Sola’s Blue AI userbase will likely fall into two broad categories: programmers and casual users. Programmers can use Blue to provide an application’s framework. This is the difference between writing a term paper from scratch and editing a term paper. While users with programming experience may understand the how behind an AI-written app’s operations, casual users, myself included, often feel lost. I spent close to an hour reviewing Blue’s code from our last article—Blue AI by Sola—trying to understand the function of each line of code. In the end, I left more confused than when I started.

As someone who’s dedicated countless hours teaching themselves Zapier automations and how to program agents, understanding how to connect apps without developer ready integrations felt impossible. In this article we’ll be exploring Application Programmable Interfaces (APIs), and how they can transform your business by understanding frameworks. Understanding what we need Blue AI to build and why we need it built will yield clearer, more efficient results.

Let’s get into it!

Pricing

The free version of Blue AI provides users 2 high-level builds and 12 standard builds weekly. For new users looking to better understand Blue as a platform, the Starter Plan (Free) is more than generous. Users receive 2x the AI Build quota in the first 7 days, and it even allows the use of API keys and backups. Visit Blue AI’s Pricing page for more information.

What is an Application Programmable Interface

An API allows systems to speak to one another using requests and responses. Generally, performable actions fall into the Representational State Transfer (REST) actions:

• Get
• Post
• Put
• Delete

Using APIs permits different systems, normally generated on separate platforms, to share data without a user acting as an intermediary. Endpoints define specific URLs where resources (meaning data pieces) are accessed. Popular Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot provide Developer Documentation to assist users in syncing data between its own internal platform and external platforms. A HubSpot admin’s endpoint is a URL on HubSpot’s servers unique to their username and is accessed through a special token called an API key. This key uses this key to access data specific to that user’s account, then write, update, or delete information on an external platform.

This all may feel overwhelming, but understanding endpoints, access URLs, generating API keys, and modeling the app framework will help Blue build the connector tunnel for us.

Sample Python Framework for HubSpot

Below is Python code written by ChatGPT that follows the HubSpot API Documentation guidelines. The plain English explanation following the numerals (#s) are for the benefit of non-programmers to better understand what is happening at each step. To prevent confusion, please note that HubSpot now uses the term Personal Access Keys instead of API keys. Personal Access Keys can be generated under the Developer page.

Building Search App with Blue AI

The above-referenced Python code is for illustrative purposes to provide a line-by-line breakdown of the fetch functions. We will construct the API fetch app in Blue’s AI Build section. For users wanting to copy this HubSpot CRM data fetch app buildout, under the user profile you must navigate to Settings à Private Apps à Legacy Apps, and then create a legacy app that will then permit the user to define permissions and produce an Access token (API).

After those steps are completed, the Access token and .env naming convention title HUBSPOT_ACCESS_TOKEN can be loaded into the Integrations tab under AI Build.

The following prompt injection allowed Blue to build the exact-intended app.

[Create an app that is able to connect with HubSpot’s API fetch server: https://api.hubapi.com/crm/v3/objects/contacts/search using the API I loaded. I want this program to connect with that API key and allow me to search by email address and the app will return the user’s first and last name.]

For privacy’s sake I cannot share the result, but after the build completed, the search completed without issue and produced the name of the contact associated with the queried email. I do not believe it’s possible for an app build to be simpler than telling the software what to do.

Conclusion

Blue AI continues to impress. HubSpot has specific formatting requirements for correctly fetching data. The fact Blue was able to reproduce this without any additional user input besides providing the Access token (API) is beyond impressive. In a real-world application, realistic next steps would include creating a refreshable data feed linking key data points between Hubspot and another piece of software.

As a reminder, everything performed in this article today is possible in the Starter (Free) version of Blue. Drop a comment below for any requests on future content. Thanks for reading!

The post Defining a Framework in Blue AI appeared first on Sola of America, Inc..

Some may mock the humble “vibe coder” and say they lack real programming experience, but the future of vibe coding is here. I remember poring over C++ manuals, writing and compiling code in Bloodshed, only to have it fail when I clicked “Run.” Then came the painstaking debugging process, which made learning even more frustrating.

It remains to be seen whether AI will make programming obsolete. Personally, I doubt it. Someone still must review the code, approve it, and make it faster and more efficient. At its current stage, AI still requires human input. Public versions of the platform are not yet able to operate autonomously or combine data as humans do.

Sola’s Blue AI now brings an artist’s vision to life for non-engineers. This cutting-edge AI-powered platform accepts instructions in plain English and Japanese and turns them into working apps in just minutes. Future articles will focus heavily on Blue AI where we’ll provide tutorials. As a vibe coder myself, I’ll show how little programming experience is needed for big results. The first step is to visit the Blue AI Homepage and get signed up. Let’s get into it!

Pricing

Below is a screenshot of Blue AI’s pricing. Once you register and reach the homepage, free users will see the following: [High 0/2 Standard 0/12 Weekly resets MM/DD]. Those are the weekly app-production runs available on the free plan.

So far, I’ve found the free version generous and a good way to get familiar with the platform and begin understanding how Blue turns the user’s ideas into fully functioning apps. For those who need more apps and greater functionality, Blue’s pricing is reasonable. Annual billing even includes two months free.

Start here

From the Blue AI homepage, click Console in the navigation bar, then Blue AI Build near the bottom of the left-hand column under Other. This opens a tutorial of sorts. Under the words Start here are six starter templates meant to be approachable for non-engineers.

All the programming instructions appear in the chat box at the bottom of the page. Clicking Portfolio, for example, fills the chat box with sample text that Blue AI will use to build the app. Here’s the sample language:

[Build a portfolio site. Requirements: hero section (name, title, tagline, gradient background), About section, skills list (5 items with progress bars), project showcase (3 cards with image placeholder, title, description, tech tags), contact form (name, email, message). Smooth-scroll navigation bar. Modern design, fully responsive.]

