FocuSoft Tech Blog

We promised we’d start publishing some of the more entertaining emails we get in our inbox, in the probably ridiculous hope that publicly shaming people may actually lessen the flow of these absurd messages.

A couple of weeks ago we posted a harried email written by a reader looking for legal help (see No, Don’t Sue Facebook. Yes, Do Get A New Boyfriend).

Now we’ve got another one. Hachette Filipacchi Media, which publishes notable magazines like Elle, Car and Driver and Road & Track, wants a little help with their search engine rankings.

The company’s Digital Outreach Coordinator, Automotive Group sent us an email telling us how much they loved a recent CrunchGear post about Ford. They offered to “link to your site on our microblogs to improve your pagerank.”

Hey, great! We love links. But this link requires a little payback. They want us to link two pages on CarAndDriver.com to the anchor text “Ford Vehicle Buying Guide and/or Ford Flex Buying Guide.”

We get reciprocal link spam emails all the time (all sites do), but it’s rare for a large brand to engage in link farming so boldly. For that, we salute them (and we passed it on to Google’s Matt Cutts).

The full email is below, with the links as they suggest them. We’ve added nofollow tags, but since the email doesn’t specify that we can’t do this, we’ll expect our links back shortly.

From: [removed]@hfmus.com>
Date: November 18, 2009 4:18:11 PM EST
To: “‘tips@crunchgear.com’”
Subject: Question for Matt

Matt,

I read your article on Ford’s efforts to cut down on petroleum usage by using wheatgrass as an alternative in its third row storage container. This concept is extremely interesting and I would love to be able to either refer your post on one of my microblogs or link to your site on our microblogs to improve your pagerank.

What I would need from you is to place either in the article or really anywhere you think on your site that makes sense: Ford Vehicle Buying Guide and/or Ford Flex Buying Guide.

Let me know what you think!

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

See the original post here: 
Email Of The Week: CarAndDriver Launches Bold Online Link Farm Strategy

We’ve heard that just about anything could give you ED, so what to do when things down below just aren’t working? You could pop lil’ blue pills or you could go with something more reliable: Shockwaves to the crotch.

According to research done at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, low-intensity shockwaves can actually reverse erectile problems unlike medications which require continued treatment. The actual shockwaves are described as not being painful, yet somehow it doesn’t really sound that way:

Each shockwave applied roughly 100 bar of pressure – some 20 times the air pressure in a bottle of champagne, but less than the pressure exerted by a woman in stiletto heels who weighs 132 lbs. (60 kg).

Youch. It’s creepy and it’s cooky, but until you can grow a replacement, this might be a more reliable way of dealing with malfunctioning equipment than ED medication. [Live Science]

Photo by otisarchives4

Here is the original post:
Shockwaves to the Crotch Treat Erectile Dysfunction [Ed]

There’s a bit of a kerfluffle at the moment over some of Best Buy’s holiday wishes. Well, I think this shows that they understand the true spirit of the season. Thanks, Best Buy. You’ve given the gift that keeps on giving, because it is imprisoned forever in the sunken city of R’lyeh. Ia!

View original here: 
Best Buy’s new Black Friday flier shows their true holiday spirit

Google and TiVo have been responsible for a good deal of anxiety within cable and network television circles. Put both together in the same sentence, and you have the potential need for some serious psychotherapy.

Yes, the two Silicon Valley companies are teaming up. Google, which sells television and online ads, today said it agreed to subscribe to TiVo's user data.

Here's where the fear and loathing come in. Google promises that advertisers pay only when their ads are seen. But TiVo lets viewers fast-forward through commercials. Now, with TiVo's data, collected from millions of digital video recorders across the country, Google can tell exactly which of those commercials are being bypassed. If all the commercials are being skipped, the channel gets no money. It's easy to see why TV executives get heartburn over this.

Google currently has an agreement with EchoStar to sell ads on its Dish Network and collect similar data from the satellite TV company's subscribers.

Information is the stock and trade of Google, which distinguishes itself by its ability to tell advertisers how often their ads are seen. On the Internet, that's a relatively trivial trick to tally up “clicks” or “impressions.” But that's harder for television.

