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Focal

Focal streamlines research by summarizing articles and enabling highlights for easy organization and sharing.
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Focal

What is Focal?

Focal is a powerful tool designed to streamline research tasks by offering various useful features. Users can save articles and papers into Focal, which then generates summaries for quick access to key points. One standout feature is the ability to highlight and group these highlights under different projects, facilitating easy sharing with others for collaborative learning. The interface is clean and seamless, providing a distraction-free user experience that enhances productivity and knowledge sharing. Focal's AI capabilities enable users to search for specific information within their documents efficiently, making it a valuable tool for knowledge workers in various fields like finance and legal research.

Who created Focal?

Focal, a renowned audio company, was founded by Jacques Mahul in 1979. Jacques Mahul had a passion for high-fidelity audio and started Focal with a vision to create exceptional sound equipment. The company quickly gained recognition for its innovative technologies and commitment to audio excellence. Today, Focal is known globally for its premium headphones, speakers, and audio systems, setting high standards in the audio industry .

What is Focal used for?

  • Enhance research workflow with GPT-4 integration
  • Securely save web pages and PDF documents indefinitely
  • Streamline highlighting process and collaborate seamlessly
  • Summarize and query documents for quick insights
  • Collaborate in secure workspaces for different projects
  • Create clutter-free reading environment by removing distractions
  • Efficiently organize research for researchers, professionals, and learners
  • Highlight crucial parts of documents, tag for organization, add comments, and discuss findings with team
  • Accelerate research process with AI-assisted literature reviews, data analysis, and hypothesis generation
  • Optimize marketing strategies and content creation with AI-driven analysis
  • Enhance research workflow with GPT-4 AI integration
  • Save web pages and PDF documents securely indefinitely
  • Streamline highlighting, annotations, and collaboration
  • Summarize and query documents for swift insights
  • Collaborate in secure workspaces for research projects
  • Create clutter-free reading experience by removing distractions
  • Highlight crucial parts of documents and tag for organization
  • Discuss findings with team members
  • Boost legal research efficiency and case preparation
  • Optimize marketing strategies and content creation
  • Enhancing reading and research processes
  • Highlighting, tagging, and capturing notes efficiently
  • Streamlining the reading experience by removing clutter and ads
  • Securely saving web pages and PDF documents indefinitely
  • Summarizing and querying documents with AI Copilot
  • Offering a secure collaboration environment through workspaces and projects
  • Helping researchers, legal professionals, students, and corporate workers make research less daunting and more productive
  • Working alongside AI to enhance research workflow with GPT-4
  • Collaborating in secure workspaces and organizing research into different projects
  • Making research methodologies more efficient and organized
  • Streamline financial analysis and decision-making with AI-powered insights from complex financial documents and data sets
  • Boost legal research efficiency and case preparation by employing AI to analyze case law, contracts, and legal documents
  • Accelerate your research process with AI-assisted literature reviews, data analysis, and hypothesis generation across diverse academic fields
  • Accelerate medical literature consumption by using AI to synthesize insights from clinical studies, medical records, and health data
  • Optimize marketing strategies and content creation with AI-driven analysis of market trends, consumer data, and campaign performance
  • Enhance policy development and analysis by leveraging AI to extract key insights from vast regulatory and legislative documents
  • Synthesize long documents quickly with AI-powered analysis and citation management
  • Transform your ideas into engaging content with AI-assisted writing and SEO optimization
  • Explain and summarize complex academic papers and research
  • Extract critical information and precedents from complex legal texts using AI-driven analysis
  • Integrating GPT-4 for an embedded AI experience
  • Efficiently highlighting, tagging, and capturing notes
  • Streamlining reading by removing clutter and ads
  • Summarizing and querying documents using AI Copilot
  • Collaborating in secure workspaces and projects
  • Organizing research into different projects with Workspaces feature
  • Assisting researchers, legal professionals, students, and corporate workers in research tasks
  • Providing an environment for efficient and organized research methodologies
  • Enhance reading and research processes
  • Highlight, tag, and capture notes efficiently
  • Streamline reading experience by removing clutter and ads
  • Summarize and query documents using AI Copilot
  • Collaborate in secure workspaces and projects
  • Assist researchers, legal professionals, students, and corporate workers in research
  • Work alongside AI (GPT-4) to enhance research workflow
  • Generate thorough, well-cited summaries with fast content generation
  • Streamline financial analysis, legal research, academic research, health research, marketing analysis, and policy development

Who is Focal for?

  • Researcher
  • Academic
  • Legal Professional
  • Finance Analyst
  • Project Manager
  • Student
  • Content creator
  • Data Analyst
  • Business Consultant
  • Healthcare professional

How to use Focal?

