Computer Support Blog

Developing and designing a mobile app for your company can take an excessive amount of stress, time, and money.  Scott Wasserman, the CTO of Artisan, is working to reduce the issues many companies have developing an app for their business.  Wasserman originally founded Artisan under the name of appRenaissance in Philadelphia in 2010.  His goal has always been to improve the mobile app development and design processes for businesses.  Wasserman calls Artisan a “mobile experience management company” which offers tools to companies that allow them to make their app as optimal as possible for their target audience.  Wasserman’s mission benefits everyday customers as well.  Consumers who have needed mobile tech support to properly handle the apps on their phone know all too well how sloppy app design can be frustrating.  Clearly, Wasserman is a cool person in tech who is trying to improve the app development process for the benefit of businesses and consumers.  Read more »

There has long been an argument about the sound quality of digital music.  Many lament the loss of quality in digital music files due to compression.  However, David Wiener and his company Aphex are working towards eliminating the quality problem with digital music.  Wiener’s company Aphex is an audio company that makes professional audio and recording equipment for musicians.  However, they’ve recently expanded into the consumer digital music space as well. Wiener and his company have released their Audio Xciter App for Android and iOS.  This new app is not just another mobile music player.  It actually incorporates technology that Aphex has used in its professional products to increase the sound quality of all the digital files you play.  Unlike music players that simply play the compressed audio of a standard music file, Aphex’s app allows for high quality playback to improve consumers’ listening experience.  Wiener is a cool person in technology driving his company towards making high quality digital audio available to anyone with a smartphone.  If you need help installing the app or getting it to work, find smartphone tech support for help. Read more »

While there are a lot of funny pictures or moments that we like to share with our friends on social media, we don’t always want those pictures permanently archived on the Internet.  Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snapchat, has created a mobile application that tries to resolve this conflict between the desire for long-term privacy and the need for social connection.  Snapchat is an app that lets users send pictures they take back and forth in real-time in a conversational manner, but also deletes those pictures forever after specified period of time.  Spiegel’s vision has resonated with consumers all over the world.  This is clear from the fact that Snapchat is consistently a top ten app in Apple’s App Store for the iPhone.  Spiegel has worked to create a space where people can share their day-to-day moments without the fear of long-term embarrassment.  Many users concerned with online privacy and Internet security have clearly been waiting for a service to provide that opportunity.  Spiegel is definitely a cool person in the tech industry who has capitalized on a simple but effective idea. Read more »

Online services have helped empower content creators in several major industries.  The music industry has arguably seen the largest shift of all since the Internet became ubiquitous.  Software exists that can turn a home desktop computer into an adequate recording studio.  Online music services like iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon Music allow musicians to make their music globally available.  However, there are still difficulties getting your work onto those online music services. Philip Kaplan, founder of Distrokid, is a cool person trying to fix that problem.  Kaplan, a musician himself, has been successful building Internet businesses in the past and is now turning his attention towards helping musicians with his new service Distrokid. Read more »

Bre Pettis’s company MakerBot is a manufacturer of 3D printers.  3D Printers use three-dimensional product designs developed via computer software programs to “print” out an object made from plastic material.  Most 3D printer manufacturers cater to the industrial market and their products often cost tens of thousands of dollars.  However, Pettis wants MakerBot to buck that trend.  Founded in 2009, MakerBot focuses on developing and selling more affordable 3D Printers that hook up to regular desktop computers.  Pettis is working to make 3D printing a reality in an everyday home setting.  If Pettis fully realizes his dream, it is possible that people will someday be able to design physical objects and print them right at home using their computer.  In theory, this could affect heavily affect the larger manufacturing industry. Read more »

Smartphones, tablets, and computers have made the digital distribution of entertainment media a major industry in the last decade.  While the first major changes came in the music and film industries, recently the publishing industry has seen major shifts towards digital markets as well.  However, it’s not only prose that people read on their computers and mobile devices these days.  With his company Comixology, David Steinberger has helped to make comics a part of the digital publishing industry as well.  Comixology sells digital comics for reading on the web, on tablets, and on mobile devices.  Readers can buy comics in both the shorter, more traditional issue format or as larger collections of issues in many cases.  Comixology has allowed comics to storm on to the digital market thanks to the vision of its CEO, David Steinberger. Read more »

Privacy is becoming a more and more frequently discussed topic these days.  This is likely because online services like Facebook and Google continue to collect large amounts of data on their users.  Some users do not seem to mind trading a bit of their privacy for free online services. Others have been less than enthusiastic about the way users seem to be paying these companies with their personal data instead of cash for their services.  Brian Kennish, cofounder of Disconnect, is most certainly in the latter camp.

Brian Kennish formerly worked at Google as a software developer.  However, in 2010, Kennish left Google due to increasing dissatisfaction with their mass data collection and the secrecy around how that data is used.  That is part of the reason Kennish developed Disconnect, a browser extension that blocks third-party sites from tracking you when you use the web.  Disconnect is available to download for four different browsers—Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari.  If you have trouble installing Disconnect, you can always ask computer support for assistance.  Read more »

Flipboard is a tablet application for iPad and Android that aims to improve the user experience for consuming social media and news.  Mike McCue, the CEO of the company, founded Flipboard in 2010 alongside iPhone engineer Evan Doll.  He branded the app as a “social magazine”, which collects information from a person’s many different social media accounts and specific news sources and places it into a magazine aesthetic for the user.  Users can then quickly flip through the digital pages of their personalized magazine to take in all the information from their media and news feeds in a single place.  This is opposed to the traditional web format of news and social media, which usually involves vertical scrolling and does not consolidate and organize your data the way Flipboard attempts to do. Those who have interest in Flipboard but are struggling with the app should find iPad support for help. McCue has lead Flipboard to great success since founding it.  He has helped to make the application one of the most featured and prominent on both Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS operating systems. Read more »

SwiftKey is one of the most successful pieces of Android software in the history of the operating system.  Millions of people have downloaded the keyboard app and used it to replace the less popular stock keyboard of the operating system.  What makes SwiftKey so popular?  The people behind the technology designed SwiftKey to be an effective and convenient program that accurately predicts what you are trying to say as you type it, saving you time as you send your messages by e-mail and text on your phone or tablet.  Dr. Ben Medlock, a computer science expert specializing in Natural Language Processing, is the man behind this technology.  Dr. Ben Medlock is currently the CTO of SwiftKey, which he founded with current CEO Jon Reynolds in 2008.  While Reynolds runs the business side of the company, Medlock is in the man in charge of the SwiftKey program itself.  Medlock’s technology has clearly resonated with Android users, as the app constantly remains one of the most popular in the Android store.  If you need help replacing the Android keyboard with SwiftKey on your mobile device, you should call for mobile support. Read more »

Information is everywhere with the Internet these days, but what if you don’t want to be exposed to some of that information while you’re online?  It may seem like an odd problem, but this issue has affected many people.  The most prominent example is encountering TV show or sports “spoilers” when people post a plot element or game outcome in your social media stream before you get a chance to see for yourself.  Zack Shapiro has created a Google Chrome browser plugin that attempts to solve this problem.  Named Silencer, Shapiro’s software actually blocks social media posts on websites like Twitter and Facebook that contain words or phrases that users want to filter out of their stream.  For example, if you recorded the World Series game on your DVR because you missed it while at work but still wanted to go online without learning the outcome, you could block phrases like “World Series” or the names of the teams on your Facebook and Twitter feeds.  This tool could possibly prove useful if one wanted to use social media without fear of ruining the outcome of a game or TV show. Read more »