GOOGLE IS FASTER THAN BING BY AJAX SEARCH

Since February, Google has been quietly testing a new type of search functionality: AJAX search. Basically, Google uses more advanced JavaScript to make search result pages load even faster by only loading new information as needed on new queries. And while it doesn’t appear to be rolling out on a large scale yet, more users are starting to notice it.

One such user is Mike Stoppelman, a software engineer at Yelp. But Stoppelman’s take on it is interesting, and worth noting because before he worked at Yelp, he was an engineer at Google for four years. As Stoppelman sees it, Google is bringing out AJAX Search to combat Microsoft’s Bing search product, which has garnered quite a bit of attention since its launch a few months ago. Some claim that Bing is faster than Google, but an AJAX GOOGLE WOULD UNDOUBTEDLY BE FASTER THAN BING WITH A LIGHTENING SPEED.

Of course, as I mentioned, Google has been testing this since well before Bing was born, but the timing of a wider roll-out could well be a result of Bing. Google has denied making changes as a result of competitors in the past, most recently for its new "Caffeine", but at some point they have to concede that they do watch what rivals are doing and change plans accordingly — it would be foolish not to. It’s worth noting that Caffeine appears to use AJAX search results as well.

There’s also the issue of whether or not this speed increase really matters all that much? After all, both Google and Bing are now serving up results in fractions of a second, and any increase probably isn’t going to be perceived in a meaningful way by end users.

But remember, this is Google. A move to shave off fractions of a second definitely seems like something they would focus on, knowing that those fractions add up. Shave enough fractions of a second off of everyone’s searches and you’ll be supplying people with more time to do more searches — which of course means more ads served, and most importantly, more money.

So how will you know if you’re getting the AJAX results? Look at the URL. A normal Google Search has something like the following at its end:

/search?q=QUERY

An AJAX search result replaces that with something that looks like:

/#q=QUERY

As I mentioned, if you don’t see the AJAX results in your regular Google results, you can see it on the Caffeine test page here.

AJAX POWERED GOOGLE PAGE:

http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

WHY DON'T TEENS TWEET?

Over the last few months everyone has weighed in on the question of “Why Don’t Teens Tweet” — except, it would appear, teens. We recently ran a survey of 10,000+ US teens aged 13 – 17 to see if we could add anything new to the question. As it turns out, the question itself is flawed.

To date, reasons given for the alleged aversion of teens to Twitter have ranged from the condescending “Because they have nothing to say,” to the responsible “Because it doesn’t feel safe,” to the Letterman-like “Because they can’t afford it” — at least without a mobile data plan.

Of course, all of these reasons are predicated on the widely accepted notion that “Teens Don’t Tweet” — that there is a phenomenon that needs to be explained. As recently as last week even, the New York Times cited the fact that only 11% of Twitter is teen as evidence of Twitter’s unpopularity to that group.

The implication is that 11% is a small number, but if we look deeper, it turns out that Twitter has a higher concentration of teens than Facebook. You can see in the chart below that Facebook is only 9% teen, so Twitter is actually more teen than Facebook, which rightly has never been perceived as having a “teen problem.” Facebook has so many users that teens just can’t be that large a percentage of the service, by definition.

To be sure, the truthiness of the headline “Teens Don’t Tweet” is persuasive. It really does feel true, and on one level it is: the vast majority of teens don’t tweet. Of course, the vast majority of the adult population doesn’t tweet either.

As it turns out, teens actually tweet more than the general population, prompting Silicon Valley Insider to say yesterday, “Kids Don’t Hate Twitter Anymore.” According to comScore, Twitter’s unique visitor composition index in the 12 – 17 age group is 118 (a value over 100 represents a higher concentration of unique visitors from that age group as compared to the age group’s concentration across the entire web). More interestingly, Twitter’s 12 – 17 composition index of 118 is higher than its composition index in the 25 – 34 and 35 – 44 age groups. The bottom line: Twitter actually skews more teen than the average site, and much more teen than Facebook.

