Computer Support Blog

Waiting for someone to show up when he or she has made plans with you is never fun.  While people can text, e-mail, or call their friends or associates to find out where they are when running late, there are many situations where that person won’t be able to respond.  If the person running late is driving or talking to someone else because of a crisis, trying to communicate with him or her through a phone or mobile device will go nowhere.  However, cool person in technology Bryan Trussel founded Glympse to help people keep track of each other when they’re running late.  Without having to disturb people by sending them repeated text messages or phone calls, Glympse users can track their friends and see their location without bothering them. Read more »

People have been creating personalized playlists since before music was digital.  Thousands of people still remember recording personal “mix tapes” on cassettes and sharing them with their friends or giving them as gifts to loved ones.  Digital playlists are, in many ways, the modern version of these personalized mix tapes and just like the mix tapes of old, people have a desire to share the playlists they create today.  Enter cool person in technology Darius Fong who has created a new service designed around the idea of everyday users crafting personalized playlists and sharing them with the world.  Fong’s product goes by the name of weeSPIN, emphasizing the social aspect of the service by using a play on the plural pronoun “we”.  Read more »

Having a digital personal assistant has been a science fiction fantasy for many consumers for decades.  Computers that speak to you and act as a personal assistant has been a common trope in popular television shows, books and films over the years.  However, only recently did the idea become a viable reality for the everyday consumer.  When Apple’s Siri feature for the iPhone debuted several years ago, it was a major hit. The conversational interaction that triggered the feature tapped into to many people’s fantasies about artificial intelligence.  Suddenly, people had the ability to ask their smartphone to make appointments, look up information and perform basic online tasks with just a few spoken words.  Flash forward a few years later and now there is a cool product called GoDog Fetch that acts in a similar way, but does so for other platforms besides the iPhone, such as Android and Windows devices.  Users who have trouble downloading the product for any of their devices can get help from a smartphone IT support service. Read more »

People often look at social networking sites and public blogs as a way of journaling or recording one’s life online.  However, there is one inconsistency with the “journal” metaphor.  Most people have never posted the content of their physical journals or diaries in a public place for anyone to see and add comments whenever they want.  Meanwhile, social networks and blogging sites such as Facebook and Tumblr set everyone’s status updates and photos to public by default so that anyone can see or comment on them.  Cool person in technology Siqi Chen has created an app that seeks to address this inconsistency by giving users a truly private multimedia journaling experience.  Chen calls this new app “Heyday”.  While users can update their Heyday profiles the same way they would update their social network accounts and even set automatic updates, none of the information on Heyday appears to a public audience.  Chen wants Heyday to be a private experience, unlike so much of what social media is on the rest of the web.  Read more »

While many people consider reading books to be a solitary activity, that doesn’t always hold true in reality.  For lots of readers, books are as social of a hobby as anything else.  People create book clubs, use social media and engage in events such as author signings and Q&A sessions just to meet other avid readers and discuss the nature of their favorite texts.  Conversations range from speculation about character motivations to complex academic discussions about story themes.  Now, a cool product in technology wants to harness this social aspect of book reading for profit.  Bookmate lets readers take notes, leave questions, and copy quotes in every book that they read with the app and then share all their notations with all of their friends on social media.  Users can read their friends’ notations within a certain book as they read it on Bookmate and then engage those friends on social media to discuss how they felt about those notes.  Bookmate integrates with popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter so people can even share their notes with friends who don’t use Bookmate.  Anyone who cannot connect his or her Bookmate account to Twitter or Facebook should get help from a remote computer support provider. Read more »

