Computer Support Blog

Learning a new musical instrument is never easy.  But, following the demise of Guitar Hero, there is – as one might suspect – an app for that!  Now, those who want to learn to play the guitar need only a guitar, an iPad, and Wild Chords to get started on a road to musical proficiency!

Wild Chords is an application, currently exclusively available for the Apple iPad, that helps teach you how to play the guitar.  In order to use Wild Chords, all you need is a guitar and an iPad; you do not need speakers or an amplifier if you are using an electric guitar.  In fact, if you are using an electric guitar, you have to unplug it from other equipment – like an amp – because the distortion from other equipment affects the program.  Even if you have never picked up a guitar before, Ovelin – the app’s publisher – is confident that Wild Chords can teach you.

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Brilliant ideas often need to come at the right time in order for it to be recognized.  Occasionally, there is an invention in the tech sector that fails simply because the marketplace was not ready for it or the supporting technologies did not exist to make it a success.  But the success of online digital photo editor Picnik is the result of a good idea hitting the marketplace at precisely the right time.  Much of the credit for Picnik’s success, then, comes from co-founder Mike Harrington.

At one point in his career, Mike Harrington was best known for the immensely popular video game Half-Life.  Harrington was the lead programmer for Half-Life and he was a co-founder of Valve, the software company that produced Half-Life.  Prior to starting Valve with Gabe Newell, Harrington was a software developer for Microsoft.  His work in the tech sector began in 1985 when he went to work for Dynamix as a programmer.  Following the success of Half-Life, Harrington took a sabbatical and traveled with his wife.

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The popularity of Glee has made the music term “mash-up” a household phrase.  In case, however, you aren’t into that trend, a mash-up is when a music producer combines two songs that are not inherently alike, but share a similar characteristic either musically or thematically.  In the entertainment and corporate worlds, mergers often act like mash-ups and they have been occurring with increasing frequency over the last decade.  One of the most peculiar mergers came when Disney purchased Marvel Entertainment in 2009.  Marvel Entertainment is the parent company that oversees Marvel Comics, Marvel Studios and Marvel Digital Enterprises.  Since the buyout, Disney has been making a lot of money off Marvel, especially through summer blockbuster films like Iron Man 2 and Captain America: The First Avenger.

But fans of Marvel Entertainment’s projects have been waiting for something substantive and new to come out of the Disney buyout for years.  Marvel Studios, for example, had all subsequent projects through this summer’s The Avengers in pre-production when Disney bought Marvel Entertainment.  Finally, the results are evident and Avengers Alliance embodies just what the buyout might mean for Marvel fans.  Avengers Alliance is a new video game for Facebook produced by Playdom.

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The Internet has become a free-speech battleground.  On the one side of the argument are people who believe that Freedom Of Speech is an absolute and information should be freely disseminated.  On the other side of the argument are those who see copyright protections as essential to protecting intellectual property rights.  While the Internet has enflamed this old argument, it also provides many remedies to the conflicting philosophies.  One of the remedies is to make clear exactly what is available for free use without any copyright protections.  For people who wish to avail themselves of works that are in the public domain, there is Public Domain Sherpa.

Public Domain Sherpa is a guide to all things that you may find on the Internet for public use.  “Public domain” is a term in copyright law that refers to a work – be it a song, story, film, book, photograph or other work that usually could be copyright protected – for which there is no copyright owner.  That means that items that are “in the public domain” may be used by artists, publishers or in any other medium freely.  There is no one you would have to pay royalties to in order to use an object in the public domain.  Because works on the Internet may not be properly annotated with the copyright information, and ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law, you might need a guide online to what is in the public domain.  That is where Public Domain Sherpa comes in!

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It is a tough thing for a company when the chief product that business creates is past its peak in the marketplace.  Many companies actively attempt to keep the truth about their product’s chances of survival in the market concealed from investors in order to continue the struggle for market dominance.  Not so at TomTom, the satellite navigation company.  Impaired by cheaper hardware flooding the market and similar, free, software offered by Google, TomTom has experienced a few rough years.  Fortunately, TomTom has Marina Wyatt.

Marina Wyatt is the Chief Financial Officer of TomTom.  Wyatt was hired as CFO immediately before TomTom made its initial public offering for stock in 2005 and she has remained with the company ever since.  Marina Wyatt came to TomTom with an impressive resume.  As a graduate of Cambridge University and a first job as a chartered accountant, one might assume Wyatt’s education was strongly rooted in finance.  Actually, her degree was in geography and it was not until she joined the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales that her interests turned to economics.  Her accounting jobs led her to positions at Psion, Symbian, and finally COLT Telcom Group.  As CFO of COLT Telecom Group, Wyatt gained the real-world experience she needed to be a vital hire for TomTom.

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The computer hardware landscape is a surprisingly dynamic one, with innovations frequently changing the marketplace abruptly.  There was recently a parody of this principle in the advertising for a major electronics retailer in which consumers are dismayed when the product they just bought is made obsolete almost instantly.  Given that most chip manufacturers already have product lines planned for the next decade, the volatility of the market is surprising and there are measures that can be taken to minimize the chances that what you buy today will be unusable within three years.  To preserve your sanity (and your wallet!), sometimes, it helps to buy the best, most cutting edge equipment.  In the case of laptop computers, your best bet might well be the EON17-X.