Similarly, the teens who visit Twitter do so 5.2 times per month, more often than users aged 25 – 44, who visit fewer than 5 times per month.

But, there is a lot more to the story than widespread misinterpretation of data. After all, why don’t the majority of teens tweet? The issue of teens and Twitter first got legs when Morgan Stanley published an influential report written by Matthew Robson, a 15-year-old intern from the UK, which became an instant hit. Here is the reason the report suggested that teens don’t tweet:

Most have signed up to the service, but then just leave it as they realize that they are not going to update it (mostly because texting twitter uses up credit, and they would rather text friends with that credit).

To validate this explanation, we ran a survey asking thousands of US teens whether text messaging charges have anything to do with whether or not they use Twitter, and over 90% said: “No — I wouldn’t use Twitter anyway.” (Note: unlimited texting plans are common in the US, whereas the Morgan Stanley report was written from the perspective of a UK teen.)

Similarly, we looked into the idea that maybe teens are turned off by Twitter’s openness and consider it unsafe. We found no support for this hypothesis either, with almost no one citing “It’s too open” or “It’s not safe” as reasons they don’t use Twitter, as the chart below shows.

So why? Why doesn’t Twitter engender passion in even most of the teens who take the plunge and sign up for an account? The answer lies in the reasons teens do use Twitter. Of teens with a Twitter account, the top 4 reasons cited for using the service are, in order:

• Update My Status
• Keep Up With My Favorite Musicians, Bands, or Celebrities
• Stay Current with What’s Going On in the World
• Keep Up with Friends I Know

Free the H-1Bs, Free the USA Economy

Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Executive in Residence at Duke University.

He have a suggestion for our President on how to boost economic growth without spending a penny: Free the H-1B’s.

More than a million doctors, engineers, scientists, researchers, and other skilled workers in the U.S. are stuck in “immigration limbo.” They entered the country legally and have contributed disproportionately to our nation’s competitiveness. They paid our high taxes and have been model citizens. All they want to do is to share the American dream and help us grow our economy.

They could be starting companies, buying houses, building community centers, and splurging like Americans. But because we don’t have enough permanent-resident visas (green cards) for them, they’re stuck in the same old jobs they had maybe a decade ago when they entered this country. They are getting really frustrated and many are returning to their home countries to become unwilling competitors. And they are taking our economic recovery with them.

TWEETYSTOCK iPhone App

TWEETTYSTOCK iPHONE APP HELPS YOU TO FOLLOW YOUR STOCK PORTFOLIO ON TWITTER:

People have been talking about the market on Twitter almost as long as there's been a Twitter. Some Twitter clients even automatically turn stock symbols into links. That's a good start, but if you're a Twitter user and market junkie, TweetyStock is a must-have iPhone app. It's like a stock-specific Twitter client that lets you follow tweets about stocks in your portfolio, view detailed charts from Yahoo Finance, and a lot more. Maybe this is a niche product, but it's got its niche pretty well handled.

TweetyStock's extensive features all work within the app; there's no need to open links in MobileSafari. For your 2 dollars, you get Twitter feeds and regular news feeds for your whole portfolio, or just a single stock. You also get two kinds of charts, and a basic table that shows at a glance whether your stocks are up or down. TweetyStock makes Apple's built-in stock app look a little shabby, especially if you're a serious trader.

MICROSOFT POPFLY IS DEAD

Microsoft's Popfly, a place to create games and game mashups, closed down on August 24. Although all the site's users lost their accounts, Popfly is far from completely dead. Microsoft has open-sourced the code and put it on Codeplex, free to be used by any aspiring game makers out there.

