Computer Support Blog

One does not have to look very hard at the managers of tech companies, small and large, to find a company that is run exclusively by men at the highest levels.  Apple Computers, the most profitable company on Earth, has only one woman on its Board of Directors and none of the executives at the Senior Vice President level or above are female!  In many ways, the tech sector remains a “boy’s club.”  Working very hard to change that is Shaherose Charania. Read more »

How would you feel if every time you made a telephone call, you had to listen to an advertisement?  What if, periodically, while you spoke on the telephone, your conversation was interrupted by advertisers trying to sell you on their products and services?  Would it be possible to feel anything but outrage if that sort of advertising not only occurred, but was based upon the topics of the private conversation you were having?  This sort of privacy violation seems utterly, almost indisputably, wrong when it comes to a hypothetical situation involving telecommunications, yet each and every day, Internet users accept that exact circumstance.  Why? Read more »

California is the home to so many tech sector jobs that it is almost hard to believe that anywhere else in the country would have any tech jobs that needed filling!  Part of the reason so many start-ups and enduring tech sector businesses take root in California is because of the colleges.  Some of the world’s most renowned universities for science and technology are located in California: UCLA, Stanford, and the University of California at Berkeley, to name a few.  Many businesses work to recruit ambitious, technical-minded employees right out of college.  That is what happened with Alicia Chen. Read more »

Water is a resource many people take for granted.  After all, it is the exception to the rule when you turn the faucet on and nothing comes out.  Some of the neatest gadgets on the market – for scientific, municipal, and personal, use – pertain to monitoring various aspects of water.  From high tech gadgets like the YSI ProODO Dissolved Oxygen Sensor to the low-tech water filters many people use, water has inspired many useful products.  One of the neatest water-related products is the PR-32 Pressure Recorder. Read more »

Outside protecting business interests, there are remarkably few executives in the tech sector who make bold or frequent political statements.  In fact, the marketing gurus in the tech sector work very hard to make technology apolitical; the market should be everyone.  So, it is a rare thing when one’s personal politics overtly guide their corporate policy within the tech sector.  The fact that his loud dedication to free access to information clearly guides Wikipedia makes Jimmy Wales an exception to the status quo in the tech sector! Read more »

The technology sector is filled with people who appear to never have heard the adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”  In the case of websites, especially social networks, programmers who originally design the site tend to strive for functionality over style.  One need only recall the iconic scene from The Social Network wherein Sean Parker and Mark Zuckerberg discuss monetizing The Facebook and come to the conclusion that it was too soon for that.  Cool things aren’t about monetizing.  The people who use websites at their inception and stick with the site do so because there is something enduringly interesting about the site that they cannot find elsewhere on the Internet. Read more »

Social networking is, truly, one of the benefits of the Internet that were not entirely conceived when the World Wide Web was first being conceived as a communications tool.  The reality, however, is that human beings are social animals and Internet social networking allows people to connect in ways they never were able to before.  The result is that the Internet is now home to massive social networks like Facebook, Myspace, and Google+, and obscure, theme-based social networks like the artist community Elftown.  What is fascinating to see is how sites that begin as one type of website, like a sale’s site, can quickly turn into a social networking hub.  That is what happened with Ju-Ju-Be.com. Read more »

In the tech sector, the ability to get goods to market is exceptionally important.  Equally important is having a reliable supply chain that provides raw materials and manufactured components to your manufacturing and assembling plants.  For that, the tech sector relies upon the shipping industry.  But the best industrial shipping organizations in the world are surprisingly high-tech businesses of their own.  One of the world leaders, Panalpina, is a major support for companies throughout the tech sector.  Leading Panalpina through its own IT revolution is Monika Ribar. Read more »

As technology has improved and advanced, advertisers have worked very hard to find new ways to exploit it.  Especially with new forms of communication technology, advertisers try to integrate product placement and utilize the new mediums to reach tech users.  For those who lived through the meteoric rise of the Internet, the days of slow modems also meant a time when you could go online and not be bombarded by advertisements all over your screen.  The video game market has been one that is much tougher for advertisers to crack into.  Advertisers want to reach the demographic, as video game players spend several hours at a time focused on gameplay, when they are not interacting with any other medium upon which they could encounter advertisements.  Xbox Live is now trying to get users to “play through” advertisements from big businesses. Read more »

Today, we have a disturbing experiment for you to try, assuming you are not using any form of advertisement blocking software and cookies are enabled in your web browser (they usually are if you have your computer set to automatically enter your login information when you visit your most frequented websites).  Open a search engine and initiate a search for something you have never looked for before and shares no commonality with any website you already frequent.  For example, search for “computer glasses” or, even more specifically, “Superfocus.”  Once the search results come up, visit every page on the first page of search results.  Tomorrow when you go online, if not sooner, consciously look at the advertisements on the websites you usually frequent.  The odds are better than even that whatever topic you searched in depth yesterday will appear heavily saturated on the sites you visit today.  In fact, because of Web Targeting, the odds are significantly biased toward advertisements you see being related to that random search topic. Read more »