Most calorie counting technology, whether it’s a smartphone app or a dedicated wearable device, provides people with pure data.  That data usually includes calories burned, steps taken, and numerous other cold hard facts about the user’s daily health statistics.  However, the problem with this system is that most users of these fitness tracking apps and devices do not know exactly what to do about the data they receive.  Without being extremely well educated in the subjects of nutrition and personal fitness, people have no context to what the data they collect actually means for them.   Everyone’s body is different and the same data will mean very different things to people depending on age, weight, gender, athleticism, and various other factors.  Cool product Fjuul is a fitness tracker that tries to solve this problem by taking a different approach.  Rather than provide users with massive amounts of data that they don’t even understand properly most of the time, Fjuul provides people with one easily understandable metric that they can follow: Fjuul points.  Users who want to try Fjuul’s system can download the app on their iPhone or iPod.  If someone has trouble installing the app on his or her device, contacting Apple tech support would be the best course of action. Read more »

Making plans and trying to account for and include all of one’s friends is not always a simple task.  Keeping track of one’s own plans is difficult enough in many cases.  Trying to keep track of every friend’s long-term plans as well is pretty much impossible.  Enter cool person in technology Karl Jacob and his new product Hangtime.  Hangtime is a smartphone app that aggregates local events of all types and allows its users to indicate what events they are definitely going to be at and what ones they are potentially interested in attending.  Once a user and all his or her friends are on Hangtime, making plans with other people becomes far simpler.  For example, if a user sees that there is a concert they want to see in their area, that user simply taps to indicate that they are going.  The app notifies any friends also going or interested in the event so that they can contact the user if they want to make plans to attend together.  Anyone who has trouble downloading Jacob’s program from the App Store should contact iPhone tech support for help.  Read more »

Shipping costs can be problematic for many individuals and small businesses. Transporting very large items can even be cost prohibitive in some cases.  However, cool person in technology Everett Steele has founded Kanga in order to make delivering items less costly.  To accomplish this task, Steele has started using a model that has seen great success in other areas of the tech industry—crowdsourcing.  Companies like AirBnB and Uber have shown that having customers provide services to each other can actually be a viable business model if a company facilitates the exchange properly.  Kanga uses crowdsourcing by allowing people to request delivery services from anyone who has access to the proper transportation.  Once users find others able and willing to transport what they need moved, they can book the drivers to make deliveries through Kanga. Drivers on Kanga can charge less than large shipping companies, making the process far easier on people’s wallets.  Steele’s company takes a small cut of each payment for making each delivery possible.  Anyone who has technical difficulty while trying to schedule deliveries through Kanga should contact a computer support service for immediate assistance. Read more »

Wine is a passionate hobby for millions of people all over the world.  Wine tastings and winery tours draw huge numbers every year.  Now, a cool product uses mobile technology to cater to the passionate wine enthusiast community.  Vivino is a mobile app available on both Android and Apple devices that allows users to discover, review and share information about all the wines they try.  Vivino contains a giant database of available wines for people to access the details about at any time.  Users can look up different wines and learn not only where it comes from, its flavor profile, and where one can buy it, but also what other wine drinkers think of it.  Vivino lets people leave starred reviews of thousands of different wines and share their opinions of the products.  People can favorite specific reviews and even follow users that have similar tastes to them.  When people become friends on Vivino, they each receive updates when the other user reviews a new wine.  Enthusiasts can find new wines to try out, or even avoid, based on the tastes of their Vivino friends.  Anyone who has trouble while downloading Vivino from the App Store or the Play Store will need to get Android support or Apple tech support to help. Read more »

Over time, many people’s grocery shopping become repetitive, and they end up eating the same meals over and over again.  Some may want to expand their palettes but due to budgetary issues or a lack of ideas for new recipes, they remain stuck in the same pattern.  Cool product Kitchin wants to help these people find ways to change up their usual meals without forcing them to change their shopping habits.  Kitchin uses the groceries a person buys to search the web and find new and unique recipes that someone can use with those ingredients.  Users download the Kitchin app, take pictures of their grocery receipts with their smartphones and receive recipe suggestions directly through their phone.  Kitchin uses image recognition technology to recognize what food items are on someone’s receipt.  Kitchin then crosschecks those ingredients against a large database of potential recipes to find new possibilities for the app’s users.  Of course, any users who experience trouble using their mobile cameras should find a smartphone computer repair service before trying the Kitchin app. Read more »