Computer Support Blog

PowerPoint presentations, while useful for businesses and professional conferences, aren’t always ideal for educational situations. More often than not, students simply do not find themselves engaged while staring at static lists and bullet points.  Cool product bContext aims to help with this issue with their iPad app.  The application allows teachers to upload static file types such as PDFs and PowerPoint presentations and then transform those documents into interactive presentations.  When a user uploads a document onto their iPad to use it in the bContext app, the app lets teachers mark up the document with their own handwriting.  Rather than requiring expensive projector equipment or smart pen technology, bContext offers teachers a cheap solution for interacting with their presentations through markup and added notes.  Teachers can make notes on their PowerPoint presentation or PDF files as they discuss them in class, creating a more dynamic experience that teachers can use to get students interested.  Teachers who have problems transferring their documents to their tablet will need iPad support to get the app to work properly. Read more »

Social media has taken many different forms as it has expanded.  People use Twitter for text content, Vine and YouTube for video, and Instagram for photographs.  However, cool person in tech Thomas Clayton believes there is a medium that people have underutilized in social media up to now: voice.  Clayton is the CEO of Bubbly, a social network where users post short voice messages instead of videos, pictures, or statuses.  Clayton’s social network is completely mobile focused.  Bubbly doesn’t even have a basic web based counterpart to its smartphone applications.  In a way, it makes perfect sense.  Since Clayton was creating a social network based on voice communication, why not focus entirely on devices specifically built for voice communication—phones?  Clayton believes that people want to have a literal voice on social media and not just a figurative one. In past interviews, he has described his company’s service as “Twitter with a voice.”  Anyone who has trouble downloading Clayton’s app for their iPhone or Android device will need smartphone tech support. Read more »

Job-hunting in the current professional world isn’t as simple as sending out a round of resumes and waiting for a call.  Looking for work requires the ability to navigate and keep track of countless job boards on the Internet, keep a calendar of interviews in order, and maintain multiple versions of your resume available for companies with different cultures and hiring processes.  CareerShift is a cool product that came into being to help jobseekers deal with how complex the process has become.  CareerShift presents users with a set of online tools that help them keep track of their job search campaign.  The service aims to be comprehensive rather than focus in on a single aspect of job seeking.  It offers multiple tools and features for users to organize and store their job documents like cover letters and resumes on the web, keep track of the companies a user gets in touch with, and to distribute the resumes and applications a user has put together.  Users who have trouble sifting through CareerShift’s large feature set may want online tech support to help them through the process. Read more »

Content management is becoming a fragmented experience as more and more storage solutions appear on the market.  It is becoming commonplace for professionals to have data stored locally on their own computers and tablets, on their smartphones, and on cloud-based solutions such as Dropbox and Google Drive.  Navigating through each individual file management system can be cumbersome and time-consuming.  To deal with this situation, cool person in tech Kevin Payne and his company Metago have built a unifying content management app for Android called ASTRO.  ASTRO doesn’t only access one storage system, but connects to both your local network and cloud services to create a single file management system for all of a user’s content.  Payne’s app can connect to services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, SkyDrive and even Facebook.  It can also access any computer that shares its data with a local network.  This means a user could conceivably access all of their files from one user interface on their phone at any given time.  Users that don’t know how to share their computer’s content over a local network will want home computer support for help. Read more »

Rewarding loyal customers for their continued business and even more importantly, turning regular customers into repeat customers are two essential aspects of the restaurant business.  Venga is a cool product that currently offers restaurants and cafes solutions for these problems through technological means.  Venga is a software suite for restaurant management that aims to engage customers, increase loyalty and give restaurants the tools to improve the experience of their patrons in different ways.  Read more »