Trial Run

For this first example, I left the sample instructions unchanged. After clicking Send, Blue AI starts generating the requested site. I do not have a particularly fast PC, and the site completed in under four minutes from start to finish.

One of the most interesting parts of the process is the live code written in the Code box. As the app builds, you watch Blue AI create an entire website from scratch, writing the HTML, CSS, and interactive JavaScript in real time.

Author’s Subscriber Lottery App

The second example in this article is a giveaway randomizer for content creators. The idea came to me years ago: an award system for longtime subscribers who receive exclusive content. Substack authors and their monthly subscribers are one example.

Suppose the creator wants to run a giveaway, or perhaps they write about small businesses and want to showcase one premium subscriber’s business as a bonus. For this second Blue AI-generated app, the goal is to give each user one lottery ticket for every month subscribed. For example, a subscriber from January to September would have nine entries. A user subscribed from March to May would have three entries.

Random Data Generation

Let’s have Blue AI generate a random list of fictitious subscribers and corresponding subscription length to use in our second lottery app. Here’s the text prompt:

[Generate a random list with two-hundred common English names. Using different columns for each data point starting with First Name and Last Name. The next column should be that person’s username, which will also be randomized by a series of sensical or non-sensical words, underscore, with or without numbers anywhere in the username. Another column will list months subscribed. Assign a number value to the month’s subscribed column which could be a few a 1 month or 60 months if the user was subscribed for 5 years. Do not exceed 60 months for total subscription months.]

Lottery App

After completing the random names, usernames, and subscription lengths, it was time to create the lottery app. I used the following prompt to build the second app, which chooses a subscriber for a giveaway. It’s important to remember describing the desired output in both a succinct, but detailed manner. While the AI can its own design decisions, results will improve significantly with clearer direction. Here is the prompt:

[Generate an app that allows the user to upload a CSV with first name, last name, username, and number of months subscribed. The app should randomly select a user and declare that user the winner. The app will create one entry for each user for each month subscribed. For example, if one user has been subscribed for 18 months, that username will have 18 entries in the lottery app.

In the upper-right corner, include an “Upload CSV” button. After the file is uploaded, a large button in the center of the screen labeled “PICK A WINNER” should change from a dull color to a brighter one when clicked. The app should then pick a user at random and display the username with a large “WINNER” in the center of the screen. While the app determines the winner, it should show a spinning wheel or similar visual indicator to build suspense.]

Conclusion

This may be the most fun article I’ve ever written. I was impressed by Blue AI’s ability to turn plain-English build instructions into a working app. Any interested readers should register on the Blue AI Homepage and begin experimenting for themselves.

In the new age of AI, the only limit is your imagination, it seems. Next article we’ll be discussion Application Programmable Interfaces (API) and how Blue AI could forge the missing link between two critical pieces of software with no coding experience required by the user. Catch you next time!

The post Blue AI by Sola appeared first on Sola of America, Inc..

What we’re hearing

We keep hearing variations of the same story.

“ChatGPT helped me put together a small app to keep our family’s schedule in one place. I just don’t know where to put it so my family can actually use it.”

“I built a quick quiz tool with Claude for my class. I have no idea how to hand it to my students.”

“I made an estimate calculator for our business. It works on my laptop. I can’t figure out how to get the rest of the team using it.”

Students, creators, founders, teachers, specialists across many fields. Different worlds, but the same shape underneath: the bar for making something has dropped sharply, and people are now running into the next wall — getting it to other people.

Why people get stuck

The reason is simple. Turning something that runs into something other people can use has, for a long time, required a stack of steps that were built for programmers. Renting a server. Configuring it. Packaging the build in the right shape. Pushing updates when something changes.

None of these are hard once you have done them a few times. But when you build something with AI without writing it yourself, this is a completely different world. The making part has gotten dramatically faster. The shipping part has not really changed.

We have been here before

If you look back at how software and the web have evolved, this exact moment keeps showing up.

When personal websites stopped requiring hand-written HTML. When blogging tools made it normal for anyone to publish writing to the world. When video platforms turned what once lived only on television into something anyone could broadcast.

In each case, a wall between people who can make something and people who can put it in front of others came down. We think that wall is coming down again right now — this time for everyone who can prompt an AI.

What we are working on

At Sola, we are building Blue (https://blue.sola.inc/) — a place where what you made with AI can become something other people can use, without going through any of the programmer-only steps in the middle.

You take what ChatGPT or Claude produced. You drop it in. You press a button. What you built gets deployed, and you receive a URL you can share — with your family, your class, your customers, your team. The piece between it runs on my machine and they can use it from theirs is what Blue removes.

Where we are today

Blue is currently in an invite-only beta — though we plan to lift the invite requirement soon. We’re growing the user base gradually while we work on feature improvements, stronger security, and operational stability.

What comes next

Beyond that, we are preparing something more direct: deploying to Blue from inside the chat you already use. Ask ChatGPT or Claude to “deploy this,” and it happens — no separate trip to a separate site. The experience of making with AI and shipping with AI should be one continuous motion. That is the version of Blue we are working toward.

An invite code for readers of this article

If you’d like to try Blue after reading this, we’ve set aside an invite code just for this article.

Head to blue.sola.inc, and enter BL03 in the invite code field on the sign-up screen. You can start on the free Starter plan and explore Blue from there.

For organizational and educational use, or for larger-scale deployments, our contact form is the place to reach us.

If you are one of the people who built something with AI and then quietly stopped — we’d like Blue to be the thing that gets you the rest of the way.

This post is from Sola, the company building Blue.

The post Built with AI, but stuck before launch — closing the last gap appeared first on Sola of America, Inc..

Change is one of life’s few constants. People change, society changes, and industries evolve. Those who resist change often find themselves exhausted by the effort. As spring arrives in the Pacific Northwest, Sola of America, Inc. is entering a new season of growth. Since launching this article series in September 2024, our content has focused primarily on Sola’s mobile applications.

