Author: coutinho

By Jason Kincaid, TechCrunch – May 24, 2010 at 03:30PM

They say a car loses half its value the minute you drive it off the lot. The same can often seem true of a brand new computer — after that lightning-quick first boot or two, PCs have the nasty habit of gradually bogging down until that new quad core processor doesn’t seem much faster than the last one you had. Enter TC Disrupt finalist Soluto, a startup that’s looking to help restore your computer to its former glory. And better yet, it’s going to hold those bloated, CPU hogging applications accountable.

Soluto has developed software that monitors your PC for things that are likely to annoy users — printing problems, crashy apps, resource hogs, and those frustrating applications that randomly cause your mouse to become useless for a few seconds at a time. It records which applications were running at the time of the hiccup, and analyzes low-level events to track things users aren’t even aware of, like which applications are competing for memory.

Even better: if a user somewhere in the world consistently has issues with a certain application and then makes a change that fixes it, Soluto can then tell other users who have had the same problem about the fix.

The product looks very compelling, with an impressive UI. After Soluto has analyzed your machine, it can suggest numerous fixes, including ‘no brainers’ like omitting certain applications from your bootup. It can show you your computer’s speed over time, mapping out when you installed a certain application — so you can see what led to the problem.

The company’s PCGenome project could actually help solve these problems. Soluto takes user-submitted data from its application and uses it to figure out which software works best on each computer. It can identify which hardware has had issues with which software. It can also help you pick out software that runs well on the specific model of PC you’re using, based on other users.

To monetize, Soluto has a few options. It will offer a freemium model with two plans: manual, which is suitable for people who are already computer savvy. This option tells you what’s wrong with your computer and how to fix it, but it’s up to you to do it. The second option is automatic: set it up, and Soluto will work in the background to fix tasks without your intervention. At this point this automatic setting does things like fix driver settings, and in the future it may be able to download applications that will work better on your machine than the one you’re currently using.

Soluto – Anti Frustration Software from Roee Adler on Vimeo.

Q&A:
Sacca: I wonder do you think this will migrate people back to PC on the platform. I’ve forgone that for the rest of my life probably.
A: It’s relevant for many computer platforms. We’re starting with PC but we will come and save Mac users.

Round 2 Business Presentation
Soluto was one of the companies chosen to proceed to round two of the TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield, where they talked about their business model. Here are my notes from that presentation:

We’re going to market with the geeks initially. There are hundreds of millions of people in pain. Consumer expenditures on security software is $3.6 billion. Snake oil solutions are pulling in $300 million.

We’re also going after SMB market. Value is easily quantifiable – we can look at boosts in workforce efficiently. We also extend the effective life of a PC, because people don’t get fed up with them and decide they need a new one. And we cut back on maintenance/support expenses.

Q: Distribution?
A: We raised a bunch of VC money to sustain free period where we create large PC genome. We believe we will do that. The challenge of being affiliated with one vendor or another is a huge challenge. We want to be objective.

Update:
Robert Scoble has posted a video of his interview with Soluto’s founders:

And here’s the entire presentation, at 51:30 in the session one video.

By Ben Blanquera, Techlife – May 23, 2010 at 10:09PM

Battelle chief lauds innovation partnerships with Ohio State : onCampus

Central Ohio has many of the ingredients necessary to become an even more significant part of the national innovation system — along the lines of Silicon Valley, North Carolina’s Research Triangle or the Route 128 circle around Boston, according to Battelle CEO Jeff Wadsworth.

Wadsworth, delivering the James F. Patterson Land-Grant University Lecture at the Nationwide and Ohio Farm Bureau 4H Center April 30, told attendees that land-grant universities must play a crucial role in both creating and sustaining the partnerships that will lead to prosperity.

After noting the similarities among the “innovation clusters,” such as the presence of a great university, significant research institutions, a highly-educated work force, the availability of venture capital and an entrepreneurial culture, he went on to say those noteworthy research clusters “are looking over their shoulders at us here, and they should.”

Considering central Ohio has all the above qualities as well as the nation’s best zoo, best science center (COSI), Chemical Abstracts Service and a host of top-tier businesses, he said, this region is poised to play a much stronger role in national innovation and serve as an even stronger economic engine for the entire Midwest.

