Computer Support Blog

While YouTube does act as a platform for promoting stars and brands in other media such as television, movies, sports, music and video games, there are many people now who have gained influence and popularity in pop culture purely from releasing YouTube videos themselves.  Many people have developed informative and entertaining web series that gain thousands of views every week on their YouTube channels.  Some of the most popular YouTube personalities include the host of SciShow Hank Green, host of PBS Idea Channel Mike Rugnetta and popular video game bloggers the Game Theorists.  These channels receive hundreds of thousands of views for their videos and have developed fan bases that rival many other forms of media.  Cool product in technology FameBit wants to connect popular brands with these YouTube personalities in order to work out marketing deals or endorsement campaigns.  On FameBit companies can search through available “YouTubers” and check the size and makeup of their audiences before contacting them to work out a deal.  Any company that wants to use FameBit but is having trouble signing up or viewing listings might have a connection issue requiring help from a network service provider. Read more »

Reinforcing good behavior in the classroom is one of the most effective ways to get students to perform well in school.  However, creating a workable system to promote and reward positive behavior can be difficult for many teachers.  Finding a way to keep track of students’ actions over time so they can earn positive reinforcement requires a significant amount of work when teachers already have a significant amount of responsibilities.  In addition, students may get confused difficulties if every teacher in the school uses a different system, decreasing the likelihood that students will keep any sort of rewards system in mind when thinking about their actions.  Cool person in technology Matthew Rubinstein wants to fix these problems with his app LiveSchool.  LiveSchool presents teachers with a unified system for rewarding their students with the help of mobile technology.  Using a mobile device such as an iPad, teachers can easily mark when their students do something positive to earn “points”.  Rubinstein’s app keeps long-term track of every student’s points.  Kids can then use these points to cash in for rewards and incentives customized by the teachers themselves.  Any teacher who has issues while trying to use the LiveSchool app may have a broken device needing tablet computer repair. Read more »

There are many private pilots who fly small planes across short distances in the United States as a hobby.  However, these private pilots have to spend a significant amount of money to take part in their passion.  The many costs associated with private flying can be a deterrent to doing what many pilots love.  However, cool product in technology Flytenow is hooking these pilots up with enthusiasts who can ride with them and share the cost of a flight.  By connecting passengers with pilots who want to fly more, Flytenow is allowing pilots to save money by sharing the cost of fuel and other expenses and giving civilian enthusiasts a chance to have a unique flying experience.  Read more »

Teachers want to give their students every tool necessary to make their education worthwhile and help them succeed.  Cool person in technology John Runkles created Bulb in order to help teachers make assignments and lessons more engaging for their students.  Bulb is an online publishing platform designed specifically for use by both teachers and students.  With Bulb, users can create elaborate reports and posts using text, images and video and post them online in a convenient easy-to-read fashion.  Using Runkles’ product, teachers can create supplemental lesson plans for online consumption using mixed media and post them online for students to see.  In response, students can create their own posts on Bulb, easily publishing assignments online as response posts with the ability to use mixed media just as their teachers do.  With Runkles’ product, students and teachers have access to one simple platform that gives them a multitude of ways to create lessons and respond to them accordingly. Students or teachers who have problems setting up free accounts with Bulb should find a computer tech support provider for help. Read more »

YouTube revolutionized the web when it popularized the idea of user-generated content powering a large social media site.  However, YouTube just supports one medium of user-generated content—video.  Wattpad is a cool product in technology that wants to do what YouTube did for user-created video, but for creative written works instead.  With Wattpad, people upload their stories for popular consumption on the website and mobile app.  Just as YouTube videos are free for the public, so are all works posted by Wattpad members.  Wattpad contains works from many different genres, ranging from crime drama to science fiction to creative nonfiction.  Users can read and react to any story on the site by leaving comments, ratings or marking stories as favorites.  Readers can read stories via the cloud or download the text for offline viewing on the Wattpad mobile application for tablets and smartphones.  Any users who have issues getting their chosen stories to download to their Wattpad library may need mobile tech support for their devices.  Wattpad also keeps track of how many people view a text and download it so writers can see the reach their work has on the service. Read more »