Collectors looking to organize their hobbies, users managing wardrobes, and home cooks building recipe collections have benefited from monoca 2. Photography enthusiasts have expressed their creativity through Bouquet, Sola’s photo mosaic application. Meanwhile, accoca provides a secure, encrypted solution for storing sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, and other personal data.

While these applications remain available through their respective app stores, Sola has expanded its focus to include a suite of business-oriented IT services. In this article, we’ll introduce Sola’s three core B2B (business-to-business) offerings—the same services that helped the company grow from its origins in Japan into the international organization it is today.

Let’s begin.

Read about monoca 2, Bouquet, and accoca

Readers interested in Sola’s mobile applications can learn more through the following articles:

Closet Cleanup with monoca 2

Budget Wedding Memories with Bouquet

How accoca Protects your Data

Download links and pricing information are provided below the introduction section of each article.

We sincerely appreciate everyone who has supported Sola in the past and continues to support us today. Our success is possible because of your trust and engagement.

Core B2B Offerings

Sola of America, Inc. now offers three primary business services through its Seattle headquarters:

• Custom Software Development
• IT Consulting
• Server Deployment

Future articles will explore each service in greater detail. For now, this overview introduces the value each offering provides.

Custom Development

Custom software development remains Sola’s flagship service.

It was the first service offered by the company’s four founders when Sola K.K. was established in November 2008. As described on the Sola corporate website, the founders sought to address a recurring problem within the IT industry: project stagnation.

Many software projects suffer delays because development work is distributed across multiple subcontractors. As more organizations become involved, communication challenges increase, accountability becomes less clear, and project timelines often expand.

Sola continues to follow its founding philosophy by completing projects through in-house software engineers and dedicated internal staff. This approach provides greater transparency, stronger quality control, and clearer accountability throughout the development process.

As businesses grow, client expectations rise accordingly. Maintaining trust requires consistent execution and reliable results. Because Sola maintains a significant engineering presence in Japan, U.S. clients can often benefit from cost efficiencies while still receiving high-quality development services and timely project delivery.

IT Consulting

Sola’s consulting services include:

• IT Advisory Services
• AI Adoption Support
• SEO and AIO Optimization
• Security Consulting

For many organizations, determining where to begin can be challenging.

Artificial intelligence now influences nearly every aspect of technology, from infrastructure planning and data center expansion to workflow automation and business strategy. Understanding how AI can improve operations within a specific organization is not always straightforward. Companies exploring Sola’s consulting services should consider starting with an AI adoption assessment.

For example, many businesses struggle with software systems that cannot communicate effectively with one another. In these situations, a custom API (Application Programming Interface) may bridge the gap between systems, reduce manual work, and improve operational efficiency.

Sometimes a relatively small technical improvement can create significant business value.

Server Deployment

As demand for computing resources continues to grow, many organizations are reevaluating the balance between cloud-based and on-premises infrastructure. Software expenses often increase gradually over time. A storage plan or software subscription that once met a company’s needs can eventually become restrictive as operations expand.

A consultation with Sola can help determine whether cloud infrastructure, on-premises servers, or a hybrid approach best aligns with an organization’s technical and financial goals. With nearly two decades of experience in information technology, Sola helps businesses evaluate infrastructure decisions before rising costs or performance limitations become operational obstacles.

Successful companies often focus on their core competencies. When technical challenges fall outside those areas of expertise, partnering with a subject matter expert (SME) can help identify problems early and implement effective solutions before they affect revenue or operations.

Japanese Excellence

These qualities translate naturally into information technology, where success often depends on accuracy, consistency, and adaptability. Returning to the theme introduced at the beginning of this article, technology itself is defined by constant change. New tools, methodologies, and innovations emerge every year. Organizations that thrive are often those willing to learn, adapt, and evolve alongside the industry.

At Sola, we embrace that philosophy and strive to help our clients do the same. If you would like to schedule an initial consultation, please visit our Contact Us page and complete the inquiry form. A member of our team will respond within two business days to discuss your needs and schedule a consultation.

We are excited about this next chapter for Sola of America, Inc. and look forward to helping your organization grow.

Thank you for reading.

The post Sola’s Expanded Services appeared first on Sola of America, Inc..

I still remember the first time I navigated to accoca’s page on the App Store. When I scrolled down to the App Privacy section and read the words [Data Not Collected], I nearly fell out of my office chair in disbelief. Comparing the same App Privacy to a popular email service provider that starts with gee and rhymes with snail, it’s shocking. According to that service’s App Store page it may collect data on: purchases, contact info, user content, identifiers, diagnostics, location, search history, usage data, other data. By most anyone’s standards, that is a lot of user data needed to manage emails. I think the lack of user data collected in accoca is the perfect way to highlight how seriously Sola Inc. treats user privacy. In a world where companies are seemingly never satisfied obtaining and analyzing user data to push advertisements and drive sales, Sola is different.

Expand the description on accoca’s App Store listing and you’ll notice they discuss the ability to store data locally or with an encrypted Google Drive backup. A choice! Who could imagine companies giving users a choice in 2026?! Under the Security section of the app description of the App Store, Sola mentions it does not push ads or cloud services that might pose a risk of tracking personal information or exposing user information to data leaks. Then finally, they talk about how each password file is encrypted with AES-256, considered by many to be the gold standard of encryption. In this article I wanted to explore what AES-256 level encryption is, why it’s so important with accoca, and how it protects your data. Let’s get into it!

Previous Articles

Below are links to some of Sola’s other articles about accoca. The articles take less than 5 minutes to read and help provide insight into both the purpose of accoca as an app and how to generate difficult to hack passwords.

What is a Password Manager (Vault)

How to Generate Strong Passwords

Testing Password Strength

accoca Google Drive Backup

Where to Download

accoca is available on the Apple App Store—linked below. A couple of key features to note: the app is free to use and Sola of America, Inc. does not collect any personal data from its users. For those wanting to unlock unlimited entries, OCR text detection, and customizable, auto-generated passwords, accoca offers a $9.99 lifetime purchase price. The fully unlocked version can be restored on another device by logging in with the same AppleID.  

