Computer Support Blog

CoachUp CEO Jordan Fliegal played basketball as a kid and while he loved the sport, he wasn’t very good at it—not at first anyway.  On the CoachUp website, Fliegal speaks about how he was lucky enough to find a personal coach to help him train in his favorite sport.  Through the private coach’s help, Fliegal managed to improve enough that many top colleges tried to recruit him.  He even went on to play professional basketball in overseas leagues.  Fliegal attributes his success to his private coach, and that’s why he founded tech startup CoachUp.  CoachUp is an online service that conveniently connects parents and kids with private trainers and coaches to help them with a sport or activity.  Fliegal attributes finding his private coach when he was a kid to pure luck.  It seems he wants to take luck out of the equation and make private coaching available to as many young people as possible with CoachUp.  This cool person in technology is using the connected world to try to help kids achieve more in their athletic activities. Read more »

Despite the thousands of SAT preparation books and college admissions guides available on the market, the most helpful information for high school students applying to college often comes from either former admissions officers or recently admitted students.  Getting help from a former admissions officer usually means hiring them as a college admissions coach.  This situation can get very expensive for parents and is therefore prohibitive for many students.  However, cool product AdmitSee wants to offer college applicants more affordable help by leveraging information from the profiles of recently accepted students.   AdmitSee obtains information from current university students and recent graduates and compiles that information into admissions profiles.  AdmitSee then stores that information on its site and gives access to those still in the college application process.  By viewing the profiles of successful graduates, high school students can find out what different schools are looking for specifically.  This information can then help AdmitSee members in forming their own successful applications.  This advantage will help kids get in to a great school for whatever career path they choose, whether they want to be a writer, aviation engineer, or even a cloud computer repair professional. Read more »

Being a professional artist is a struggle for many, as young and talented creators saturate the field in today’s art world, making it harder to acquire a fan base.  However, the Internet has become an incredibly valuable resource for artists to reach admirers and carve out their niche in the wider art loving populace.  Daniel Arroyo is a cool person in technology who has built a website that leverages the advantages of the Internet to help artists as they find their audience.  Artgonia acts as a platform for artists who want to share their work and build a network of fans.  Arroyo’s website utilizes social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus in order to help budding artists and photographers reach much wider audiences.  Artists can share their art through unique Artgonia profiles to try to make their work go viral on the web.  Any artist who is interested but doesn’t know how to create social network profiles that help them take full advantage of Arroyo’s site should seek out an online computer support provider. Read more »

Finding new products, books, music, movies, or activities you want to try isn’t always easy, even with all the resources the Internet provides.  While sites like Amazon provide customer reviews, they are from strangers whose tastes and experiences may not be the same as your own.  This difficulty remains present even in places dedicated to reviews specifically such as Yelp!, TripAdvisor, and Google review pages.  While these reviews can give people general ideas about the quality of different media, products and activities, they don’t compare to recommendations from people whose opinion someone trusts the most, such as friends and family.  Qwinti is a cool product in technology that attempts to resolve this concern by giving people a social platform where they can review and recommend any experience they have, but keep those reviews within the confines of one’s social network.  Qwinti only works through Facebook.  This means that only friends and family see anyone’s review of a product or experience.  This strategy aims for people to get better recommendations that are more relevant to them by limiting the pool of potential reviewers to only the people that a consumer trusts.  Anyone who has problems installing Qwinti on Facebook will need online tech support to assist them with setup. Read more »

Everyone knows that annoying feeling that comes with hearing about news weeks after they should have been aware of it.  Sometimes it’s about a friend, a boss, a business associate, or a celebrity they follow intensely, but it’s almost always something they wish they’d known sooner.  Cool person in technology Axel Hansen created Newsle specifically for people in this situation.  Newsle automatically finds news from hundreds of sources and matches it against each of its users’ specific follow lists to present them with news that only has to do with the people they care about the most. Hansen’s program starts out with users connecting to their Facebook or LinkedIn account and importing their friends or business colleagues onto their follow list first.  This process automatically sets up users so they see news about anyone in their social or business networks the minute it appears on the web. Newsle scours the Internet and finds out when a news outlet reports something about anyone in a user’s network.  Anyone who uses Newsle but can’t seem to connect it to any social networks properly can get assistance through phone tech support. Read more »

