Computer Support Blog

Cords are so passé.  Come to think of it, so is risking your high-priced electronic devices with damage and theft.  Despite what companies like Apple might want you to think, spending a couple hundred dollars on an iPhone 4S is a hefty investment for most Americans!  So, when the screen gets scratched or the whole smartphone is stolen, it is a significant financial setback.  From an unlikely place, though, comes a sensible solution.  That place is Tenqa and the solution is their new REMXD Wireless Bluetooth Headphones.

Tenqa’s REMXD Wireless Bluetooth Headphones are, as the name suggests, headphones that connect to any Bluetooth-enabled device.  If your Smartphone, tablet computer, or MP3 player is Bluetooth-enabled, you may connect it to the REMXD Headphones and enjoy all of your music when not in contact with your device.  With a range of thirty three feet, Tenqa’s REMXD Wireless Bluetooth Headphones allows you to listen to your music while working out, gardening or doing other activities while the device that holds all your music remains safe!

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Demand Media had a pretty rough 2011, though its Fourth Quarter earnings were actually better than expected.  A provider of videos, blogs, and other media over the Internet, Demand Media has been working to transform the way people use the Internet for education and entertainment.  While the company has been growing, Demand Media’s Board has been buying back its stock and the company is not quite where the executives and analysts thought it would be.  Dave Panos is the man who will change the direction of Demand Media!

Dave Panos is the Chief Strategy Officer of Demand Media and his plans for the company are ambitious.  Because Demand Media is known for delivering original Internet video content the company is in competition with many distribution channels, like YouTube.  Panos organized a strategic partnership with competitor CoverItLive.  By pairing Demand Media and CoverItLive, Panos helped increase the video base of Demand Media dramatically, which allows Demand Media to reach a much wider audience.  Having the vision to partner with potentially vulnerable competitors is part of what makes Panos a truly great Chief Strategy Officer.

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The Internet has given rise to many phenomena in American culture.  Arguably the most significant lasting social change of the Internet comes in the form of people making statements.  In the inorganic medium of the Internet, anyone can rant about anything anytime they want to.  Between Tweets on Twitter, Facebook status updates and any number of message boards on any of a million websites, for the first time in the history of humanity, anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can feel like they have a voice that is being heard.

Not everything said on the Internet is a gem of human wisdom.

Just as in real life, where once you say something you cannot take it back, Internet users – thanks to things like the Facebook Timeline – are discovering that what they say lingers online, even for years.  But with all of the people posting very publicly about everything in the world, the Internet is now giving users the equivalent of leaving the room where you can hang out with a bunch of friends you actually like!  These new, limited, social networks, have the potential to restore actual family and friend interactions amid all of the noise of more popular Internet social networks.

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In the midst of the worldwide recession, as companies like Facebook prepare to make billions of dollars overnight, there are still some websites devoted to giving on the Internet.  The giving sites are attempts to remind people who have Internet access that they live in a land of (comparative) plenty and that no matter how bad your problems are, there is someone, somewhere in the world, who has it much worse than you do.  You have the ability to help others at minimal cost to you.  That is the philosophy behind Philanthroper.com, which is arguably the coolest giving site on the Internet!

Philanthroper.com is a website that challenges visitors to donate to worthy nonprofits – 501(c)3 groups – each and every day (if at all possible).  The site has a very simple design and exists, not to make money for itself, but to raise money for charities most people have never heard of.  In order to encourage donations on a regular basis, Philanthroper.com only allows donations from $1 – $10.  The site’s founder hope that by limiting the amount of the donations, you will be encouraged to come back each day because giving was not that difficult the day before!  On the other end of the equation, founder Mark Wilson hopes to conclusively illustrate that many people doing a little bit each day adds up to a lot.  By having many people pooling a fraction of their resources, they may still do a great deal of good.

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Corporate executives of major companies have a lot on their plates; that is the nature of the position.  Because of the burdens of the industry, technology companies have additional stresses and responsibilities that add to the CEO’s responsibilities.  As a result, the very best CEOs in the technology sector tend to hire a close cadre of people whom they can trust absolutely.  The CEO relies upon these close corporate officers to oversee the minutiae while they focus on the big picture for a company.  Usually, one of the key hires to make a tech sector CEO successful is the hiring of a head of human resources.  Mark Pincus of Zynga certainly qualifies as successful and part of his success comes from his reliance upon Colleen McCreary.

Colleen McCreary is the Chief People Officer of Zynga.  In that role, McCreary frees up CEO Mark Pincus to worry about things other than the staff of Zynga.  As Chief People Officer, Colleen McCreary is the woman to see about applying for jobs and all other human resource issues at Zynga.  McCreary has been with Zynga since 2009 and helped the company staff up as the Facebook games Zynga produces became more popular.