Password Manager accoca

What is AES-256

AES stands for Advanced Encryption Standard and is a specification for the encryption of electronic data first established by the US National Institute of Standards (NIST) in 2001. Originally developed by cryptographers Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen, AES comes in three different key sizes: 128, 192, 256. In simplified terms, the greater the key size the stronger the encryption. This key size determines how many rounds the original input character is changed before producing an output character:

• 10 rounds for 128-bit keys
• 12 rounds for 192-bit keys
• 14 rounds for 256-bit keys

To elaborate, each plaintext character the user writes for a password will then get transformed for several rounds (see above). After the final transformation round, a resulting ciphertext is produced. When encrypting a password for secure data storage, each character within a password undergoes the round shifts. With the passkey, decryption takes place in the opposite direction to unscramble the puzzle. In a simplified example, the letter ‘t’ might be securely stored in accoca’s password file as ‘#’. It all depends on the key size and accompanying secret key. More on secret keys below.

Key Derivative Function

I promise after this paragraph it’s end of the technical stuff—but it’s a fascinating subject. If the user wanted to encrypt and protect data at an extreme level, one should use a 128-bit secret key combined with a 256-bit key size. But without manipulation, producing a 128-bit secret key would require memorizing a password around 20 characters long. While storing a 20-character password is no problem for accoca, it’s impractical for the memory of most people. For this reason, many methods of encryption take a user’s password, or secret, and then use a key derivative functionto add length and complexity to the original. The result is a 128-bit secret that can then be used to encrypt the data in a 14 round 256-bit key size. The short version: key secret + key size = strength of the data encryption.

Difficulty of Hacking

As referenced in the introduction of this article, accoca stores each password as an individually encrypted file. For users, that means that even if a bad actor were to… break into a user’s device and find accoca’s locally stored password files or hack a user’s Google Drive backup, they would still be faced with first decrypting the encryption on the file storage and THEN running another hack on each individual password file.

Authors Biaoshuai Tao and Hongjun Wu in a 2015 paper about a key recovery attach against AES encrypted data estimated a 128-bit key with solid secret key would require somewhere around 38 trillion terabytes of data to hack. At the time, that was more than all the data stored on all the computers on the planet.

Conclusion

This was a technical article that might not interest all users. The reasons for publishing it, however, are not technical nor complicated. In a world filled with hackers, scammers, and other bad actors, data privacy is something everyone must take seriously. Using simple to guess passwords is an invitation to have your identity or other sensitive information stolen.

With accoca, with the simple tap of a finger, users can instruct the software to increase or decrease the generated password length, include letters, numbers, and symbols, in virtually any powerful and secure combination to keep users safe when accessing their accounts. Why risk it when you don’t have to? Try the free version of accoca and when you’re ready to step up your data privacy practices, the full version is available for a single lifetime unlock of $9.99. Sola cares about your data and so should you.

Thanks again for reading and as always, comment below for any requested content in future articles.

The post How accoca Protects your Data appeared first on Sola of America, Inc..

Admittedly, a lot of what I see today on Instagram is mediocre. It’s overflowing repeated jokes and memes that become copies of copies of copies. How original. BUT, every now and again, I find myself getting recommended a series of delicious-looking recipes that inspires me to try something new in the kitchen. In many ways, short-form content platforms like Instagram or TikTok are the perfect platforms to showcase food. With a crisp edit, the viewer can go from seeing the raw ingredients neatly arranged mis en place style to the results in 30 seconds or less.  

As the video ends and your mouth is watering, here’s where it gets tricky. It’s common practice for creators to post the recipe in the video’s description. Fine. Alternatively, many creators will pin their first comment containing the recipe. However, any URL posted in either the description or in a comment does not function as a hyperlink. I see it in virtually every food reel. Other users will beg for functioning link to the recipe, but it’s not possible.

The other night, after I’d saved the second or third recipe, dreading how I’d have to eventually hand write them, the thought occurred to me that accoca has a built-in OCR text reader feature to solve this dilemma. Combine a text-converted recipe screenshot with our monoca 2 for Cooking Recipes setup and we’re ready to start curating a delicious digital cookbook. Let’s get into it!

Previous Articles

In past articles, we’ve looked at how monoca 2 can be used for everyday life, tracking grocery prices, and even organizing minis for tabletop gaming. Each of those examples showed how the app’s customizable categories and fields make it flexible for any kind of collection.

Using monoca 2 in Everyday Life

Tabletop Gaming with monoca 2

Gift Shopping with monoca 2

Where to Download

The fully unlocked version of monoca 2 comes with unlimited item creation, 10 shared groups, no ads, and higher resolution icons and images, is available for a single, lifetime unlock payment of $9.99. Share your device’s trial code with a friend to give them a 25% discount. Share each other’s codes and you can both receive a discount.

App Store: Download for iPhone/iPad

Google Play: Download for Android

Web(Beta): https://monoca2.web.app/.

Capturing a Recipe in accoca

The OCR text detection feature is only available in the paid version of accoca. In several previous articles we’ve detailed why accoca is a great value at the $9.99 lifetime unlock fee. We’ll skip those details today, but considering many password vault services charge users $9.99 every month, accoca’s lifetime unlock price is more than fair.

Our first step in building a digital cookbook from short-form videos is to find some cooking content. If your algorithm isn’t tuned for food, a few internet searches for Instagram or TikTok cooking videos should fix that. After watching a handful, your account’s algorithm should adjust, and you’ll get more cooking content with each engagement.

After finding the recipe you want converted to text, pull up the description and take a screen capture of the ingredients and cooking instructions. In my sample below, this was a recipe for black bean chocolate protein brownies. I did make this recipe (photos below) and admit it was good, but in my opinion, it did not taste like a brownie. In the flavor it was obvious the base of the ‘brownie’ consisted of black beans and banana. If you’re someone watching their sugar intake, however, I’d recommend giving them a try. They can somewhat satisfy a sweetness craving.