Anyone who has ever tried to plan a trip as part of a large group can tell you that the process becomes tedious and difficult.  Sending emails back and forth constantly amongst a large group of friends is not the most convenient way of making plans.  That’s why cool person in technology Paul Watts has built Gatherball.  Gatherball is a set of collaborative tools on the web for groups to use when planning either a long vacation or a short getaway.  Watts’s website works at every step of a trip-planning project—from concept to booking.  Users who want to plan a trip or have an idea can use Watts’s service to send invites to specific friends.  Those who receive an invite then read a pitch on the Gatherball about a getaway or vacation idea from the original user.  These new users then agree to join, opt out or send messages to the trip creator to iron out details.  Any user who has had trouble with websites like Gatherball linking with their Facebook account will want to have access to online tech support in case they run into problems. Read more »

Many of us have had our wallets filled passed capacity with a seemingly endless amount of customer loyalty and rewards cards from popular retailers.  Punchkeeper is a cool product that wants to make loyalty cards more convenient for both the companies that promote them and the customers that use them.  Punchkeeper uses a combination of mobile technology and QR code scanning so that businesses can easily set up a digital loyalty card system for their clients.  This service provides businesses with the tools to generate special QR codes that their customers can scan each time they use a service or buy a product.  Once customers scan a designated QR code with a mobile phone, the Punchkeeper mobile app recognizes the code and adds a “punch” to the appropriate digital loyalty card.  This solution prevents customers from having to fill their wallets with plastic cards that they almost never use.  Another advantage to turning loyalty cards digital is that retailers can avoid spending the resources to print thousands of cards or dealing with customers that lose or forget them when they come to shop.  Anyone who has issues downloading the Punchkeeper app or getting QR codes to scan properly can get help from a smartphone PC support company. Read more »

When most people talk about how difficult the hiring process is, they’re talking about the jobseeker’s half of the equation.  While it’s certainly true that job hunting is no easy task, many people don’t consider the difficulties that companies have when looking for the best candidates.  Combing through different sources to find strong applicants is difficult enough for many HR departments.  The process gets even harder when optimizing the applicant selection and interview process to identify the absolute best candidates.  Greenhouse is a cool product that offers a technological solution to the hiring process.  Greenhouse provides a connected set of tools that streamline the applicant screening and selection process. The product aims to help HR departments struggle less with their hiring decisions.  Businesses that use Greenhouse can keep application sourcing, interview strategies, and candidate review all in one centralized location.  Greenhouse aims to improve the hiring process by reducing wasted time and energy.  To accomplish this task, it keeps every step of the application process together in one piece of software while looking to focus and optimize each task for HR teams.  Companies that have robust business IT support will have a much easier time integrating Greenhouse into their current systems. Read more »

Amos Elliston is, first and foremost, a software engineer.  However, his career has grown significantly over the years and turned him into a highly successful leader as well.  Currently, Elliston is the Chief Technology Officer of PocketChange, a company that rewards users of specific mobile apps with loyalty points.  Elliston’s current position offers him a serious challenge, as he has to work to make the PocketChange loyalty rewards system integrate with hundreds of different mobile applications.  He also has to coordinate teams that work with two different mobile operating systems: Android and iOS.  Fortunately, Elliston has a significant amount of experience handling large engineering and software projects.  This cool person in technology has held upper management positions at two other major software startups besides PocketChange over the last seven years.  This is not a man who would ever need onsite computer support to solve his computer problems like most people.  The evidence heavily suggests that Elliston is a man who knows what it takes to succeed in the tech industry. Read more »

Communication in any large organization or business can be a hassle when there are hundreds of employees.  In a hospital or other healthcare workplace, things are often even more chaotic due to the constant intake of patients and sudden emergencies that can occur.  Cool person in technology Sunny Tara founded docBeat in order to attack this problem by improving communication in hospitals.  Tara’s product, docBeat, is a mobile platform that facilitates quick and secure communication between workers in a healthcare institution.  Tara lets doctors and other healthcare professionals install docBeat on the smartphones they already own.  This makes integrating docBeat into a workplace easier, although hospitals should still have onsite tech support available to ensure the system works smoothly.  Read more »