Computer Support Blog

ELearning and education technology are two of the hottest areas in the tech industry currently.  Startups are attacking this area from many different angles. While some companies, such as Coursera, are trying to transplant the traditional experience of college-level education onto the Internet, many other companies are trying alternative methods to propagate learning on the web and through technology.  One such cool person who is working to accomplish this is Emily Foote.  Foote is the co-founder and vice president of curricular design at ApprenNet.  ApprenNet is a web-based learning tool that Foote and her colleagues designed to promote educational discussion about a variety of topics.  Foote is a co-founder of the company and an originator of the idea.  She handles the curriculum and the application of it ApprenNet programs while her partners and other co-founders—Karl Okamoto and Paul Tzen—handle other aspects of the company.  Okamoto works with business aspects as CEO and Tzen is the engineer who builds the backbone of ApprenNet’s software.  Since Foote and her team designed the ApprenNet product for use in large institutions, organizations that want to use the product will need large-scale computer support help to integrate and maintain it.  Read more »

Few things are more disappointing than paying an expensive monthly fee for a gym membership and then spending your time waiting in line to use sweat-covered machines and dealing with immense amounts of background noise every time you decide to go.  GymFlow is a cool product available for mobile devices that aims to help people avoid these frustrating circumstances.  GymFlow is an app that users can download to their smartphone and it tracks the traffic levels at nearby gyms.  Users can view traffic updates in real time to see how many people are working out at a given time compared to the gym’s maximum capacity.  Based on this traffic, people can choose what times will be most convenient for them to visit and complete their own exercise routine.  Rather than base their traffic statistics on social media check-ins, the team at GymFlow has opted to work directly with Gym owners to obtain data directly from membership card swipes and scans.  This provides GymFlow users with a far more accurate idea of how crowded a particular gym is since many people don’t track when they go to work out with their social networking accounts.  Many gym-goers don’t even have accounts for social media in the first place!  Read more »

The majority of travel sites essentially handle their business in similar ways.  They focus on specific partners, book through agents that work for the site rather than the transit provider themselves, focus on flights over other forms of travel, and charge convenience fees for booking through the site in the first place.  Cool product FromAtoB is a travel site that doesn’t follow these conventions and attempts to give customers a different, more pure experience.  Rather than have customers book their transit through the site itself as a surrogate, FromAtoB acts more like a search engine. It connects users directly to travel providers themselves.  This difference means that customers avoid unnecessary middlemen, and even potentially avoid unwanted “convenience fees” or extra charges incurred by booking through a surrogate.  FromAtoB lets users search through hundreds or providers and then links customers to those sites so they can purchase their transit and accommodations directly from the source.  FromAtoB wants to de-complicate the process of using a travel website, and this feature is one of its main tools in doing so. Read more »

Battery life is always a key issue whenever reviews for a new model of cell phone come out on the web.  Smartphones become more demanding and power intensive as time passes, and while battery technology continues to improve, many of us still find ourselves charging our phones once or twice a day just to keep them running.  Cool person in technology Tibor Fabian founded Ardica to tackle this problem and find new ways to improve mobile battery life with his startup Ardica.  Ardica researches, develops and sells new mobile battery technology, and Fabian directs his company away from just improving the standard lithium-based batteries that are most common today.  He wants to find innovative solutions that surpass what is expected and put out more power for longer periods of time.  That’s why Fabian and his team develop batteries based on fuel cells and chemical hydride technology rather than using conventional techniques.  Fabian believes this technology will produce more efficient batteries that last longer and have greater overall lifespans.  Mobile device users who have needed smartphone computer repair for battery issues know all too well that current technology can be quite frustrating.  Read more »

A company’s logo is integral to its identity.  It’s the first point of interaction between a business and its customers in most cases.  It is the symbol of a company and is what comes to mind for most people when that business comes up in real world conversation.  However, for all of its importance, a logo is just a static image.  Even the best-designed logos can only engage so much with their audiences.  Cool product LogoGrab wants to change that fact.  LogoGrab is a tech startup that has developed a technology that links logos to digital content on the web.  When LogoGrab applies its technology to a design, the logo can then work the same way as a QR code might with a smartphone.  People in the physical world can scan the logo and it will take them directly to any web content of the company’s choosing.  LogoGrab adds a layer of interactivity to a company’s logo, making it more than simply a symbol to a business’s customer base.  In a way, LogoGrab makes designs that act as an ambassador to a company’s audience, since the interactive logos connect users to more content from that company.  Any company who wants to use LogoGrab and integrate it with an existing mobile app and mobile site will need sufficient mobile IT support resources. Read more »