Of course, features that depend on the now-defunct site, like high scores, aren't included, but someone ambitious could host them in the future. On the Popfly page at CodePlex, the developers have left some suggestions for directions people could take with the code:

• *Example code for a simple, general purpose Silverlight game engine
• Create a Silverlight 3 scene / actor / behavior editor for the data format and make new games
• Porting the engine to run your games on other platforms, like XBox 360 or Zune via XNA Game Studio or client PC via WPF
• Building a copy of the game engine to use with your game data to post on your website.
• Fix multi-actor collision resolution and make Lots O' Peas go faster!
• Add new features like grid-based terrain, dialog trees, etc
  

I'm not sure how likely it is that any of this will actually get done, but there have to be some coders out there with time on their hands.

11 USEFUL WINDOWS APPS TIES TO YOUR GMAIL ACCOUNT

Love your GMAIL account but want to do more with it? If you're a Windows user, there are plenty of great (and free) apps that take advantage of your massive inbox in the cloud!

GBridge sets up a Hamachi-like VPN and offers loads of cool features for your Windows desktop, including file sharing, backup and synchronization, and remote control via VNC. Since the developers added support for Google Apps domains, this has become a great way to keep your office team connected.

GMail Drive is an oldie but a goodie. I've got several of gigs available, and there's no chance I'm going to fill that up with actual email anytime soon. Plug GMail Drive into Windows, and you can drop files into your extra space just like any other folder on your system.

g2peer allows simple file sharing with your friends via your GMail account. Don't need the other features from GBridge? g2peer is a good option. Your pals at the other end don't even need to install the app to get files from you since it supports "command line" interaction via GMail - check the help page to see how it works.

GMail Backup gives you an easy way to save a copy of your precious cloud-based inbox on your local system. This app requires IMAP access to GMail, so make sure you've enabled it in your preferences. GMB also has a restore feature - which makes it a handy way to migrate from one GMail address to another should you ever need to do that.

GPhoto Space provides you with one more place you store and share photos online. Why bother? Maybe you don't want to set up a Flickr or Picasa Web album. Maybe you just want a mostly private place to store some photos for personal viewing.

Affixa offers an easy way to tell Windows GMail is your default mail client and to send file attachments right from your desktop. If you'd rather not bother with a desktop email app and IMAP or POP access to GMail, Affixa is a handy way to bridge the gap between your PC and the cloud.

Pidgin, though it doesn't technically provide any straight-up GMail functionality, does let you chat with your GMail contacts who are signed in to chat. The newest version even provides Google Voice and Video support.

Digsby, of course, will let you chat with those people too - you'll just need to use Tokbox if you want voice and video chat. It does, however, support incoming mail notifications. As always, we recommend grabbing the alternate installer.

Gmail Notifier Plus (right) makes a slick little addition to your Windows 7 desktop, with jumplist support and the ability to check multiple GMail accounts.


The GMail Reader Gadget is one of the best options available for your Windows 7 or Vista Sidebar - assuming you're into gadgets, of course.

Got another favorite app that plays nicely with GMail? Share it in the comments!

APPLE IS ONLY ONE LAUGHING IN MOBILE PHONE BUSINESS NOW

Apple today reported a 6.9 million iPhones shipped the last quarter, passing by 3 million the 10 million mark set by Apple when the iPhone was introduced, something that places Apple in a healthy position in a industry that live with a shrinking earning margin.

Apple has done a remarkable job beating RIM, selling 13 million of iPhone and generating enough money to guarantee the innovation at home. Apple has taken the market by storm, created a trend in mobile telephony and mandate what and how to do business, it is growing and surpassing established companies that used to be the innovators, but have seen its business eroded completely by Apple strong presence in that sector.

Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola have shown that, while the were driving the market, today is strongly difficult for them to compete with Apple with the same level of innovation and price.

The problem in competing with the iPhone is that Apple is an unpredictable company, that really know how and when sacrify or risk its business to conquer a broader market, Apple killed the most requested iPod and introduced a refined version, risking to lose sales while trying to provide a better product, this is something nobody would even try, but that move resulted in better sales and better quarter earnings.