“In general, the feeling is that TV needs more accountability for the audience it is delivering to advertisers,” said Todd Juenger, vice president of TiVo's 4-year-old audience research business, said in an interview. “Right now, TV is kind of fuzzy. It is such a powerful medium, but it suffers from a lack of tools to measure its impact. We help to provide those tools.”

Today, the 800-pound gorilla is Nielsen Co., whose TV show ratings determine how much networks can charge for ads on certain shows. But Nielsen focuses on how many people watch a given show.

Google, however, wants second-by-second feedback on whether people are watching ads and who is watching them. Through its deal with EchoStar, Google already processes more than

This time they’re reconstructed the Declaration of Independence, complete with edits and comments from the founding fathers. My US History is a bit fuzzy, but there are plenty of obvious jokes nestled in here, and I’m sure the Googlers have included a few more subtle ones as well. Unfortunately, it looks like you’ll have to have a Wave account if you want to witness the creation of one of the United States’ most important documents. But we’ve tried to grab a few of the key moments in the screenshots below.

As a demonstration of what you can do with Wave, the document succeeds in some respects. But frankly it can still be confusing to tell what’s going on. For example, when the founding fathers are casting their votes, the Wave only says something vague like “Thomas Jefferson edited this message” — it’s up to you to figure out what he did.

According to a tweet a few minutes ago from Wave team member Lars Rasmussen, the idea to create famous documents came from Tim O’Reilly. Hopefully we’ll be seeing more of these soon.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Read the rest here:
We Hold These Truths To Be Awesome: The Founding Fathers Give Google Wave A Try

The RTS web game Zombie Outbreak Simulator plops you down into a Google Maps-provided area of DC swarming with zombies. The outbreak’s details are up to you: How many civilians? Are they armed? It’s a killer timewaster (GET IT?).

Basically, it’s a zombie invasion in our nation’s capital. You can change the details of the invasion in any way you choose: Zombie speed, infection rate, number of civilians, percentage of civilians armed, number of highly effective police, and more. You can play around with it to either defeat the zombies (boooooring), let them take over the city and pretend like some of their more gruesome kills are of your opposition politician of choice (take that, Michele Bachmann!), or try to make the odds even and see who really wants it more. Warning: Turn down your speakers if you’re at work. The eerie post-rock soundtrack is accompanied by the expected array of flesh-hungry moans, which is the kind of thing that’s sort of tricky to explain away as part of your quarterly PowerPoint earnings presentation. [Class 3 Outbreak]

See the original post:
Zombie Outbreak Simulator: Sim City Plus Google Maps Plus the Undead [Games]

The central guideline of museum going has long been “do not touch.” Soon, the Ufizzi will flip that rule on its head by allowing visitors to flick and pinch their way through the museum’s works of art.

The Ufizzi Galley, a museum in Florence boasting one of the world’s most famous collections of Renaissance art, is readying touch screen stations where visitors will be able to browse the museum’s collection in a Cover Flow-esque format. The stations, dubbed “Ufizzi in a Touch,” were developed by an Italian company called Centrica and will be loaded with 100-megapixel shots of the Ufizzi’s most famous works which include Boticelli’s The Birth of Venus and Titian’s Venus of Urbino.

The novel technology, rolling out in December, will presumably have one of two effects: cheapening the Ufizzi’s masterpieces or elevating the elusive properly tagged iTunes library to work of art status. [CultofMac]

See the original post here:
"Ufizzi in a Touch" Brings Cover Flow to Renaissance Masterpieces [Art]

It’s been quite a few months since we’ve heard anything from Klausner Technologies, but it looks like the company has finally decided on its next set of targets that are allegedly infringing on its now infamous visual voicemail patents. As announced in a pair of expectedly terse press releases, Klausner says that both RIM and Motorola have now crossed into lawsuit territory with the Blackberry Bold 9700 and Motorola CLIQ, although it isn’t specifying what sort of result it’s looking for, or exactly how the two devices are infringing on its patents (at least some other RIM and Motorola devices are apparently covered under licenses granted to mobile operators). If the company’s past track record with Apple, Verizon, LG, and Google is any indication, however, we wouldn’t bet against a settlement.