Customers are the most important aspect of any business that revolves around a product or service.  Companies must be on the pulse of customers’ needs and desires at all times if they want their product to thrive in the marketplace.   However, it’s hard for a business to be customer centric if it does not communicate with its clientele efficiently.  Converser CTO and cool person in technology Oisin Hurley wants to help mobile app developers connect and engage with their user base.  Hurley has developed messaging and communication technology that is installable in any mobile application.  This two-way messaging system gives app users a direct connection to the developers so the users can voice opinions, make suggestions and get problems addressed.  Just as many remote tech support computers connect directly to their customers’ computers to provide service, Converser allows mobile app companies to connect directly to the people using their product.  Hurley’s company also keeps app users engaged with actionable in-app messages that prompt users to try new features or functionality.  With Converser, Hurley helps both app users and app developers stay informed. Read more »

When traveling, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the choice of places to eat, stay, or spend time.  This is especially true if you’re particularly unfamiliar with a certain city or area.  Cool product Locish helps tourists deal with this common problem by requesting the direct help of local experts.  Locish is an iPhone application that connects travelers with local residents to ensure the travelers make good decisions about what to do in a certain city.  Users ask for recommendations directly in the app, uploading their specific questions to the Locish database.  The company’s recruited team of local experts then go through questions and provide recommendations on what to do.  Locish’s network of locals can help users choose restaurants, bars, clubs, tourist attractions, museums, hotels or any place at all that you might find yourself in while on vacation.  Locish uses interactions with real people to get its customers recommendations rather than rely on a mathematical or computational solution.  While this means users won’t always get responses immediately, the responses they do get will be more personal and likely more helpful.  Anyone who has trouble posting questions on the app can get help from a smartphone tech support company. Read more »

Health and fitness is an area where technology is in a bit of a boom.  Wearable devices like watches and wristbands count the calories people burn and quantify their daily fitness stats.  There are hundreds of apps that help you track people’s eating and exercise habits, and there are even ones in which the sole purpose is to motivate users to exercise more.  Still, there aren’t many apps that help people with the process of exercising itself.  Cool person in technology Arel English founded Vitogo to change that fact.  Vitogo is an iPhone app that acts as a personal trainer for its users.  Vitogo stores exercise related data to help people achieve specific goals with their workout schedules.  Rather than simply provide users with metrics about how many calories they have burned, Vitogo provides actionable workout plans to help users achieve specific workout goals.  English has incorporated enough fitness data into his app that Vitogo provides users with specific long-term plans to achieve their goals.  This cool person in technology has even made it so his app will adjust a user’s workout plan every 4-6 weeks to ensure that the person’s exercise regimen does not plateau.  While fitness apps that merely track calories are akin to non-actionable computer diagnostic tools, Vitogo tries to be the fitness equivalent of a full-service computer tech support program. Read more »

Have you ever been at a theme park, but been without an easy way to find out when certain shows and attractions occurred?  Maybe you’ve been at a museum and walked through hundreds of exhibits with no way to get more in-depth learning about them.  Venues such as museums and theme parks could invest in more workers to fill these gaps, but the costs are usually too much for them.  Cool person in technology Todd Marks wants to provide a solution to these institutions that will solve these customer-related problems in an affordable way.  Marks’s company viaPlace has developed technology to deliver people useful information on their mobile phones based on their location at a given time.  For example, theme parks could provide maps and attraction times to users’ phones with viaPlace.  Marks’s company could help museumgoers get more details when they’re at certain exhibits.  These use cases are prime examples of when Marks’s location-based content delivery system would be useful.  Read more »

Ephemeral messaging—sending messages where the content disappears after a certain period of time—has become a major trend in the tech world ever since the immense success of Snapchat.  Vocal is a cool product that continues this trend by expanding the scale beyond a message between two people.  Vocal is a mobile messaging app that supports chats between large groups of people.  One user starts a live group chat and anyone else can join through the app or by following a link.  Once a host closes a chat, Vocal deletes the text of the chat permanently, leaving no record of it.  This ephemeral approach to communication is likely the product of an Internet age where companies record and save almost everything you do say online.  Many people, especially in younger demographics, prefer the idea that their daily conversations won’t be around to haunt them well into their future.  This philosophy provides users of apps such as Vocal with a feeling of freedom to say what they want without worrying over consequences.  Embarrassing moments are less likely to become viral jokes on the Internet and job recruiters won’t comb through every single statement someone makes in a conversation, unlike what might happen if the conversation was on Facebook.  Users who have had problems deleting data or messages from social networks in the past can call a remote tech support company if they want assistance.  Read more »