So, if rivals are thinking that this success will put Apple to rest while they prepare a iPhone killing strategy, they must wake up now, Apple won’t rest on its laurels and the next iPhone killer will be created by Apple itself.

MAKE USB FLASH DRIVE FOR WINDOWS

Making a bootable USB flash drive for Windows Vista and Windows 7 isn't all that tricky, but it's always nice to find an app that simplifies things. Not only does WINTOFLASH make the process about as easy as it can get, but it can also create Windows XP, Server 2003, and Server 2008 installers.

The default options make it easy to roll a silent Windows install, or you can flip the custom switch and specify the exact setup parameters you want to use.

The handy app also has one more trick up its sleeve: moving Windows Preinstall environments. PE discs can be extremely handy for troubleshooting and repairs, and being able to painlessly zap them over to a USB flash drive means not having to burn a new copy every time someone's haggard old optical drive decides to chew up your CD.

WinToFlash is a free download and is totally portable. It's an excellent tool to add to your USB-related utilities.

YAHOO MESSENGER 10 WITH BETTER VIDOE CHAT

Yahoo is getting ready to roll out the latest version of its Yahoo Messenger chat app, and a beta version of Yahoo Messenger 10 is already available for Windows users. This time around, the focus is on new features for webcams. Now you can start a high-quality video call (with audio) from within an IM window, which is a step up from the low-quality video calls with no audio that Yahoo had before.

These improvements are only for 1:1 calls to other buddies who have Yahoo Messenger 10, though. If you're using Yahoo Messenger to broadcast video to multiple people, you're still stuck with no sound and lower video quality. Video calling also gets some of the features you might be used to from apps like Skype: putting calls on hold, entering full screen mode, and repositioning your video windows.

Yahoo's also jumping on the "activity stream" bandwagon: you can put your buddy list in update mode, and see what your friends are doing on other social sites, like Twitter and Last.fm. You can start a chat from the updates view, and the update you're talking about will show up inline in your IM window, so your friends know what you're responding to. Yahoo Messenger 10 also finally has the ability to sort your buddy list by availability, so the contacts who are actually online and available will show up at the top.

GIMP 2.7 RELEASED

The folks behind the open source GIMP image editing application have released the first beta build of GIMP 2.7. The application is available for Windows and Linux, although the download server for Gimp 2.7 beta seems to be a bit fuzzy at the moment. You can get the source code from a mirror, or download the Windows installer from Filehippo.

As you can see from the screengrab of the installer, this is not a stable release. And it crashed on me a few times as I tried out some of the new features, including the new on-canvas text editor. But here are a few of the changes in GIMP 2.7:

• GIMP resources such as brushes and patterns are now taggable.
• Save as and Export functions have been separated. To save a file as anything other than an XCF file, you need to use Export.
• Enhanced size entry widget
• Refinements to the layer mode menus
• Status bar feedback for keyboard changes to brush patterns

MOZILLA WEAVE 0.6

Today,MOZILLA WEAVE took another step forward. The browser synchronization add-on is now at version 0.6 and better than ever.

Apart from the old Weave sync kung fu - bookmarks, history, and passwords - the newest version can now keep your Personas up to date across multiple machines. Performance has gotten another boost, and there's a new about:weave page that allows for easier management of your preferences and Weave account.

The first-time sync also now includes the option to specify which direction you want to sync. That's a welcome change, since it means no more deafult Firefox bookmarks sneaking into my Weave profile in the cloud.

Version .6 is proof that Weave is moving in the right direction - though I'd still like to see the option to sync add-ons and themes. Perhaps that's coming in future builds. We'll have to wait and see.