The EON17-X laptop computer is a powerful laptop computer with a number of versatile options.  Built by Origin, the EON17-X utilizes some of the most advanced hardware on Earth to provide a superior computer, especially when compared to most big box stores.  For example, one of the processor options for the EON17-X laptop computer is the Intel Core i7-3930K processor, built upon the advanced Sandy Bridge technology.  Sandy Bridge is one of Intel’s most advanced chip designs available to the consumer market.  The fact that the EON17-X employs today’s cutting edge technology virtually guarantees that this laptop will remain usable and relevant for all programs for the foreseeable future.  Right now, it delivers incredibly fast results for complicated programs and graphics rendering.

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One of the dangers in starting a new social networking platform is that users will not flock to it simply because they do not understand what the network offers.  While that is primarily an issue for a marketing department, each new social network needs a hook, an angle unique from the other social networks that delivers something new to the Internet.  For that, new social networks need a decent Chief Product Officer, who helps determine what the Internet site actually offers to users and programmers who want to develop applications on their network.  As a relative newcomer to the social networking market, Klout has Chris Makarsky.

Chris Makarsky took a winding road to get to Klout and his career path was a somewhat uncommon one for a man who has risen to be Chief Product Officer of an Internet company.  While studying Economics and Psychology at the University of Virginia, Makarsky took an internship working for the Federal Trade Commission.  After getting his two B.S. degrees, he took a year off from school and went to work for Musictoday.  While working for the ticket vendor Musictoday, Chris Makarsky was intrigued by management techniques and after a year, he returned to the University of Virginia to begin his Master’s work.  In 2007, Chris Makarsky graduated with a Master’s of Science in Management of IT.  Armed with that degree, he was immediately hired by Yahoo! as a product manager.

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With all of the leaps forward in the way entertainment is presented, from enhanced audio standards to 3-D Blu-Ray players, it is almost surprising to learn that microprocessor production has been occurring on a two-dimensional scale for so very long.  Even the current generation of microprocessors, in stores now, runs on transistors that are two dimensional.  While they are faster and more intricate than the earliest transistors from 1947, they are essentially the same design.  Until now, the transistor has been refined by improved manufacturing methods and changes in the materials used to manufacture them.  All of that is about to change, though.  Intel is releasing computers based on their Ivy Bridge technology, the world’s first transistors designed with three dimensional pathways!

The Ivy Bridge processor is a 3-D Tri-Gate transistor and what that means to consumers is that it is fast!  The Ivy Bridge processor advances the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture that Intel pioneered and released in 2011.  While the Sandy Bridge used circuit pathways that were 32 nanometers wide, the Ivy Bridge improved the pathway to 22 nanometers!  With that improvement in the die, Intel’s new Panther Point (Series 7) chips will have more transistors per chip . . . by several orders of magnitude!  The change in ten nanometers allows Intel to use a vastly greater number of transistors in their new chips.

What does this change mean for you?

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More than ever before, consumers are bombarded by advertisers and institutions that demand your attention.  Network television studios try to keep you thinking about your favorite show for the entire week between episodes, just as news channels tease upcoming stories constantly and advertisers desperately try to get your attention so you can buy their merchandise.  As consumers adapt to one form of advertising or programming reinforcement, experts in the industry work to develop new methods, products and services.  Arguably the coolest new service that connects your television viewing experience to other aspects of your life is Flingo.

Flingo is a relatively new company that combines the television watching experience with the social resources that enhance the experience.  The CEO of Flingo, Ashwin Navin, is not attempting to change the way network television viewing happens.  Instead, with Flingo, Navin hopes to enhance the viewing experience in ways that others have not tried before now.  In addition to innovating for television viewers, Flingo works with high definition television manufacturers and producers to try to elevate the television-viewing experience as much as possible, while still keeping it the passive activity most viewers want.

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Every company in the technology sector has a strategy and few companies have been as open about their outlook for the market as Nokia.  Nokia, the mobile phone manufacturer, is widely attributed with connecting one billion people to cellular networks through their innovative and popular devices.  Recently, Nokia unveiled its “Next Billion” Strategy.  While their stated goal is clear – Nokia wants to be the supplier for another billion mobile phone customers – their exact strategy to reach the goal is not as evident.  However, it is Mary T. McDowell who will be responsible for achieving the Next Billion goal!

Mary T. McDowell is the Executive Vice President of Mobile Phones at Nokia.  This means that the ultimate decisions and responsibilities for all things having to do with mobile phones at Nokia fall upon her.  While Nokia’s CEO plays an important role in achieving the Next Billion Strategy, McDowell’s marketing prowess with mobile phones will go a long way toward determining the success or failure of the plan.  Given that McDowell was the executive that shepherded the popular and wildly successful E-Series mobile phone from Nokia to the global marketplace (well in advance of the current CEO taking that position), it looks like McDowell is more than up to the task.

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