Social networking often carries a stigma indicating that it limits people and prevents them from experiencing other aspects of life away from the computer. So much of social networking has to do with sharing content on the web and collecting digital imaginary benefits such as “likes” or “favorites” that it’s easy to see why some people feel this way.  Cool person in technology Justin Parfitt believes that social networking doesn’t have to limit people from experiencing the “real world” but can, in fact, be a useful tool to open people to new experiences.  Parfitt designed his social network HeyLets around the concept of providing people with the chance to discover new experiences they may enjoy while out of the house.  Parfitt’s product doesn’t focus on one sort of experience or event exclusively, but instead allow users to share all types of places and activities they enjoy.  HeyLets users simply post small status updates and photos as they would with other social networking sites, but also frame those updates with data that indicates where their experiences were located and how others can enjoy them too.  Anyone who has issues connecting to HeyLets may want to seek online computer support for assistance. Read more »

When companies or organizations post longer videos on their website or on an event page, it can sometimes be hard to keep viewers engaged for the entire time.  Many visitors are only going to have interest in one or two segments from a thirty-minute or one-hour video.  Whether it’s a roundtable discussion, a press conference, or another long-form video for promotional or informative purposes, the reality is that it will only annoy viewers to force them to watch the entire thing to find the few pieces in which they have interest.  Cool product in technology Vinja allows companies to organize longer videos for their audience and create interactive videos that are easy to navigate.  When viewing a video made using Vinja, people have the option of skipping around to clearly labeled segments quickly and easily.  Viewers won’t struggle through a very long video to find a particular clip of interest.  Even better, Vinja contains options for users to share segments of the video to social media immediately with one click.  Any user who has trouble sharing a Vinja video to any of their social media accounts might need home tech support to help determine the issue.  Read more »

It’s easy to forget about what happens to old and unused computers.  Technology updates so quickly that people often don’t have time to figure out what to do with their old machines and will leave them in storage, collecting dust for years.  Needless to say, this is not the best use for older technology that often works perfectly fine or could work fine with just a little computer repair.  The Outlook Foundation is a nonprofit that wants to take those old computers and technology and use them for a better purpose.  The charity takes older technology and repurposes it in order to donate it to children in need who can benefit from having access to a computer and the Internet.  The foundation also aids veterans who return from overseas without a job by giving them computers that can help them find a place in civilian life once again.  By giving technology who those who can benefit the most from it, the Outlook Foundation has found a much more effective and altruistic use for the computers that people have replaced with newer tech. Read more »

One would imagine that fundraising with the Internet would make the process simple and efficient, but for many nonprofits, that simply isn’t the case.  Many fundraising platforms, whether they be locally accessed software or cloud-based services, make things unnecessarily difficult for nonprofits.  Some platforms force donors to redirect to another site before they can input their information to donate.  Others have very rigid rules for the types of fundraising they can support, and a significant number of services take percentages of the donations that their platform processes.  Cool person in technology Roderick Campbell founded CommitChange to be a fundraising technology that actually does make the process more efficient and simpler for nonprofits.  Read more »

Even with advances in recent years that allow apps in Android and Apple to run concurrently so that users can switch between them with a simple gesture the typical smartphone experience still prohibits people from true multitasking.  People can only view apps one at a time on most popular smartphones, limiting their experience. In order to check on services in real time, users must always open individual apps. Cool person in technology Dwipal Desai has founded Terrain in order to break users away from these limitations.  Terrain is a new launcher for Android devices that leads users away from a one-at-a-time paradigm for viewing apps.  Users can download and install the launcher from the Google Play Store.  Anyone who has trouble applying Terrain to his or her smartphone may need help from an Android tech support provider. Read more »