LOGMEIN FREE SERVICE REMOTE PC ACCESS

LogMeIn provides a suite of free and commercial applications that let you remotely log onto your PC or Mac from any machine with a web browser. But there are a few drawbacks. While you really can use pretty much any web browser, you'll have better results with Internet Explorer or Firefox because those applications can handle an ActiveX control or plugin. If you're using a different browser, your remote session may look more like a slideshow than a live view of your remote computer.

But the LogMeIn folks are getting to roll out a handful of new features including support for a Flash-based control that should work better with other browsers including Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera.

The new LogMeIn Free will also include the ability to wake some computers (depending on their hardware) from sleep using wake-on-LAN controls. The LogMeIn web site has also been redesigned and you can start using the new layout now by logging into beta.logmein.com.

CODEWEAVERS URGE FREE CROSSOVER USERS TO PAY

Once upon a time, about 10 months ago, a company called CodeWeavers ran a promotion allowing customers to download and install their software fore free. CodeWeavers suite of Crossover apps basically lets users run a number of Windows games and utilities including PhotoShop, Office, and World of Warcraft on Mac or Linux machines. The programs usually run about $40 to $70, but thanks to a heck of a lot of publicity, CodeWeavers wound up giving away an estimated $45 million dollars worh of software in one day.

On the one hand, the promotion wound up boosting CodeWeaver's customer base by 400% (although I'm certain some people downloaded the application without ever getting around to installing it). On the other hand, a huge number of people who might otherwise have paid for the software over the last 10 months might have decided there wasn't much reason to do so.

Now that the 1 year anniversary of the big promotion is coming up, CodeWeavers is sending out emails to the roughly 650,000 people who downloaded the free software asking them to consider paying for ongoing support. The company is also planning on releasing a new version of the software in December, meaning anyone who pays for support will get the update, while those who let their 1 year subscription expire will have to pay full price for the new version.

Do you need support in order to keep using the software. No. But even if you don't need the updates or customer support, you might want to think about taking pity on a company that wound up giving away a ridiculous amount of software in one day last year at the risk of dramatically decreasing revenue for the next year. Last December, the company explained that sales were down 25% since the october promotion, but I'm not sure what the impact has been since then.

s4ve.as 24 Hours File Hosting

There are plenty of places that will host your files for free. Many of them, however, have bandwidth limits or size restrictions, or are just too darn complicated to bother with. s4ve.as offers the basics I want from a free host and is dead simple to use.

As Jay mentioned to me, it's kind of like a beefed-up Senduit. While Senduit offers customizable time-before-self-destruct, it's got a 100Mb limit. That's just not enough in a lot of cases. s4ve.as does away with size limitations, so you're free to upload whatever the heck you want.

Simplicity is key here - browser for any file, and click upload. When the transfer is complete, integrated bit.ly support gives you an automatic short url to paste into sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Just make sure you tell your pals to grab it within 24 hours. After that, it's gone, daddy, gone.

APPLE IPHONE ON LOACTION SPECIFIC HOMESCREEN

According to a patent filing back in February, Apple may be working on a new loaction specific home screen for the iPhone. In the patent, Apple outlines how a user could set a persistent default location in the weather app, and set location-based arrangements of app icons on the home screen. The patent drawings show icons for local contacts, local weather, local time and local maps.

Instead of having to manually enter your location, you'd have a "here" button within the weather app (and possibly others?) that would use your current location to configure everything for you. The patent also suggests that apps could get location-specific icons, featuring landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge or the New York City skyline. These features obviously aren't of much interest for those who don't travel, but for all you bicoastal, iPhone-toting gadabouts, this is good news.

TRICKS TO BRING OLD WINDOWS TASKBAR IN LATEST WINDOWS 7

Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows 7, brings a slew of tweaks and improvements. While most adjustments are under the hood, the graphical user interface has received a facelift as well. One of the first changes you will notice is the revamped taskbar. Unofficially dubbed the "Superbar," this new feature is essentially a mash-up of the traditional Windows Quick Launch/taskbar and the Mac OS X dock.