Converting to Text

In preparation for text-converting several recipes, I created a new ‘Recipes’ category in accoca. Just like in monoca 2, each category is totally customizable to fit the user’s needs. Category settings are included or excluded with the flick of a toggle switch. I chose to add Tags, URL, Location, and Note. The Title field is a required field. It’s worth mentioning that the OCR text detection is buried under the Note field, so let’s focus there next.

In this category sample I wanted to keep everything bare bones. Tags are useful if needing to perform a broad search in the future. While hyperlinks don’t work in comments or posted in video descriptions, the URL of an individual reel is simple enough to copy/paste. Feel free to track those in the URL field.

After filling in the other details, tap the Note field, Text detection, then select Photo library and search out the screen capture you took earlier with the ingredients and cooking instructions. The scan field can even be modified so only the desired text is captured. When done, your screen should look like the third image below. All that’s left is nice, clean text.

Porting to monoca 2

Once the recipe is in text format, the sky is the limit of where it can be posted, reposted, or permanently housed. I referenced an article waayyy back from December of 2024 about using Sola’s monoca 2 for storing cooking recipes. I STILL use that organization structure to this day. Recipes we cook often at home I generally have a good sense of when to add what ingredient and how long to cook it, but the quantities are tough to remember. It’s important to get the right spices and the correct proportions or the whole dish can be ruined.

If we’re using social media video links within monoca 2, there’s a field already reserved just for that in the previous article. It’s convenient to get a refresh on the cooking difficulty or final look of the dish with just a tap. Using this OCR conversion method, I can only imagine the countless internet recipes waiting to be conquered.

Conclusion

Sometimes an object or an idea’s intended purpose is not it’s only purpose. While accoca’s intention as an application is to securely generate, store, and recall usernames, passwords, and other sensitive information, there are other uses. Sometimes one small feature or detail can be totally transformational—and it’s awesome!

Well… I’m off to doom scroll more food videos on Instagram, and you should be too. With accoca and removing the stress of having to physically write down a recipe from a video description, there’s no excuse!

As always, please drop a comment below for any feedback or suggestions on future article content. We’ll catch you on the next one!

Where to Download

The fully unlocked version of monoca 2 comes with unlimited item creation, 10 shared groups, no ads, and higher resolution icons and images, is available for a single, lifetime unlock payment of $9.99. Share your device’s trial code with a friend to give them a 25% discount. Share each other’s codes and you can both receive a discount.

App Store: Download for iPhone/iPad

Google Play: Download for Android

Web(Beta): https://monoca2.web.app/

The post COMBO! monoca 2 and accoca appeared first on Sola of America, Inc..

In our previous article, Gift Shopping with monoca 2, we talked about how many of us are victims of modern consumerism. Every year companies come up with reasons for new sales periods, start existing sales earlier, or extend existing sales. With social media permeating nearly every facet of our lives, advertisements fly in from every direction. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, in your Gmail account, and in the margins of websites—all places for ads, all seeking engagement clicks. Woefully, I must admit, I’m a sucker for a deal. The popular outdoor retailer Backcountry has fleeced me for many-a-dollar over the years by flaunting prices at 60, 70, or even 85% off retail. Cha-ching! I made the purchase.

Other than the obvious pains in my wallet, the other fallout of my consumerist victimhood is a closet full of clothes I hardly wear. On several occasions my wife and I discussed how to solve this problem. The consensus was to track our use of clothing items. If an article of clothing remains unworn for a year, the rationale for keeping it must be well-founded. If an article of clothing remains unworn for two years, it’s time to sell it for a bargain to see it gone or donate it. A simple system, right?  How to track each piece’s use became another issue entirely.

After much consideration, monoca 2 became an obvious choice. The app lends itself particularly well to solving the problem of an overfull closet through its ease of customization. The ability to quickly attach photos from your device’s camera roll or snap them from within monoca 2 only adds to the convenience. In this article we’ll cover the system I developed and, with luck, can provide an update in a future article. Keep in mind, this system is customizable for most any kind of object. If you’re not a clothing enthusiast like me, find what you have an excess of and apply it to that category. Let’s get into it!

Previous Articles

In past articles, we’ve looked at how monoca 2 can be used for everyday life, tracking grocery prices, and even organizing minis for tabletop gaming. Each of those examples showed how the app’s customizable categories and fields make it flexible for any kind of collection.

Using monoca 2 in Everyday Life

Tabletop Gaming with monoca 2

Gift Shopping with monoca 2

Where to Download

The fully unlocked version of monoca 2 comes with unlimited item creation, 10 shared groups, no ads, and higher resolution icons and images, is available for a single, lifetime unlock payment of $9.99. Share your device’s trial code with a friend to give them a 25% discount. Share each other’s codes and you can both receive a discount.

App Store: Download for iPhone/iPad

Google Play: Download for Android

Web(Beta): https://monoca2.web.app/

Making the ‘Wardrobe’ Category

As with most any other monoca 2 focused article, our first step is to create the primary category, then populate the subcategories. At my primary employer’s office, the dress code leans more towards business formal. A tie is not necessary, but I wear collared dress shirts every day. For that reason, I divided several of the categories into formal and casual. Below is the final subcategory list:

• Short Sleeve
• Long Sleeve
• Dress Pants
• Casual Pants
• Collared Shirts
• Formal Outerwear
• Casual Outerwear
• Dress Shoes
• Casual Shoes
• Hiking Shoes
• Hiking Clothes
• Uncategorized

Part of my ongoing strategy will be to add to these categories every day, if possible. In several previous articles covering monoca 2 we mentioned that organizing does not come easily to some. I fully recognize that the time investment required to fill a category is likely an inhibiting factor for prospective monoca 2 users. Adding to the categories little by little can reduce any potential app-fatigue.