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Zappos, an Amazon retailer that sells shoes, announced recently that hackers breached their website and stole confidential client information. The stolen information included email addresses, the last four digits of credit card numbers, phone numbers, encrypted passwords and physical addresses. Using this information, the hackers might be able to determine a client’s other passwords. For many people, their email password is also the password they use for many other websites. This dangerous practice can compromise your Internet security.

Internet security is a vital issue in this age of online-everything. When we have online banking, important private emails, online shopping, and other important private information kept online, it is essential to know that your information is safe.

It is very important to make sure that your online banking passwords, email passwords, and passwords for other websites that contain sensitive information are not passwords you use for less important websites. If remembering passwords is an issue, do not hesitate to make use of the forgotten password feature of most websites or set up a master password. Your Internet security may depend on the difficulty and variety of passwords that you use. As the lesson of Zappos should teach you, low Internet security could mean hackers get your information or even plant malware and viruses on your computer.

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Apple Computers, employs an elegantly simple strategy to dominate the mobile computing marketplace.  Apple’s strategy is built largely on a hope that you will buy their entire product line, not just one or two of their devices.  That is to say, products from Apple, more than any other company in the technology sector, are designed to interact easily with one another.  For example, Apple makes it very easy to connect an iPad to an iTV or a MacBook Pro.  But, as many people have discovered, there are more affordable high definition televisions with more options than the iTV.  But why should you be inconvenienced for wanting a great HDTV and an iPhone and wanting them to interact?  Scosche does not think you should be inconvenienced!  That is why Scosche made the sneakPEAK HD Cable!

Scosche’s sneakPEAK High Definition Audio/Video Cable for iPad, iPhone & iPod is a fairly simple cable that allows you to connect virtually any Apple i-product that has a screen on it to a high definition television.  By connecting your Apple products’ output port to the HDTV’s input ports, you are transforming your Apple product into a media player, like a DVD or Blu-Ray player.  This will allow you to play media from your iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad on your high definition television, even if you are streaming it from the Cloud!

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The Internet truly has made the world smaller in many ways.  With communications over the Internet happening virtually instantaneously, the people of the world are more interconnected than ever.  This interconnection between geographically and culturally different people is especially evident on Internet social networks.  Just because the connectivity between people exists in the Internet does not necessarily mean that it is well-understood.  To understand the real impact of online activity, one needs impressive analytical tools like those offered by Gnip.  Gnip needs Chris Moody.

Chris Moody joined Gnip in the middle of 2011.  Hired by CEO Jud Valeski, Moody assumed the dual roles of President of Gnip and Chief Operating Officer.  In the two executive positions, Moody essentially runs day-to-day operations of Gnip.  Chris Moody is directly responsible for the company’s development and while Valeski and the Board of Directors determine the overall direction of Gnip, it is Moody who is responsible for managing the company to get it there!

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If you check out the technical news sites regularly, you might well be baffled at the updates they frequently have about Legos.  Legos, for those not in the know, are small plastic building toys used to create buildings, vehicles and other structures and devices using standardized plugs and sockets.  Legos first hit the market in 1949 and have grown steadily over the decades since.  They are a children’s toy, one that many adults may not have considered for years.

Why, then, are Legos so prominently featured on so many of the technical sites?

In recent years, Legos have exploded with popularity again.  During the brand’s last major lull, the Lego Company expanded their influence by licensing Legos with major niche franchises.  As a result, Lego capitalized on the popularity of other brands, like Star Wars, Pirates Of The Caribbean, and Spider-man, by creating corresponding Lego sets of places, vehicles and characters from those franchises.  That gambit worked for the business model, but it also gave an entire subculture – the AFOLs – the opportunity to “come out.”  AFOLs are Adult Fans Of Legos and the largest AFOL site on the Internet has four thousand members!

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Puzzle games are exceptionally popular among casual computer game players.  The rise of smartphones has made video games accessible to a much larger audience. Puzzle games like Hexic and Angry Birds have effectively captivated smartphone users and opened entirely new markets up in the video game industry.  But while Angry Birds has remained comparatively static – Rovio has effectively merchandised Angry Birds beyond the popular game, but not released any new expansions for some time – a new game has come to dominate the puzzle game niche.  That game is Cut The Rope.

Cut The Rope is a physics-based puzzle game similar in several ways to Angry Birds, which might be why it so easily took over the same niche.  Developed by Chillingo, Cut The Rope features bright colors and simple animation that makes it ideal for playing on a smartphone or tablet computer, where one does not need the most advanced monitor to get the most out of the game.  When Chillingo released Cut The Rope to the Apple App Store during the fourth quarter of 2010, it sold three million downloads before the end of that year!  Since its initial release, Chillingo has continued to release Cut The Rope for different video game platforms, as well as a new expansion, Cut The Rope: Experiments.

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