founder’s Lessons In Cellphone Etiquette [Cellphone Etiquette]

i.Tech SolarVoice 908 is another first

Posted: 21 Oct 2009 06:43 PM PDT

Every once in a while, a “tech-first” is reached, and i.Tech has recently announced that their SolarVoice 908 is the first solar-powered Bluetooth headset.

I had a chance to try it out, and it paired effortlessly with my cellular phone. Oddly enough, it charged quite quickly. I can’t help but wonder if it was already charged by facing the sun.

As it is, it has five hours worth of talk time, and standby time of 140 hours. That is without sunlight, it can supposedly have infinite standby time provided it has some sun. A flashing green light indicates that it is solar charging.

Of course, the solar-powered cell is just the main feature, as it also has noise reduction for call clarity that employs “advanced digital signal processing software”. It also has multipoint connection to allow the SolarVoice 908 to connect to two cellular phones simultaneously.

It has a design that fits into the ear and will stay there, but it comes with a plastic wire that will go around the ear for extra security. It also comes with a tiny cradle with some adhesive, which is a good place to keep the headset when not in use.

You should be able to get the i.Tech SolarVoice 908 for about $66.69 on sites like Amazon.

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First White Spaces Broadband Trial Spreads Wi-Fi Via Broadcast TV [WiFi]

Posted: 21 Oct 2009 06:40 PM PDT

eadb9b4ed8tic 03.jpg First White Spaces Broadband Trial Spreads Wi Fi Via Broadcast TV [WiFi] The NAB has been battling white spaces networks for years, but the technology that repurposes unused TV spectrum as a Wi-Fi signal is finally getting a trial period in Claudville, Virginia.

The idea is simple, but the politics aren’t. All white spaces networks do is stick data into the unused frequencies that neighbor television signals, but broadcasters are afraid that TV signals aren’t robust enough to handle data being packed in so tightly. This trial will be the first real-world test of that belief.

Hopefully all will go well and the tech will be able to provide rural communities with the broadband they’ve been hurting for. [Ars Technica]

Image via FutureAtlas