The Category Fields

A best practice in building category subfields involves listing the most critical information first. For me, in this sample wardrobe category, that information was the last time (date) I wore a particular article of clothing. Other key pieces of information included the size and material. Material is important because it indicates the difficulty in laundering a particular piece. Also, I’ve recently found myself moving away from synthetic materials like polyester, nylon, and rayon, for natural fibers like cotton or wool.

• Last Worn (Date)
• Size (Text)
• Material (Text)
• Stored at (Location)
• Purchased price (Number)
• Purchased at (Location)
• Purchased on (Date)
• Photo (Image)
• Note (Text – Multiline)
• Ease of Styling (Score 1-5)

A photo of the clothing is arguably the second most important piece of information—and one I want to see quickly. I did not list it at the top in order to make the spacing of the item entry flow better. Notes can be used for general information, laundering instructions such as dry clean only, or hand wash only, or other useful tips. I renamed the Score 1-5 field to Ease of Styling. In clothes, it happens all too often. I’ve purchased many pieces appreciating the color in the moment only to realize later how difficult the it is to match with anything. I’ll likely add low scoring ‘Ease of Styling’ pieces to my ‘sell’ or ‘donation’ lists in addition to infrequently worn pieces.

Ask any enthusiast and they’ll tell you, invest in a handful of timeless, high-quality pieces you always reach for rather than a closet full of junk and you’ll be much happier.

As they say, “buy once cry once”.

Conclusion

I’m excited about this ‘Wardrobe’ Category and the insights it will bring. And it was awesome sharing with all of you readers. While I don’t think I’ll become a minimalist anytime soon and try to reduce my owned objects down to 100 or less, decluttering brings peace of mind. I encourage you to find something you’ve overpurchased or over collected and try to reduce it down to the fewest, most frequently used objects.

Having already added a few sweaters to the donation pile, I’m already feeling less burdened. As always, please leave a comment below with any requests for any future article topics. Catch you next time!

Where to Download

The fully unlocked version of monoca 2 comes with unlimited item creation, 10 shared groups, no ads, and higher resolution icons and images, is available for a single, lifetime unlock payment of $9.99. Share your device’s trial code with a friend to give them a 25% discount. Share each other’s codes and you can both receive a discount.

App Store: Download for iPhone/iPad

Google Play: Download for Android

Web(Beta): https://monoca2.web.app/

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The Holiday Season is upon us! And for many people that means shopping, shopping, and more shopping. It seems like every year companies look for more excuses to host a sale. Whether that always translates to a bargain for the consumer remains to be seen. I remember visiting an Under Armour store one weekend and saw a pair of running shorts for $30. Since Black Friday was the following week, I held off on purchasing the shorts that same day. Returning the next week, I noticed new price sticker on the shorts showed $50 with a 40% discount—which meant the shorts were still $30. I suppose the lesson here is, not all sales mean deals. Be careful out there.

You may be asking yourself, what does that story have to do with monoca 2? Shopping, of course. Whether gift shopping for Christmas, Chinese New Year, a friend’s birthday, or another special occasion, coordinating gift shopping can be tedious. I can recall so many drawn-out text conversations with my wife sending each other link after link. “What do you think of this for your dad?” or “How about this for your sister?”

Sure, texting is one way to coordinate, but with monoca 2 we can use a simple template to share ideas, websites, and even mark whether a certain gift is ‘greenlit’ for purchase. In less than 5 minutes from start to finish, the template can be built and then shared with anyone. Let’s get into it!

Previous Articles

In past articles, we’ve looked at how monoca 2 can be used for everyday life, tracking grocery prices, and even organizing minis for tabletop gaming. Each of those examples showed how the app’s customizable categories and fields make it flexible for any kind of collection.

Using monoca 2 in Everyday Life

Tabletop Gaming with monoca 2

Modern Books at archive.org

Where to Download

The fully unlocked version of monoca 2 comes with unlimited item creation, 10 shared groups, no ads, and higher resolution icons and images, is available for a single, lifetime unlock payment of $9.99. Share your device’s trial code with a friend to give them a 25% discount. Share each other’s codes and you can both receive a discount.

App Store: Download for iPhone/iPad

Google Play: Download for Android

Web(Beta): https://monoca2.web.app/

Building the ‘Gift Shopping’ Category

For this demonstration of monoca 2’s capabilities, we’re keeping things beyond simple. The ‘Gift Shopping’ category has only four fields—color tag, multi-line note, barcode, and photos. It’s a minimalist setup, but the goal is to streamline sharing ideas compared to text conversations. Add subfields depending on the occasion. In the screen captures shown below I used:

• Office Secret Santa
• Dad’s Birthday
• Kyle’s Birthday
• Christmas

Within a given subcategory, start with the multi-line note field. Instead of juggling a dozen browser tabs, losing track of links, or scrolling endlessly through text threads, you can treat the note section like a personal shopping database. Each line can hold a potential item name, the price, and a hyperlink to the store page. For example, under the ‘Dad’s Birthday’ subcategory:

• UA Run Shorts; https://store.example.com/item
• Hydro Flask 32oz, Alpine; https://anotherstore.com/hydro

All in one place, all neatly visible, and all instantly accessible. No more searching through a chat because you “swear you sent that link already.” If you’re collaborating with someone—your partner, sibling, or friend—you can both add and update links in real time, making the whole process feel like you’re co-editing a shared bulletin board.

Color Tags

Next, consider the color tags. You can assign colors to represent stages in your gift pipeline: green for “already bought for,” yellow for “considering,” red for “too expensive” or “bad idea”. Alternatively, if shopping for a larger occasion like Christmas, color-code by price range for things like major gifts or stocking stuffers. The point is that the colors instantly turn your category into a visual dashboard where you don’t need to decode anything. The structure is also flexible in that a category can be used to label the gift receiver where items are added as the gifts themselves. Categories can also represent the occasion where the items are the recipients and there’s a strong case for using the multi-line note function.

