Computer Support Blog

New websites evolve through many changes early on in their life cycles.  However, sometimes developers and designers make these changes based only off of gut feelings or from incomplete data.  Idea Informer is a cool product that wants to help website owners make purposeful changes every time they edit or change their sites.  This cool product accomplishes this by giving website visitors a direct line of communication to the owner on the site, allowing users to give specific feedback.  Through Idea Informer, website owners receive a constant flow of comments from users about their projects’ design and functionality.  Designers and developers can then consider the accumulated feedback when altering and updating the site.  Website owners definitely do not want users to have to call for computer support just to navigate their sites.  Idea Informer lets developers and designers find issues and fix them quickly so websites are as cleanly designed and easy to use as possible.  Read more »

Trying to succeed as a student athlete isn’t always just about skill on the field or on the court.  Gaining buzz and hype around your name and accomplishments is a necessity for any student athletes who want recruiters to approach them about playing on the next level.  Sometimes that means a high school athlete trying to catch the eye of collegiate athletic departments, and sometimes that means college athletes at more obscure universities looking to get attention from professional scouts.  Social media and the Internet can play a key part in the gaining the buzz student athletes need for the right people to notice them.  However, using general-use social networks such as Twitter or Facebook can have mixed results since athletes’ profiles often get lost among the immense amount of content on these sites.  Cool person in technology Patrick O’Quinn founded Awesome.Me to give student athletes a social network designed especially for them where they could garner buzz for their accomplishments without getting lost in the shuffle. Read more »

Wikipedia is one of the one of the most used sites on the Internet.  A major part of how that reality came to be is how easy it is to keep information up to date on the site.  The “wiki” format of the website allows all users to edit and review information.  This fact means that people can constantly update and double-check all articles on the site.  While this format has proven to be incredibly useful for Wikipedia’s encyclopedic purposes, a cool product called BrainKeeper wants to apply it to another purpose.  BrainKeeper provides businesses with internal wiki sites where they can store all corporate information.  Employees can then edit the company’s internal wiki powered by BrainKeeper every time a policy change happens or anything of significant importance occurs.  Office tech support assistance will be necessary for any less technically inclined employees who have trouble updating information through BrainKeeper’s system. Read more »

Analytics and data collection is hot area in the technology industry.  There are countless analytics startups trying to help both large corporations and small businesses grow.  However, cool person in technology Rob Mancabelli believes that analytics can help improve more than just business.  Mancabelli is a former teacher and educational technology director that wants to get schools on the analytics bandwagon in order to find better ways to help young students.  Mancabelli’s company BrightBytes has developed a product for schools that provides actionable data that can help institutions improve children’s experiences and increase their learning.  Mancabelli wants to measure how students interact with what’s available at school and seeing what policy changes affect positive change statistically.  If his product can provide these insights, Mancabelli’s analytics could have a major impact on education.  For example, if analytics prove students using the computer lab more often frequently receive better grades, then there is viable data school officials can use to acquire more funds for things like IT support.  Just knowing the most effective ways to spend a school’s limited funds could make serious change in many kids’ educations. Read more »

Many social networking sites claim to connect people and bring them together, but these connections often exist only in the virtual world of the Internet.  Cool person in technology Kate Spivak believes that connections, whether professional or personal, are much stronger when made in the flesh.  That’s why this cool person founded BlendAbout, a new Internet startup that connects people of similar interests online and then also connects them in the real world.  Spivak’s company accomplishes this by matching up people with similar interests and placing them into group dinners designed for personal and professional networking.  BlendAbout meetings connect six people with similar interests according to their profiles and reserve a meal for them at a restaurant they can all travel to conveniently.  People can use these dinners to meet other people in their professional field or others who share their hobbies.  Rather than only posting comments back and forth in a forum or chat room on the web, Spivak’s startup aims to connect people in the physical world as well.  Read more »

Nearly everyone knows the experience of losing car keys, the television remote, cell phones or any number of important items used on a daily basis.  In some situations, people can easily locate what they’ve lost, such as when someone calls a smartphone to hear it ringing and go find it.  However, most of the time, people are left frustrated by their inability to find what they have misplaced.  Now, a cool product in technology aims to take away that frustration for good.  Linquet is a small tracking device that anyone can easily attach to any item he or she owns in order to locate it when it goes missing.  This small item tracker is easily linkable to anything a user wants, whether that be the car keys, a camera, or even a pet.  Users can set off an alarm using a special remote when they lose their Linquet connected item.  Anyone who has trouble getting a Linquet remote to work can always contact mobile computer repair for help with the issue. Read more »

Song royalties have become a more complicated issue in recent years due to the way technology has affected the music industry.  Online radio companies like Pandora and Slacker Radio service millions, and on-demand streaming services like Rhapsody and Spotify have gained a significant hold in the market. These realities mean there are suddenly far more virtual venues than ever before where musicians and songwriters should earn royalties for their work.  Technology has also changed the global market for music, as it’s far easier for songs to gain exposure on several continents now.  Before the Internet, only larger stars backed by major labels would see radio play internationally.  Now, a video uploaded to YouTube can go viral and an independent artist can have worldwide exposure.  Without knowing how to collect international royalties however, it’s much more difficult for those independent artists to receive pay for their work.  However, a cool product in technology called Songtrust is providing artists a platform on the web to help them collect the royalties they should be earning from every possible source. Read more »

Making products into services has been a common theme among technology startups over the last few years.  Companies like Spotify have taken music, which people once sold like a product in album and single form, and allowed people to pay a monthly subscription for unlimited access to it.  Netflix, Crackle, Hulu and other video streaming companies have made film and television a subscription service for millions of people as well.  Even computer repair companies now offer subscription-based plans as opposed to one-time service.  Now, a cool person in technology wants to transform another product into a service for consumers.  TurningArt founder Jason Gracilieri wants to make professional art subscription-based for admirers.  Read more »

There are a many companies producing websites and software that help people when searching for a new job.  The uncertainty of the current job market has made these products popular as people look for any edge they can get when seeking a new position.  However, many people never think about the other side of the equation.  With so many people seeking new positions, companies can have a harder time sifting through applicants to find the best person for a new job.  Cool product Workable wants to help businesses select the right people for every open position they have.  Read more »

Any parent that has ever volunteered to be a leader of any extra-curricular activity for their kids knows that trying to organize children from dozens of families is a harrowing venture.  Cool person in technology Yuval Spector wants to use the Internet to make this task far more manageable and less intimidating.  Mass emails with broken threads, missed phone calls and numerous other problems usually complicate things when trying to plan activities for large groups of children.  However, Spector’s company UpToUs provides parents with numerous organizational tools that can help group leaders keep things organized when working out details with so many other parents.  Spector wants to reduce the potential for chaos when parents are trying to coordinate activities by giving them a central organizational system. Read more »