As it's often the case with any significant change in the way we use software,opinions will vary. While many like to stick to the "if it's not broken, don't fix it" philosophy, I happen to like the new taskbar a lot. Unfortunately for the those of you who don't, defaulting to the ways of old isn't as simple as unchecking Superbar in favor of Quick Launch, so you'll have to get a little hands-on. Keep reading to bring back the taskbar you're familiar with.

Start by right clicking the Superbar, mouse over Toolbars and click New toolbar. When prompted to enter a folder directory, paste the following string of text:

%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

Then click Select Folder.

A labeled Quick Launch bar should appear near the clock.

To configure the Quick Launch bar to how it was in previous versions of Windows, you'll have to make a few swift changes. Start by right clicking the Superbar and unchecking Lock the taskbar. You should see a few dotted lines appear near the Quick Launch bar.

Next, right click on the Quick Launch bar, uncheck Show text, and Show title. Then you'll need to right click on all your Superbar icons and unpin them.

Grab the dotted lines near the Quick Launch bar and pull it all the way to the Start button. By doing so, the bar where your applications load will be bumped near the clock - so pull those dotted lines back to the left near your Quick Launch bar.

Now, your open application

will still be using Windows 7's small collapsed buttons instead of the long text-filled ones. To change that, right click on the Superbar and head into Properties.

Click the drop down menu next to Taskbar buttons and choose either of the last two options. When you're done, click Ok and recheck Lock the taskbar.

The finished product should look something like this:

BLU-RAY DRIVES SLOW ADOPTION IN PCs

According to research firm iSuppli,Blu-ray drives have a long path ahead before establishing a strong presence in the PC arena. The firm concluded that despite the accelerated consumption of Blu-ray players, as well as more and cheaper high-definition movie titles, few PCs are Blu-ray equipped. It is estimated that by 2013 Blu-ray drives will be present in 16.3% of shipped PCs - up from 3.6% this year.

iSuppli senior analyst Michael Yang said the technology would eventually find success, but that success will be limited in the PC sector through the next five years. Yang went on to add that cost is the primary hurdle. Consumers are simply unwilling to pay a premium for high-definition PC drives. Rightfully so, overall there is a pretty limited library of Blu-ray content.

Yang compared Blu-ray's transition to dominance with previous eras of storage media. The 3.5" floppy drive lived for some 15-plus years before falling out to CDs, which eventually succumbed to the present DVD. The change is typically stimulated by a rapid adoption in everything including music, games, and movies - a crucial phase that Blu-ray has yet to hit.

TV PROVIDERS TEST ONLINE BROADCASTS

Scrambling to protect their subscription revenue, TV providers Time Warner Cable and Verizon are planning to offer their paying customers shows on the Web. The old broadcast model could face a serious threat if cable shows became widely available on the Internet. The collective traditional media is already feeling the Web's presence, and it seems they are looking to nip it in the bud.

Dubbed TV Everywhere, Time Warner's trial of the online TV service will include shows from the NBC Universal-owned Syfy channel; Time Warner's TNT, HBO and TBS; Cablevision System's AMC, IFC and Sundance Channel; and BBC's BBC America. CBS and Discovery are also involved in the test. The trial of TV Everywhere is expected to be made available to 5,000 households. Verizon will roll out its flavor of the TV Everywhere trial, making TNT and TBS available online for FiOS customers.

Recognizing the threat at hand, other companies are also moving to safeguard the subscription model of old. DirecTV is reportedly working on a version of TV Everywhere. While their attempts may woo some, I have one question: Will the TV Everywhere online broadcasts be crammed full of ads?