Behind it all, though, he said “there are great expectations that it begins with us: All of you and your wonderful institution and those of us at Battelle.

“Like The Ohio State University, our mission can be boiled down to, quite simply, the betterment of mankind,” Wadsworth said. “Our ability to successfully resolve challenges including energy, health care, national security and education depends on innovation and on the strength and productivity of our economy.”

Wadsworth described the history of collaboration between OSU and Battelle, which didn’t really ignite until the beginning of this decade, when “an atmosphere of ‘not invented here’ yielded to ‘proudly found across King Avenue’ — in both directions.” The collaborative spark, he said, has led to nearly $80 million in projects that have involved both institutions in the past 10 years.

“We have changed the nature of our relationship from a transactional one, where individual researchers work together episodically on specific programs, to one of ‘engaged’ institutional partners,” he said. “Now our work together includes genuine collaborations in research, education, economic development and civic improvement.”

The interaction, he said, has been particularly effective in achieving results in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and economic development.

The effort behind STEM education, he said, is at least partly self-serving for both Ohio State and Battelle; with nearly 40 percent of the current workforce eligible to retire in the next decade, it behooves both institutions to train and nurture their replacements.

He said the collaborative efforts with Metro Early College High School and the Battelle Center for Math and Science Education Policy at the John Glenn School of Public Affairs both have shown early success.

He said the partners also have set a “strong foundation on the economic development front,” citing work developing the Route 315 Research and Technology Corridor and the founding of TechColumbus as well as the joint Ohio Bioproducts Innovation Center that already has led to a multitude of new products that benefit the Ohio economy.

By Jason Fitzpatrick, Lifehacker – May 22, 2010 at 07:00PM

If you’re looking for a way to decrease the eye-stinging power of cut onions without resorting to wearing a dive mask, a simple soak will do the trick.

The sting of onions is so powerful that people are always on the lookout for new ways to banish it without suiting up like a bio-hazard team. At the cooking-centered blog The Kitchn they highlight a trick shared by Rick Bayless of the show Mexico: One Plate at a Time:

His sous-chefs were busy prepping onions and he quickly stopped the camera operator to make sure he got a shot of their large buckets filled with water and drowning onions. (Onions can’t swim without water wings – didn’t you know?) He said that all the onions in his restaurants get a quick dip in the “pool” before being used in any dish: fresh or cooked. They don’t need to soak long, just enough to get them washed off after being peeled and having their ends cut off. Not only does it eliminate tears, it also brings out their true flavor without being so harsh.

This is definitely an interesting twist on cutting onions under the water and certainly easier. Have a clever kitchen trick to share? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

By Jason Fitzpatrick, Lifehacker – May 21, 2010 at 11:00AM

If you’re an astronomy buff and looking for a little bit of Friday Fun, you can pore over high-resolution photos of the Moon and help NASA flag and identify previously unseen craters.

Moon Zoo is an interactive project between NASA and the public, powered by the Zooniverse engine. Participants can mark craters, identify interesting features—fissures, abandoned space gear, alien outposts?—and help map the surface of the Moon in unprecedented detail.

If you’re going to take a break and do a little aimless browser clicking, you might as well head over to Moon Zoo and be the one who discovers the long-lost Moon Death Ray of Dr. Zindartha. Have a favorite and fun project to share in the vein of Moon Zoo’s crowd-sourced discovery? Let’s hear about it in the comments. Thanks ptsgp!

By bkuchera@arstechnica.com (Ben Kuchera), Ars Technica – May 21, 2010 at 07:51AM

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes back is one of the best science fiction films ever made. It’s also 30 years old today, so we give you official permission to feel old. While every movie in the original trilogy is endlessly quoted and referenced in pop culture, Empire Strikes Back is the film that comes the closest to being a great movie.

The film is jet black in tone. Luke lost the only person he knew that connected him to his father, and to the legacy of the Jedi Knights, when Obi-Wan was struck down by Vader in A New Hope (or as older Ars staffers still refer to it, Star Wars). Han Solo is biding his time with the rebels before leaving to return to his life of being a professional smuggler and scoundrel; the bounty on his head is becoming too much to bear. The rebels may have destroyed the Death Star, but they’re still undersupplied and on the run, holed up on a frozen hell of a planet. Darth Vader is scouring space to find them, and he seems oddly preoccupied with a young pilot named Luke Skywalker. It only goes downhill from there.