Klausner takes aim at RIM, Motorola over visual voicemail patents originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In financial news, HP delivered something positive today. The fourth quarter has been a good one, with HP reporting a net income of $2.4 billion, in comparison to the $2.1 billion they reported last year. It’s nice to see some good news for a change.

HP has given credit to their Services division for the profits, despite a decline in software, imaging, and printing revenue. HP is also optimistic about 1Q 2010, and predicting earnings of $0.90 to $0.92 cents a share.

Read the rest here:
HP announces 4Q profits, and the news is good

There’s a certain type of person for whom airports and airplanes cease to be novel, and start to feel like home. This is depressing, on many levels! Which is why these people need gifts. Lots and lots of gifts.

BTW, if you hate the gallery format as much as the Grinch hated Christmas, click here.

A good pair of in-ear phones: It’s impossible to overstate how valuable these are. Not only do they sound better than your stock earbuds, they dull the chorus of engine sounds, snores, baby cries and not-as-subtle-as-your-seatmate-thinks beanfarts nearly as well as those Bose noise-canceling phones some airlines hand out in first class. As a bonus, you can sleep comfortably in these. Ultimate Ears MetroFi 170s are nice, clear and bassy for about fifty dollars, while Shure’s next-level SE210s can be scrounged for under $100. $50 for the UEs, $90 for the Shures. [Amazon, 2]

An iPod Touch: Yeah, I know, another iPod recommendation. Seriously though, perfect travel gadget: Video and music (and podcasts, sweet podcasts!) are travel must-haves, and games are a massive bonus. But what about apps to keep you busy or productive? White noise machines to put you to sleep? Internet access on the off chance your plane has free Wi-Fi? Look out for better deals come Friday, too. $200 [Apple]

Timbuk2 Commute 2.0: It’s a solid gear bag, with more than enough space for a laptop, DSLR, various accessories and a phone or two, and it’s TSA compliant, meaning you can leave your laptop halfway inside your bag through airport security for a slightly less terrible experience. Retails for about $100 in size medium, though you can find it for a bit less is you look around. $90 [Zappos]

Some juice: Almost every gadget charges by USB nowadays, a habit that the Duracell Instant Charger will happily oblige. It’s most useful as an emergency phone charger, though it’ll work for almost anything.

If your traveling giftee is a Man of the World, consider the Kensington International Adapter with USB. Here’s the theory: said traveler can plug almost whatever he wants into almost any wall socket, and charge his Duracell portable battery at the same time. MAXIMUM ELECTRICITY! $15 for the Duracell, $30 for the Kensington [Amazon, Target]

A stupid neck donut pillow: Because they’re awesome and anybody who says they
aren’t hasn’t slept on an airline cushion for eight hours. Plus, they’re cheap, and you can probably find one at your local Walmart if you don’t want to bother with shipping. $13 [Amazon]

Tethering: It’s a bit nerdy, and you might he some reservations about fiddling with someone else’s phone so much, especially given how sensitive carriers can be to this kind of thing, but if your traveler is aware of the risks, tethering is a wonderful gift. And not just wired or Bluetooth tethering—I’m talking Wi-Fi tethering, MiFi style (and without the extra contract, which would be a terrible gift). It can save money and headaches in hotels or airports with paid Wi-Fi, and it’ll be endearingly nerdy. Free! [For iPhone, jailbreak; for Android, rooting; for Palm, homebrew]

Those laptop privacy shields: People will think you’re looking at porn if you’re using one of these”>one of these, no matter how nice your suit is. Avoid, unless your traveler actually wants to look at porn. $45 [Amazon]

Methanol cell chargers: They’re too expensive to recommend now and it’s difficult to explain to the TSA how exactly they aren’t a dangerous explosive device, and for that matter, why you just don’t carry a normal battery, like a non-scary human? Hmm? These should be easy enough not to buy, since they barely even exist. Still!

Don’t forget to recommend your own favorite travel gadgets in comments-include pics and pricing if possible.

All Giz Wants is our annual round-up of favorite gift ideas, including amazing attainable objects and a few far-out fantasies. We’ll be popping guides catered to different interests several times per day for the next week, so keep checking back.

See more here:
Travel Gifts For People Who Sleep On Airplanes More Than In Beds [Giftguide]