Barcode Scanner

Now, the barcode field is most useful for last-mine or in-store shopping. Let’s say you’re walking through Target and see a coffee grinder is the home goods section. You can scan the barcode right from the app and, in seconds, look the item up on eBay or Google. This means comparing prices on the spot instead of wondering whether the store’s “limited-time sale” is actually a deal… or if it’s just another $30-shorts-that-were-always-$30 situation.

Photo Field

And let’s not forget the photo field. This one is useful when you need to show something to someone else quickly, or when you want to remember what something looked like. For example, did the hoodie look cooler in red, or black? If you and your partner are coordinating gifts, you can snap a picture of something you saw in a store, add it to the category, and they’ll see it right away. No more sending a photo through text where it gets buried under a dozen memes. Photos in monoca 2 stay exactly where they belong—paired with your notes and tags, ready for anyone you’ve shared the category with.

Conclusion

What really ties all this together is convenience of the system. With only four fields, this sample template shows how simple is often. It’s able to be set up in under 5 minutes and then instantly shared with any other monoca 2 user. Then, you and your co-shoppers can browse ideas on your own time, update notes without disrupting each other, and come together later to quickly finalize plans. That means fewer back-and-forth messages and far less frustration.

Holiday shopping will never be entirely stress-free. But with monoca 2, it can at least feel a little more organized and a little less chaotic. Happy shopping and mind your wallets!

Where to Download

The fully unlocked version of monoca 2 comes with unlimited item creation, 10 shared groups, no ads, and higher resolution icons and images, is available for a single, lifetime unlock payment of $9.99. Share your device’s trial code with a friend to give them a 25% discount. Share each other’s codes and you can both receive a discount.

App Store: Download for iPhone/iPad

Google Play: Download for Android

Web(Beta): https://monoca2.web.app/

The post Gift Shopping with monoca 2 appeared first on Sola of America, Inc..

It is fascinating how traditions change with time. At one point in the United States most of the population celebrated the same Holidays. With all of society’s changes and the rise of a melting pot of different cultures, that is no longer true. In many instances, especially in a professional setting, it is no longer acceptable to wish someone a Merry Christmas. After all, the individual receiving the wishes may be of a differing religion or simply not celebrate Christmas.

Thanksgiving, on the other hand, is a different story. Originally linked to a famous feast held in 1621 between Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe in Plymouth, Massachusetts, a long list of countries now celebrate some version of the Holiday. Being thankful for the things in your life is one of the roots to lasting happiness. In Japanese, the term for this feeling is 幸せ（しあわせ）, pronounced: she-ah-wah-say in English.

At Sola K.K. and Sola of America, Inc. we have a lot to be thankful for, and wanted to share a bit of our humble beginnings with you, our audience. We want to express our gratitude for nearly 20 years (17 to be specific) as a company. Considering many companies do not survive even their first year in business, we think it’s a big deal.

A Brief Recap of Sola’s Apps

accoca

accoca is Sola’s password vault (password manager). It provides users with the option to store their encrypted password data as local only, or upload an encrypted password backup to their Google Drive.

accoca is available on the Apple App Store—linked below. A couple of key features to note: the app is free to use and Sola of America, Inc. does not collect any personal data from its users. For those wanting to unlock unlimited entries, OCR text detection, and customizable, auto-generated passwords, accoca offers a $9.99 lifetime purchase price. The fully unlocked version can be restored on another device by logging in with the same AppleID.  

Password Manager accoca

Bouquet

Bouquet is Sola’s photo mosaic app that uses photos from your device’s camera roll, Google Photos account, or clips them from a video to make stunning photo mosaics—instantly. Mosaics can be customized in myriad ways, including:

• Number of squares used to form mosaic (parent) image
• Type and quantity of ‘piece’ images
• Filter, Alpha, Color, and Blender sliders

The app is free to download and use. Click the link below to get started.

Bouquet: Craft Mosaic Art

monoca 2

Monoca 2 is Sola’s item organization app. Its applications are nearly endless, with uses ranging from saving food recipes, to cataloguing minis figurines for tabletop gaming. Items can be classified into broader collections, then refined into individual categories depending on the user’s needs. The free-form category subfields allow for complete customization, and categories can even be shared with other users by inputting that category’s share code.

The fully unlocked version of monoca 2 comes with unlimited item creation, 10 shared groups, no ads, and higher resolution icons and images. It is available for a single, lifetime unlock payment of $9.99. Share your device’s trial code with a friend to give them a 25% discount. Share each other’s codes and you can both receive a discount.

App Store: monoca 2 for iPhone

Google Play: monoca 2 for Android

Web(Beta): https://monoca2.web.app/

About Sola

Humble Beginnings

Sola K.K. was founded in November of 2008 in Chiyoda City, Tokyo, with less than $6,500 in capital. In January of 2010, the company moved it’s headquarters to Kayabacho, Chuo City, Tokyo. By April of 2011, Sola K.K. increased its capital to a little less than $30,000, and by October of 2015, had put together a little over $70,000 in capital.

Finally finding its legs, Sola’s capital increased dramatically from 2016 – 2020, with a significant milestone coming in September 2017 when Sola K.K.’s capital jumped to nearly 200,000.00 USD. This kind of slow, yet consistent growth as a company was only possible with many hours of hard work and dedication from Sola’s founders and its staff.   

Sola’s Services

Sola has since grown to incorporate several lines of business:

• Development of IT infrastructure and software development
• Systems engineering
• Research and development using various technology platforms such as smart phones and VR (virtual reality)
• IT consulting services
• Sales of products related to IT infrastructure and systems

For business inquiries, please contact ‘contact@sola-air.com’.

The Big Picture

On Sola’s website, as of August, 2025, the company employs 260 people. This is where thankfulness comes in. This is the impact. Over the course of time, many companies tend to get caught up in their business operations and forget that they are a conduit for employees living their lives. Each of those 260 employees has family, friends, and other loved ones they care about. While life isn’t about money and money won’t provide you with a fulfilling life, it is necessary to survive in modern society. While Sola grows a little bigger every year, so does its family of employees that makes Sola so special.