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By noreply@blogger.com (Damn Cool Pics), Damn Cool Pictures – May 18, 2010 at 07:48AM

Being two of the richest men in the world, did you ever wonder what Bill Gates and Steve Jobs might talk about when they were alone? Well, as this post implies, it might be entirely different than you might think. It might also be extremely funny.

By Gordon DeWitte, Toolmonger – January 05, 2010 at 03:14PM

There’s a neat YouTube video referenced on the Make blog showing a Jackson Lumber 3-Saw Vertical Edger in operation. A “lumber’s eye” view of a 3-saw edger is shown in the picture above: lots of heavy-duty exposed saw blades with an enclosure for the operator. I really liked watching those blades ripping through a large log, and then doing it all over again after the log is rotated. It would be kind of cool to have a 3-saw vertical edger in the garage — yup, that’s my 3-saw edger over there in the corner, behind the Bessemer converter — but the neighbors would probably complain about the noise.

How Lumber is Made [Make Online]
Jackson Lumber 3-Saw Vertical Edger at Work [YouTube]
Jackson Lumber Harvester [Manufacturer’s Site]

By Kevin Purdy, Lifehacker – June 14, 2010 at 08:30AM

If you’re anything like me, you’re doing a sad number of Google searches for things like “one gallon into pints”—while the garlic is quickly browning. This simple visualization of gallons, quarts, pints and cups locks in such volume conversions.

Image by Emma Christensen for The Kitchn. Apologies for an earlier misattribution.

Apartment Therapy’s The Kitchn blog points us to this clever visualization of how many of each major kitchen measurement fits inside one another. I found a big-enough graphic of the trick at a fifth grade math wiki page, but there are likely better and more printer-friendly sizes out there. If you like the idea, of course, you’re free to draw or Photoshop it yourself—and share the results in the comments, if you please.

Got a better way of remembering how many of something goes into something else? Tell us your grandmother’s little trick in the comments.

By The How-To Geek, Lifehacker – June 11, 2010 at 05:00PM

Windows only: Soluto bills itself as an “Anti-Frustration Software”, and it’s not hard to see why—it tracks all the applications in your system boot process, and tells you exactly which ones are slowing you down.

Once you’ve installed the software and rebooted your PC, Soluto springs into action, tracking every single process that runs during the boot process, and then allows you to easily drill down into the list of processes to see exact times for each one. To make it easier for the layman to understand what processes can be removed, the applications are grouped into “No-brainer” or “Potentially removable” groups.

Once you’ve identified an application that you’d like to deal with, you can drill down into the details and control it directly from this screen. You can “Pause” the application, which will effectively remove it from the boot process, or you can “Delay” it, which will change the service to run on a delay instead of directly during the boot process—which will get you to a working desktop a little quicker.

The graph next to the buttons shows you what other users did, so if you really have no idea what something is, you can use the wisdom of the crowd—though we’d like to point out if you really aren’t sure, you might want to Google it first, or ask a more geeky friend.

Clicking the Read more link next to the application name will bring you to a screen that shows even more details about a process,including the process name, what percentage of Soluto users have it installed, and a lot more information.

Other than tracking your boot process, you can also enable tracking while you are running your PC, which will allow Soluto to try and identify more problems with system slowdowns, compatibility, and other issues. You can choose the “My PC Just Frustrated Me” option, which will pop up a screen with some suggestions on what applications might be cause, and send the report to Soluto—though you won’t immediately see any results from doing so.

To better understand how Soluto works, check out this short video which does a great job of explaining the software, how to use it, and how it can help you troubleshoot the boot process:

According to our conversations with Roee Adler from Soluto, the software will always be free for end-users. Soluto’s application does send some information about your PC back to Soluto’s servers in order to analyze your system, but they assured us that it was limited strictly to data about the processes, drivers, and system components, and no personal information is transmitted or kept anywhere.

Soluto is a free download for Windows only, and definitely worth a look if you’d like to troubleshoot your system boot speed issues.

By Brian Barrett, Gizmodo – June 11, 2010 at 04:40PM

GE Engineer Matt Gluesenkamp decided that to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the laser, he’d destroy any hope you ever had of lightsabers becoming a reality. Hey, Matt, next time just blow up some balloons or something. More »





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