Computer Support Blog

There are some truly incredible minds working in academia today.  The best teachers can inspire the next generation and help change the world by providing the fundamentals of their given field to their successors.  But only the most jaded people actually believe the unfortunate adage “those who can’t, teach.”  In fact, some of the very best educators lead by example and continue their professional development by excelling in their field while teaching.  Louis McPhee is one such educator and his latest invention, a medical robot, may well change the world.

An assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, Louis Phee is able to translate simple ideas into complex, working technologies.  Louis Phee is credited with the design of a new medical robot based upon a crab!  When Lawrence Ho mentioned to Phee that cancer extraction would be much easier using a crab, over a crab dinner, Phee explored the possibility of taking that outlandish idea and making it into a reality.  Louis Phee and Lawrence Ho worked together to create a surgical robot designed like a crab that is now treating cancer in the esophagus!

Read more »

Some companies in the technology sector work very hard for years before their brand is successful enough to have name recognition outside the industry.  In 2010, two of every five personal computers that were sold used a mother board by computer manufacturer ASUS.  Even so, it was not for a few years later that ASUS began to market computers effectively enough to compete in the computer manufacturing market.  The transition from support company providing vital internal hardware to a recognizable brand of its own comes as the result of Jonney Shih’s hard work.

Jonney Shih is the Chief Executive Officer of ASUSTek Computer, Inc. (commonly known as ASUS).  Shih has been the Chairman and CEO of ASUS since 1993 and he has presided over the company’s longest period of sustained growth.  In fact, it is hard to imagine where ASUS would be if Jonney Shih were not guiding the company.  Virtually every major policy that has made ASUS a household name resulted from Shih’s influence and direction.

Read more »

There are few CEOs whose personal story is as interesting as the biography of Jason Hsuan.  Abandoned as a child in China, the Chinese government sent Jason Hsuan to a labor camp where he toiled from ages fifteen to eighteen.  When he became ill from tuberculosis, Hsuan was deported to Taiwan to be with his remaining family.  While that sort of hardship might crush a lesser man, Jason Hsuan used the experience to grow, learn and develop his corporate philosophy.  Now, Dr. Jason Hsuan is the CEO and Chairman of TPV Technology Limited, the world’s largest manufacturer of computer monitors!

Despite having spent three years in a labor camp, which robbed him of educational opportunities and was largely dehumanizing, Jason Hsuan lifted himself up.  Once in Taiwan, Hsuan began working to improve his lot in life.  While he worked for six years at General Electric, he saw it as his duty to go help his father when the Taiwan Pepsi Cola branch suffered a severe economic downturn.  Hsuan prioritized his family and went to work for Pepsi, serving as a Vice President of the Taiwan branch.  That sense of responsibility served Jason Hsuan exceptionally well when he came to the United States to pursue his education.  At Boston University, Hsuan earned his Master’s in Systems Engineering.  After earning his Master’s, Jason Hsuan went to the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn where he applied his talents to getting his Ph.D. in Systems Engineering.

Read more »

The music industry, which has spent the decade since they effectively sued Napster out of business, has watched their market shrink for years.  The business leaders within the music industry blamed digital downloads of music, specifically pirated downloads, for the steady decline in revenues.  But 2011 showed some interesting trends in the music industry which suggests that the executives may have simply been grossly impatient with their emerging market.

In 2011, for the first time ever, digital music sales grossed more money for the music industry than physical media (compact discs) did.  While the music industry claimed that digital music would outstrip physical media sales back when Napster was in operation, the decade between its demise and the reaching of this milestone suggests that the music industry did not know how to effectively exploit the new medium and sales path.  After all, if pirating music had been the sole problem with the music industry making money off digital downloads, as soon as Napster was shuttered and iTunes started selling digital downloads, the music industry would have met their goal of selling more digital downloads than physical discs.

Read more »

Social networks come and go; that is rapidly becoming one of the realities of the Internet.  What is fascinating to see is how the different social networks attempt to appeal to different niches, whether they try to make their appeal from the interface device or to a target demographic.  LinkedIn appeals to professionals, Facebook appeals to friends with shared interests, Twitter appeals to cellphone users who are on the go; each social network has a niche.  Until now, no social network has been built around the sudden prevalence of video technology on smartphones.  That changes with the emergence of Viddy!

Viddy is most analogous to Twitter in that it is a social network built on very short communications.  Like Twitter, Viddy appeals strongly to the smartphone users who love to stay connected and share material through their smartphones.  As a more sophisticated way of social networking, Viddy uses videos as a platform for its network!