Just seventeen short years ago, the company consisted of only four members and now there are 260. Two-hundred and sixty opportunities to improve a little bit every day, to hug a loved one, and count all the positive things in life. Yes, life is full of unique challenges and life isn’t fair, but if you stop and consider the bigger picture—you might find there’s a lot to be thankful for.

From everyone at Sola, thank you for 17 years. Here’s to seeing what 20, 30, or even 50 years brings us. Take care, and we’ll catch you next time.

The post Sola: A Lot to be Thankful For appeared first on Sola of America, Inc..

Recently, I was having a conversation with my father about movies—as we frequently do. Specifically, we were discussing the new Frankenstein movie produced by Netflix and directed by Guillermo Del Toro. Del Toro’s filmmaking abilities are unique. There is typically some sort of fantasy or supernatural element and a compelling narrative that drives the story along. Some of his better-known works are Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and a personal favorite of mine—Pinocchio. At the time of writing this article there are 2 Frankenstein trailers out for viewing. The first trailer shows the story from Viktor Frankenstein’s perspective, and the second trailer shows the story from the monster’s perspective. A nice, if not wholly unique, twist.

While speaking about Pinocchio with my father, I remembered going to see the stop motion sets for the movie at the Portland Art Museum. For around 8 weeks back in Fall of 2023, the art museum displayed the painted sets from Del Toro’s version of Pinocchio, and the work was incredible! Towards the end of the exhibition there was a color palette display showing the different tones and moods used in the film. For example: the village used a relatively neutral palette. The carnival incorporated more reds, oranges, and yellows—bright colors! The Underworld used hues of blues, purples, and blacks, and in Fascist Italy, blacks, whites, greens, browns, and reds were used.

This got me thinking about other creative ways to use Bouquet. As someone who does not typically feel inspired to snap photo after photo, I was curious to see if simple color blocks could create mosaics within Bouquet. This was interesting to me because exactly like the Pinocchio sets and the colors used based on the location, sets of tonal colors could be an easy way to adjust the mood of a favorite photo mosaic. Look below to see the results for yourself!

Previous Articles

Posted below are the articles related to Bouquet. Those titled Bouquet: Photo Mosaic Tutorial and Advanced Features of Bouquet are written in a tutorial style format. All the articles take less than 5 minutes to read. If you’re new to Bouquet as a platform and want to learn more about its features and how to use it, I highly recommend checking out those articles.

Introducing Bouquet: Creating Stunning Photo Mosaics

Bouquet: Photo Mosaic Tutorial

Advanced Features of Bouquet

Bouquet in a Corporate Environment (Part 1)

Where to Download

The app is free to download. Use the links below.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website: https://bouquet.sola.inc/

Test Images

When I decided to experiment with using color blocks instead of images with Bouquet, I had no idea what the result would be. Below I’ve posted the picture I snapped at the Pinocchio exhibit at the museum. The other two images of my wife and I’s golden retriever, Lia, I felt would make decent test images. One photo of Lia had a large amount of white background space that Bouquet would need to figure out how to fill in. The second image was more color diverse. I assumed the second image would be easier for Bouquet to process, and I was right.

Generating the Color Blocks

Generating the blocks of color for Bouquet to construct the mosaic was painstaking. I was probably not going about it in an efficient way, but Canva is the only readily accessible image editor on my desktop PC. It is great software, and I’ve used it extensively in the past to build presentations, create social media posts, you name it, but… the software is not always intuitive. T

After clipping two 1×8 color palettes from the Pinocchio set design, it was time to start building the blocks. I set the two blocks in an open project in Canva, then created a new 300 pixel x 300 pixel blank canvas. I copied this canvas an additional 15 times to create adequate colors to test. In total there were:

• 8 color blocks with lighter shading
• 8 color blocks with darker shading
• 16 colors blocks made by combining the two palettes

The Results

Once the color blocks were formed and downloaded onto my phone, it was time to start testing. As suspected, the image of our dog with a lot of white space in the background yielded poor results. In fact, I did not believe they were worth sharing or posting, so they’re omitted in this article. The second image where Lia has a set of bookshelves behind her, I think, produced a cool set of results.

Unsurprisingly, the mosaic made with the 8 lighter shaded color blocks was a bit boring. The analogy of writing a song using any of the major scales (as opposed to minor scales) comes to mind. The results were fine, but nothing out of the ordinary. Afterwards, I used the 8 darker shaded color blocks and felt like I was looking at a piece of art. The results with all 16 colors was good, too, but I found myself drawn to the results with the 8 dark shades. I think some of that preference comes from the fact that the shading (as in shadows) filled in with the darker palette created a better outline.

From further away, you can more clearly see Lia’s eyes, nose, snout, and ears. At one point I went a little crazy and made a custom column set where Bouquet used built a mosaic with 14,00 blocks. At certain points I was concerned my phone (it’s not the latest and greatest model) might heat up and start spitting smoke. I’m kidding, but filling in that many squares took a while and I didn’t feel the results were worth the processing power.

Conclusion

Color can play a big part in mood and tone for an image. Just like in the set designs for Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio, colors play a big part in our lives too. While some reading this article might feel it was a waste of time because the results weren’t perfect, I don’t feel that way. Sometimes it’s necessary to experiment and try new things. Rather than scrambling each time to add a bunch of individual piece images when creating a photo mosaic, I was curious if keeping some colored blocks in my phone’s camera reel would allow me to quickly and easily make new mosaics with only a single image.

The results, in my opinion, warrant additional experimentation to see what is possible. In the future, I think I’ll try and sample colors directly from the parent image and use color blocks specific to that image’s palette to create the mosaic. It should be interesting. We’ll catch you on the next one!

Where to Download

The app is free to download. Use the links below.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website: https://bouquet.sola.inc/

The post Mood and Tone with Color (Bouquet) appeared first on Sola of America, Inc..