To use Focal effectively, follow these steps:

  1. Sign up for Focal on their website to get started with a free trial.
  2. Upload your PDFs and save web pages to make them searchable.
  3. Utilize AI-powered search features to understand context and intent for more precise results.
  4. Search for specific information within your data and documents to get instant answers.
  5. Connect and search across all your data sources seamlessly.
  6. Summarize, query, and capture insights with the help of AI technology.
  7. Build confidence in your answers with transparent and traceable insights provided by Focal.
  8. Take advantage of the semantic search capabilities to find any piece of information from your documents efficiently.

By following these steps, you can harness the power of Focal to enhance your research and information retrieval processes effectively.

Pros
  • AI-embedded: Work alongside AI to enhance your research workflow with GPT-4.
  • Save Forever: Securely save web pages and PDF documents indefinitely.
  • Superior Highlights: Streamline your highlighting process, make annotations, and collaborate seamlessly.
  • AI Copilot: Summarize and query documents to gain insights swiftly.
  • Workspaces: Collaborate in secure workspaces, organizing research into different projects.
Cons
  • Currently only supports desktop, no mobile app available
  • No free plan, limited trial before subscription
  • Some pages not found on the website

Focal Pricing and plans

Paid plans start at $USD/month and include:

  • 2,000 pages per month
  • Standard AI Model
  • PDFs and Web Articles
  • AI Summaries
  • AI Copilot Sources
  • AI Copilot Workspace

Focal FAQs

Who is Focal designed for?
Focal is designed to help anyone who requires efficient and organized research methodologies, including researchers, professionals, and learners.
Can I save documents indefinitely on Focal?
Yes, you can securely save articles, web pages, and PDFs for as long as you need.
How does Focal create a streamlined reading experience?
Focal provides a clutter-free reading environment by removing ads and unnecessary distractions, focusing on the content.
What can I do beyond saving and summarizing documents with Focal?
With Focal, you can highlight crucial parts of documents, tag for organization, add comments, and discuss findings with your team.
How does Focal's AI Copilot feature work?
Focal is integrated with GPT-4 to offer an AI Copilot that helps in summarizing and querying documents to extract insights.
Do you have a free plan?
We don't have a free plan but when you sign up you'll be allowed to create 3 free sources (PDFs or web pages) and have limited Copilot usage so you can try the product before you subscribe. Afterwards you'll be prompted to select one of our plans and to start a further 7 day free trial.
Do you train on our data?
We don't train on any of your data. We use your documents as a knowledge base using a technique called retrieval augmented generation (RAG) so that we can provide the most contextual and up-to-date information to our AI. This improves the accuracy and relevancy of our responses.
Is my data secure?
We store your data on GDPR and SOC2 compliant cloud servers. You're in full control of your data and when you delete it from our platform it is removed completely. All communication to our servers are encrypted end to end.

Get started with Focal

Focal reviews

How would you rate Focal?
What’s your thought?
Amina Al-Mansoori
Amina Al-Mansoori January 30, 2025

What do you like most about using Focal?

I love the intuitive interface of Focal. It makes organizing my research articles incredibly easy. The highlight feature allows me to categorize my findings by project, which is a game-changer.

What do you dislike most about using Focal?

If I had to point out a downside, it would be that sometimes the summaries can miss intricate details that are important for in-depth analysis.

What problems does Focal help you solve, and how does this benefit you?

Focal helps me quickly sift through large volumes of research articles, allowing me to focus on my analysis rather than getting lost in reading. This efficiency enhances my productivity significantly.

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Luca Rossi
Luca Rossi February 2, 2025

What do you like most about using Focal?

The ability to generate summaries quickly is fantastic. I can save hours of reading time, and the summaries are usually spot-on for what I need for my reports.

What do you dislike most about using Focal?

Sometimes the document upload process can be a bit slow, especially with larger files. A quicker upload feature would be appreciated.

What problems does Focal help you solve, and how does this benefit you?

It allows me to keep all my research organized under specific projects, which is vital for my work in finance. I can easily share these organized highlights with my team, facilitating better collaboration.

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Tariq Khan
Tariq Khan March 4, 2025

What do you like most about using Focal?

Focal's search functionality is incredibly robust. I can find specific information within my saved articles with ease, which saves so much time.

What do you dislike most about using Focal?

The AI-generated summaries sometimes lack nuance, but they are still quite helpful for getting the gist of things.

What problems does Focal help you solve, and how does this benefit you?

Focal helps me keep track of multiple research projects without feeling overwhelmed. The organized highlights mean I can present information clearly to my colleagues.

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