Computer Support Blog

The first big threat to traditional advertising models on television came from the development of cable tv.  Advertisers liked it even less when premium cable channels like HBO, Cinemax and Showtime offered viewers both original programing and advertisement-free television viewing at a price customers appeared willing to pay.  As advertisers struggle with how to monetize streaming television technology, HBO is working to adapt to the digital transmission framework.  For that, they have Alison Moore.

Alison Moore is the Senior Vice President of Digital Platforms for HBO.  In that role, Moore is responsible for all aspects of HBOs online and streaming presence.  It is her job to oversee the creation of a viable online subscription service for HBO, especially marketing its original content on the Internet.  Her responsibilities also include promoting and positioning the HBO digital services to compete with established streaming services like Netflix and Blockbuster Online.

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GitHub has become the primary website for democratic open source coding. Open source coding, simply put, is the principle that many programmers work under in which they freely give away their programs and source code (basic programming language) to anyone who wants to use it. Open source software is quite common, though you may not know a program is open source if you are user, as opposed to a programmer.  The Android operating system is a well-known open source program. Google allows programmers to access the root code and write new programs for Android, which makes it open source.  By contrast, programmers who want to write applications for Windows must to access the source code and sign a contract for the right to use the proprietary code.

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There are billions of pages on the Internet and millions of things to do on those pages. Among other things, you can chat with people across the globe, learn about new computer support issues, write blogs about your favorite subjects, or watch streaming movies. So why would we ever run out of things to do online?  For those who face the overwhelming choices the Internet offers with a profound sense of indecision or who enjoy the thrill of discovery, there is StumbleUpon.

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We are using our smartphones less and less for actual phone calls and more for mobile web browsing, text messaging, video chats, and apps. This implies that we do not like calling people anymore, not when it is far easier to simply text them or pull up a website. Of course, that applies to ordering takeout food as well.

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With smartphone technology and mobile computing technology constantly changing, it can be exceptionally difficult for a communications business to remain competitive.  By the very nature of discovery, if your business is not the first to market with a product or technological advance, you end up following someone else.  In the tech sector there are few things worse than being a follower and in the mobile phone carrier industry, that is especially true.  So, when Sprint-Nextel and Verizon developed 4G networks for their customers, they left the other telecommunications companies in the dust.  That, however, was not enough to stop Neville Ray.

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Sometimes, an individual’s association with a company can make all the difference in establishing a business venture.  John F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to make a political magazine at a time when the market was pretty much strangled with political print magazines did not stop him from making George a success.  In a similar way, one of the new tech sector startups benefits greatly from the celebrity of one of the members of its management team.  Numecent is an emerging Cloudpaging company and it would be just another Internet startup if it was not for Hildy Shandell.

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Changing the face of shopping on the Internet is not as easy an idea to execute as it is to conceive.  There are many different models for trying to lure websurfers into shopping, though the prevailing wisdom is one must have a site or interface that is rich with images.  Shopping through pictures you find on the Internet is the basic idea behind sites like Shopalong and Luminate.  Making it possible for you to buy what you see in pictures online is the job of the engineers at Luminate.  Directing them and making Luminate successful is Troy Chevalier.

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At one time, not that long ago, Internet users looking for a social media experience went immediately to MySpace. There, they could update their profile, post messages, and talk to their friends. The site was mainly a hit with teenagers, but featured a great space for independent musicians to get their music featured because of the large media section on the site.

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The social network landscape continues to change.  With Facebook going public and changing their privacy policies and the rise of Google+, the media would almost have you forget there are any other social networks on the Internet!  Despite that perception, there are several other Internet social networks and many of them have benefits and intriguing aspects that the major social networks lack.  The differences in how the Internet social networks look, feel and operate are the result of each networks engineering department.  For Yammer, Kris Gale is the engineer in charge.

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Every great idea in the tech sector requires good people to execute.  No matter how clever or constructive a concept is, without the right technical people to execute the plan, a business or ambitious idea will fail.  So when a number of influential individuals in finance, education and business began departing their lucrative careers to form the Khan Academy, some of their most important hiring choices involved staffing their technical support positions.  That made Marcia Lee an important hire for the Khan Academy.

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