focus

Though we haven't had a digital-imaging-related giveaway in a while, we have a good one this week from Lensbaby for all of you with dSLR cameras. We're not only offering up the Lensbaby Composer Lens but we're also throwing in the two newest additions to the Lensbaby Optic Swap System, the Fisheye Optic, and the Soft Focus Optic.

That's a pretty sweet package.  The good news is that if you win, Lensbaby will send you the right products for your specific camera, whether it's a Canon EF (EOS), Nikon F, Sony Alpha A / Minolta … Read more

PageFocus Pro is an enterprise-capable form-creation, management, and publishing application development package with an integrated database engine. PageFocus Reader is a free tool that you can use to view, navigate, print, and otherwise manage the software's proprietary files as well as PageFocus and PageFocus Pro Forms. It supports electronic data transfer and can be used to distribute e-catalogs, registration and order forms, and documents, as well as for data collection.

This program contains two separate executables, the PageFocus Editor, for creating and editing documents and forms, and the runtime Expo application, which handles the database end. Each uses the … Read more

Amid all the budget cuts at California's university and community college systems that administrators and students are facing, good news on a California campus is hard to come by these days.

Here is one bright spot.

Victor Valley College, a community college in Victorville, Calif., is partnering with SolFocus to add solar energy as a campus energy source and a part of its curriculum. It plans to install a 1-megawatt high-concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) solar farm on 6 acres of its campus.

The installation once completed will save the campus about a third in annual energy use and raise up … Read more

Freedom is a free, ironically named application that's designed to increase productivity by temporarily disabling networking on your computer so you won't be able to visit Web sites, send or receive e-mail, or get distracted by anything else over the Internet.

In Freedom's simple, spare interface, you set the number of minutes that you want your computer to be offline (totaling anywhere between 5 minutes and 8 hours), and you decide whether you want to allow access to your local network (for tasks like printing and file sharing) or completely disable all networking. In recent updates, Freedom … Read more

Research a better mousetrap for Google, and you could find yourself the recipient of a healthy grant.

The search giant debuted its first Google Focused Research Awards on Monday, announcing grants of $5.7 million to several fortunate college professors tackling projects that could benefit the company and hopefully benefit research efforts in general.

The grants cover four specific areas of interest to Google--machine learning, using mobile phones to collect information on health and the environment, energy-efficient computing, and privacy. The company said it has already invested in these fields but that there is much more to do, so it'… Read more

This video of the 2012 Ford Focus popped up on YouTube yesterday. The Focus will, no doubt, be the talk of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Both the four-door sedan and five-door hatchback body styles of the next-generation Focus will be previewed at the show.

According to an announcement today on Ford's Web site, the company is showing a "completely new 2.0-liter gasoline engine for the North American market that features DI and Twin Independent Variable Camshaft Timing (Ti-VCT) for enhanced performance and fuel efficiency. The new 2.0-liter DI Ti-VCT engine is up … Read more

DETROIT--Small cars are in vogue, and Ford unveiled arguably its most important model in the category Monday, a redesigned Ford Focus scheduled to start shipping in North America and Europe early in 2011.

Executive Chairman Bill Ford said at the North American International Auto Show here that fuel efficiency is the single most important feature in the new model. The car will be available with a 1.6-liter or 2.0-liter direct-injection engine that improves fuel economy 10 percent to 20 percent over the current Focus, the company said; the 2.0-liter model has up to 20 more horsepower than … Read more

For the first time in 23 years, Pepsi has decided to not run any advertisements during the Super Bowl. Instead, the nation’s second-biggest soft drink maker is plowing marketing dollars into its "Pepsi Refresh Project," an online community that lets Pepsi fans list their public service projects, which could range from helping to feed people to teaching children to read. Visitors to the site can vote to determine which projects receive money. The program will pay at least $20 million for projects people create to "refresh" communities. Last year, Pepsi spent $33 million advertising products such as Pepsi, Gatorade, and Cheetos during the Super Bowl, according to TNS Media Intelligence, $15 million of it was on Pepsi alone. Ad time last year for the NFL championship game cost about $3 million for 30 seconds, on average. Pepsi spokeswoman Nicole Bradley said Super Bowl ads don't work with the company's goals next year: "In 2010, each of our beverage brands has a strategy and marketing platform that will be less about a singular event and more about a movement." Pepsi's remarkable decision epitomizes the new paradigms of marketing: Online instead of TV; many-too-many instead of one-too-many; engagement instead of advertising; sharing instead of broadcasting; movements instead of events; communities instead of campaigns.… Read more

Cutter Joiner provides a simple way to dice or merge a song file for easier consumption. We were surprised to discover how easy both processes were and how useful this could be for music fans.

The program's interface was surprisingly simple, considering the technical work required. While we did need to visit the Help file's instructions, all the visual aids quickly helped us feel comfortable. Focus MP3 Cutter operates much like a standard MP3/media player; for example, it uses a sliding bar to adjust the time of the selected tune. Using it, we were able to listen … Read more