Read more »

For companies in the technology sector, having a sense of the marketplace and the potentials of both your company and the consumers you service is essentials.  This means having corporate executives who are strategic thinkers.  The ideal corporate officer for the tech market must balance a sense of pragmatism and vision for multiple product releases and market scenarios.  Arguably, the person most responsible for anticipating the needs of the company and executing the plans that adapt the company to changing market conditions is the head of Strategic Planning and Operations.  For Autodesk, that person is Moonhie Chin.

Moonhie Chin is the Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning and Operations for Autodesk, a software company that primarily makes animation and art software.  Chin is a powerful executive who has been working for Autodesk since 1989.  As the Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning and Operations, Moonhie Chin is responsible for leading the team that keeps Autodesk competitive around the world.  If falls to her to allocate the infrastructure of Autodesk – in materials and personnel – to determine what products the company will release and when they will be available on the market.  In her role of Senior Vice President, Moonhie Chin must not only be aware of the demands on the supply chain at Autodesk to ensure they manufacture their products in a timely fashion, but the forthcoming products by competitors as well.  Chin has to anticipate the consumer and corporate trends to position Autodesk for success.  Given that Autodesk has been steadily growing, with increasingly more popular products, since Moonhie Chin took over as Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning and Operations, she is clearly doing the job right!

Read more »

This year, the blind will begin to see again. Well, no…that is not quite true. However, people who have gone blind from retinal degradation will be able to see light/dark, shapes, and faces if the FDA approves a new technology that was created to enable people to regain lost sight.

The Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System from Second Sight Medical Products is a device that will allow some blind people to begin to see again. This technology only works for people whose photoreceptor cells have degenerated, but there are over 200,000 people with that condition in America alone. After 13 years of development, a few test patients have finally been fitted with the device. The company is conducting clinical trials and Second Sight is waiting on approval from the Food and Drug Administration before they make Argus II available publicly.

A small camera embedded into a pair of sunglasses sends an image to a smartphone-sized processor, which converts the image into a black and white picture. This picture is wirelessly transmitted to the receptors surgically implanted around the eye and finally sent on to the electrodes that the surgeon carefully attached to the retinas.

Read more »

Apple is not the only company that is working hard to fill in the last size gaps between the smartphone and the tablet computer.  While e-readers once had a niche of their own, with the emergence of the Kindle Fire and the growing rumors about the mini-iPad, it appears that every major mobile computer company is racing to create tablet computers or smartphones with screens in the 5” – 6” range.  One of the first to market is the Samsung Galaxy Note.

The Samsung Galaxy Note joins the Samsung Galaxy line as a smartphone with a significantly larger touchscreen – 5.3”! – than most and it is designed to impress.  With its HD Super AMOLED display, the Galaxy Note presents vivid colors in an incredible 1280 x 800 resolution.  This level of resolution is incredible for a handheld device and means that streaming movies and television will look about as good as they would on a high definition monitor!  With the display screen made of Corning’s Gorilla Glass, the Samsung Galaxy Note resists scratches and breakage.

Read more »

The idea of play is an ancient one, so it is a pretty ambitious goal to reinvent the wheel on toys.  In fact, given the billions of dollars that are spent each year producing, developing, transporting and marketing toys, the idea of trying to completely reinvent the marketplace is an audacious one.  When the casual concept for such an idea turns into a viable business unexpectedly, sometimes the innovators themselves are surprised.  That is exactly what happened with Outfit 7 and Samo Login.

Samo Login is the Founder and CEO of Outfit 7, a Slovenian mobile app company.  Outfit 7 is best known for the Talking Tom application, an animated cat that you upload to your smartphone.  The cat repeats phrases you say to it and interacts in a limited digital environment.  Samo Login’s concept for the figure was to create a toy for mobile phone users.  With more than two hundred million Talking Tom apps downloaded, Samo Login’s concept seems to have truly taken off!

Read more »

The first things that come up in an Internet search of computers and chocolate are computer-shaped novelty chocolates, but the relationship between computers and chocolate is a lot more complicated than that!  Computers are involved in almost every step of the chocolate manufacturing process.

All mass production in the chocolate manufacturing industry is done now on assembly lines.  The role of computers in chocolate manufacturing begins well before the first drop of chocolate hits the mold.

Whenever a manufacturer wants to produce a new chocolate, they create computer models of the manufacturing process.  By imputing the ingredients and the desired final shape of the chocolate, chocolate manufacturers can engineer the entire process of making the candy virtually before they start production.  If they intend for the chocolate to have a filling like nuts or nougat, the manufacturer programs additional steps into the computer model.  Through the computer models, chocolate manufacturers are able to accurately project both the cost and time it will take to produce a new chocolate.

Read more »