Static and bad sound quality commonly plague conference calls.  However, group calls themselves are often essential for efficient communication within a company.  Cool person in technology Stephane Giraudie has set out to fix this problem by creating Voxeet.  Giraudie claims Voxeet offers a better solution for business owners than standard conference calling due to the high quality experience that the product offers.  On the company’s website, Giraudie states that users will find a much higher quality of sound when using Voxeet.  Also on the website, Giraudie’s company cites “3D immersive sound” and HD audio technology to remove unwanted static from group calls as key factors in Voxeet’s user experience.  If Giraudie’s product live up to his claims, business owners could avoid miscommunication from misheard calls due to bad sound quality. It’s easy to imagine that most owners and managers would greatly appreciate higher quality audio in their group calls. Voxeet runs as computer software rather than a product you integrate with your phone, much like consumer-focused conferencing products such as Skype and Google Hangouts.  That means businesses will need access to good PC tech support if they have technical issues with the product. Read more »

Bands and musical artists have used photos from concerts as promotional items for years.  However, getting good pictorial content from gigs can cost a lot of money and require a lot of resources for artists, especially if a major label doesn’t back them.  Bands need a paid photographer to get the content and need to put up on their website or across social media.  Cool product Vivogig wants to take the effort out of this process by allowing bands an easy way to use their fans best photos for promotional and marketing content.  Fans download the Vivogig app to their phone and upload their gig photos to a band’s profile, where other users can vote on and rate their photographs.  This system creates competition between fans to upload the best photos and get their content featured on the app.  Competition like this ensures that Vivogig only features the best quality fan photos on a band’s profile page.  Fans who use the app but have trouble with their phone’s camera may need smartphone computer repair to fix the issue. Read more »

Hiring managers often find their e-mail accounts buried in resumes.  Sorting through these documents to find suitable candidates for new positions can be a messy, disorganized process.  This is especially true when trying to juggle other responsibilities.  Cool person in technology Ben Curtis created Catch the Best specifically to solve this exact dilemma.  Catch the Best is a web-based tool that HR professionals can use to keep track of job applications and help hiring managers gather feedback from co-workers on how well specific resumes fit open positions.  Curtis built Catch the Best as a web application so that he could make it easily accessible to a large HR team all at once.  By using a cloud-based system on the web rather than developing a piece of local software for hiring manager’s computers, Curtis was able to streamline the process of sharing resumes with others in a company easy and automatic.  Those who are unfamiliar with cloud-based technologies or who have issues with Internet-based applications should find a cloud computer support service to help them.  Read more »

Researching the fastest way to get somewhere on public transportation can be an extremely inconvenient process.  This is especially true if you need to take more than one form of transportation.  You have to look through several websites to try to find the best route that matches up most conveniently with your schedule.  Catapulter is a cool product that wants to make sure its customers can avoid this burdensome process.  Catapulter finds the fastest and cheapest ways to travel between two points by public ground transportation.  Catapulter surveys multiple ground transportation providers, including Greyhound, Amtrak, and several public transport organizations in major cities.  It then automatically checks each provider’s schedule and comes up with the most convenient solutions for travel scenarios.  Those who want to use the website but have problems connecting or technical issues with their search results can receive help from a cloud tech support service. Read more »

LinkedIn has proven to be an essential networking tool for many in the business world.  The ability to stay connected with so many business contacts has helped many forward their career and their companies.  However, LinkedIn’s corporate focus on traditional business career paths doesn’t work for everyone.  Cool person in tech Yinon Weiss is a military veteran who found that LinkedIn wasn’t the most appropriate tool for helping military personnel find work in the real world.  Military careers and experience didn’t translate easily to LinkedIn’s design or outline.  This is why Weiss founded RallyPoint, a professional social network designed specifically for both active military personnel and veterans.  RallyPoint helps its members maintain an online presence, network within the military, and apply for jobs.  RallyPoint lets its members apply to jobs in the private sector, but also has options for active personnel to apply for PCS opportunities.  Weiss wants RallyPoint to make networking and job hunting whether someone is still active in the armed forces or not.  Members of the military who want to try RallyPoint but have little experience with social networking might be able to get help from a computer support service. Read more »