APPLE IPHONE DEALS WITH CHINA UNICOM

Following weeks of speculation, Apple has finally reached an agreement with China Unicom to bring its much-coveted iPhone to the world’s largest mobile market. The devices will go on sale during the fourth quarter of 2009 under a three-year deal and, as expected, they will be stripped of their Wi-Fi capabilities to comply with government regulations.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Unicom will not share revenue with Apple - as most partners do. Instead, it will purchase the handsets on a wholesale basis and resell them to consumers. It isn’t yet known how much the device will cost Chinese buyers, or what airtime packages they will have to sign up for, but company executives did say they plan to offer subsidies to lower the iPhone's price.

Indeed the carrier's challenge will be to price the iPhone and accompanying plans at competitive levels. Imported iPhones currently sell on the gray market for as little $680, and those include Wi-Fi functionality.

For Apple, China represents a huge untapped market with nearly 700 million wireless subscribers and just a handful of carriers giving service. China Unicom alone had 141 million wireless users at the end of July. Meanwhile, China Telecom, the country's third wireless carrier, is reportedly in talks with RIM to offer Blackberry handsets in China and with Palm to add the Pre to its lineup.

CORSAIR 8GB AND 12GB DDR3 KITS FOR CORE i5/i7

Corsair has shown their new high-density offering,comprised of an 8GB and 12GB DDR3 Kit. Designed for use with Intel Core i5 and Core i7 processors, the DDR3 DIMMs are available in dual and triple channel configurations.

According to Corsair's vice president of technical marketing, John Beekley, early adopters of Windows 7 among other power users have recently been demanding 8GB and 12GB solutions. The dual channel kit (part number CMD8GX3M4A1600C8) ships with four matched 2GB modules, tweaked for Intel's coming P55 platform. The triple channel setup (CMD12GX3M6A1600C8) is complete with six matched 2GB sticks, and is aimed at the currently available X58 platform.

Both configurations have XMP profiles dialed in at 1600MHz, and CAS latency settings of 8-8-8-24. The modules in each kit are cooled with Corsair's DHX+ heatspreader -- which is compatible with their liquid cooling apparatus -- and come with a fan. Unfortunately, there's no price or mention of availability - but you can expect to pay a premium.

TWITTER SENSE MY6SENSE RANKING TECHNOLOGY

At this very moment, at this very villa in the Israeli city of Hertzeliya Pituach, the final preparations are being made for what can be best described as ‘TwitterSense’—a way to automatically filter your Twitter stream so that the most relevant Tweets come out on top. The location in question is the home of my6sense, which currently offers a powerful way to filter news feeds. It is applying its filtering technology to Twitter and by the looks of it you’ll soon be able to follow as many Twitter users as you want and still never miss out on the most important tweets.

First, a quick recap on my6sense: The company has been building out what it calls ‘digital intuition,’ a content ranking technology that to date has been applied to RSS feeds to separate the signal from the noise. My6sense’s technology translates user actions such as Web navigation within and across various streams of content, and actions taken with various pieces of information in different contexts, into semantically-sensible implicit user feedback. The real beauty is that it requires zero intervention other than using the app itself. Here’s how I described my experience with the ALPHA RELEASE.

TwitterSense in an extension of my6sense’s ranking technology and in this respect treats a user’s Twitter stream like an ordinary content source, much like an RSS feed. To begin with, my6sense has to differentiate between simple status updates/personal tweets and tweets which link to content. The differentiation is a must because its ranking algorithms require further optimization to be able to correctly float important simple/status tweets. In the short-term they have no plans to solve this particular challenge. Instead, the company is focusing on ranking tweets with links—and we all get quite a few of those. From my6sense’s perspective, your friends provide the first level of filtering. It then provides the second level by taking it upon itself to re-rank these Tweets so a users’ focus is directed to the information that is most important to them.

My6sense plans to make TwitterSense publicly available in a couple of months or so. In the meantime, if you want to experience what it will behave like I suggest downloading my6sense’s native iPhone app to see how it works on RSS feeds. You won’t have to spend very long waiting to see the ranking magic since some backend improvements were made that get users to achieve the ‘A-ha moment’ I mentioned above much quicker, even within one or two brief sessions. There’s also a new digital intuition meter that provides users with feedback regarding the status of their preference model and indicates how strong their digital intuition is at that point in time.

gSCREEN SPACEBOOK FIRST DUAL DISPLAY LAPTOP

Using a laptop has distinct advantages over desktops, most prominently in the mobility department. To gain that boost in portability, though, sacrifices must be made. As a whole, laptops lack the computing muscle offered by their clunky counterparts. That shows in more areas than one - not least in precious screen real estate.

Acknowledging this, a little-known company named gScreen has earned a seat in the limelight with its dual-display-packing notebook. Called "Spacebook," gScreen is working on models that house two 13, 15.4, 16, or 17-inch LED-backlit LCD displays. With a specifically tailored sliding mechanism, the Spacebook's secondary display can be slipped out when needed, and tucked away when not.

In an interview with Gizmodo, gScreen said the Spacebook's specifications will include an Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce GF900M, a 7200RPM HDD, DVD drive, six or nine-cell battery and Windows 7. The company's website has more details, listing a Core 2 Duo P8400, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 320GB 7200RPM HDD, 512MB Nvidia GeForce 9800M GT or Quadro FX 1700M, and VGA/HDMI-out.

Given the slightly dated specifications, I assume the Spacebook's hardware

will be revamped in the models to come. As attractive as a laptop with two displays may be, the complete package probably weighs in excess of 12lbs, not to mention the elevated power consumption. Just something to keep in mind before you plunk down your hard earned dollars.

The company is pressing for December 2009 launch -- probably to snag a few holiday sales -- and plans to have the first units sold via Amazon. Although there is no official price established, gScreen is reportedly trying to keep it below $3,000.

NOKIA N900 IN MARKET ON OCTOBER

Waaaay back in May, we put up just shy of 750 words jam-packed with details on Nokia’s unannounced N900 Internet Tablet. This morning, Nokia finally pulled back the curtains on the device - and man, we absolutely nailed it.

Though we would have expected Nokia to announce this at next week’s Nokia World event, they’ve gone and verified all of the details we’d mentioned previously. 3.5″ 800×480 touchscreen? Check. 32GB internal storage? Check. 5 megapixel camera, T-Mobile USA friendly 1700mhz bands, and running Maemo 5? Three checks, please.

While we originally mentioned that Nokia’s target date for the US was July, that’s obviously come and gone. However, their target date for Europe has always been October, and it seems like they’ll see it through; beginning sometime in that month, the N900 will go on sale for €500 ($711 USD) before taxes and subsidies. We still fully expect this thing to show up on T-Mobile USA before too long.

This thing is a monster, and we can’t wait to get our hands on it. The specs we know so far:

• 32 GB onboard storage, expandable up to 48 with microSD.
• GPS and A-GPS
• FM Transmitter
• 1320 mAh battery
• TV-out
• Bluetooth
• 5 megapixel
• WiFi
• Bands: GSM Quad-Band 850, 900, 1800, 1900. WCDMA 900, 1700/2100, 2100 (This is Nokia’s first internet tablet with telephony support)
• 5 Megapixel camera w/ Carl Zeiss lens
• Mozilla browser w/ full Flash support

HIGHLIGHT: Of course, something else worth mentioning here is that it’s running Maemo 5, the latest build of Nokia’s Linux-based operating system. Maemo 5 is a complete overhaul, doing away with and rebuilding much of what we’ve seen before. The browser is based on the Mozilla engine (think Firefox), and has full Flash support. You can switch between running apps in a fashion similar to OS X’s Expose; just click the dashboard, and all of your running apps appear on screen for selection. They’ve tied copy-and-paste into the core of the OS here, allowing you to do copy any text to and from any application. There’s a ton going on here, and the new OS looks absolutely incredible; if you want to dive deeper into it, this NASCENT OS was given a fairly thorough run through a few days ago.