Computer Support Blog

Product reviews have been a staple of the Internet for a very long time, especially since Amazon popularized them as an ecommerce giant over the last decade.  Journalistic product reviews have also increased both in quantity and significance, as different technology blogs and news publications dedicate time and page space to them.  With more people having access to these types of reviews thanks to the Internet, the demand for them also increases.  This situation has led to review aggregator sites like Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates movie reviews, and Metacritic, which aggregates reviews for forms of media.  Users frequent these review aggregator sites to get a good sense of what the public opinion is on certain media such a  movies, games, and music.  Now there is also a cool product that aggregates reviews of consumer electronics for the tech geeks who keep up with the newest devices.  This product is Reviewsor. Read more »

Video content on the web is in abundance these days thanks to user-generated content on sites like YouTube and DailyMotion.  While there is much high quality entertainment available on these sites, there is still a lack of high quality How-to video on the web.  Even for subjects where there is a significant amount of videos, such as home computer repair, the vast majority of content is low quality with bad sound, bad video and no production value.  There isn’t a convenient and free space for people to access high quality how-to videos made by experts on the Internet.  Cool product Grokker is changing that by building a large video database that exclusively contains expert how-to videos for anyone interested.  Read more »

Small companies that require design work but don’t have a graphic artist on staff often struggle to come up with funds to get projects completed by a professional.  Cool product DesignCrowd wants to change that situation for small businesses by using the Internet to help them crowdsource designs for many different types of projects.  With DesignCrowd, companies post projects they need completed with a brief description of the reason for the job and what type of design they are looking to use.  DesignCrowd’s community of graphic artists can then make different designs based on a company’s brief.  The situation turns into a contest of sorts, where different designers post ideas and concepts for a company and eventually the user chooses a winning design.  Companies pay an initial fee to DesignCrowd to post their projects on the site.  DesignCrowd itself pays out money to artists for each winning design.  This system potentially gives companies an affordable option that lets them choose from many different designs when they need work done.  Any company who has trouble posting projects on DesignCrowd will need computer tech support for assistance. Read more »

For many professional careers, including ones in the IT support industry, professional certification and additional training are becoming a requirement to get ahead.  Unfortunately, many working adults cannot find time in their schedules to dedicate to training and additional education, especially if they’re taking care of family as well as working full time.  Cool technology product Simplilearn is utilizing the Internet’s flexibility to offer working professionals training and certification options that they can actually fit into their schedule.  Simplilearn offers users a wide range of courses in multiple fields that adults can take both online and in classroom settings.  They even offer courses that use a combination of the two methods to attempt to fit the needs of as many adults as possible.  Simplilearn also offers a slew of online practice tests for users so they can prepare accordingly for their certifications.  Each Simplilearn course comes coupled with a set of online resources specific to that certain class.  These resources often include online forums for students to interact in and ask questions before their certification exam.  Read more »

When one considers Facebook’s origins as a college-exclusive social network, one could say that the college environment is the birthplace of modern social networking and digital life.  Facebook leveraged college’s social scene to make mass communication easier.  What if an entrepreneur leveraged the social nature of college to help students with the real purpose of universities—education?  Entrepreneur and cool person in tech Jack Tai founded OneClass to attempt exactly that.  OneClass is an online resource for post-secondary school students that crowdsources study materials and class notes to form a large database of helpful tools for students.  OneClass sources course notes on a wide variety of subjects from students across North America.  It also stores organized study packets and video tutorials for many of those subjects.  OneClass focuses on offering study material provided by other students rather than formal textbook-style material provided by teachers or institutions.  In theory, this makes a lot of sense, as students would likely understand other students’ way of explaining things.  Anyone who has trouble accessing the notes or videos on OneClass should find remote tech support for help with a solution. Read more »

Budgeting your time to work on learning a new language is difficult.  Keeping up-to-date on vocabulary, studying flash cards, and working on your reading comprehension don’t always fit into a busy schedule when you’re trying to balance work and life.  Cool product Lingua.ly aims to make learning a new language a more convenient option by allowing people to work on their language skills as they browse the Internet.   The theory is sound.  Most people spend massive amounts of time web browsing both at work and in downtime they have at home.  Building the process of language learning into something we already do so often could certainly make it easier to add learning Spanish, French, or Italian to the daily routine.  It may not work for people who need computer support just to handle a web browser properly, but it could break down some barriers to learning a language for most of the connected world.  Read more »

Most eCommerce depends heavily on a discounted mass-market model that focuses on items produced in very high volumes and shipped from big warehouses.  It’s a very functional, but very dry system.  Wherein the world of physical retail, there are often specialty shops that depend on unique products and craftsmanship, these types of products and retailers commonly get lost in the shuffle on the Internet.  Grand St. CEO and cool person in technology Amanda Peyton wants to change this and help the visibility of unique, specially crafted products on the web.  Her company works a curator for eCommerce, seeking out and partnering with makers of specialty items and offering a limited number of these items as deals through the Grand St. website.  Rather than fill warehouses with everyday products, Peyton wants to give exposure to unique items.  For example, Grand St. has featured a Bluetooth thermometer for your grill that alerts you when your food finishes cooking, an inflatable solar-powered LED lantern, and a digital pen that records your handwritten notes and syncs them wirelessly with your smartphone.  Clearly, these are not everyday items you’ll find in Wal-Mart, but specialized tech toys that focus on niche markets.  If you ever need help with an electronic item purchased from Grand St.’s website, you should find a good tech support provider. Read more »

Anyone who wants to use licensed music for a project such as a website or video game knows how much it can cost and how much of a hassle it can be to implement.  Licensing music for commercial use is a costly process and can involve many legal headaches.  While many may want to utilize such music to make their project more engaging to users, they often forgo doing so due to the effort and cost involved.  Feed.fm is a cool product in technology that is looking to streamline the process of licensing music for commercial projects.  Businesses that want to use licensed music can avoid much of the hassle by using Feed.fm’s large database of licensed albums and songs for whatever project they desire.  Feed.fm is a service that handles all the legal issues surrounding licensed music for you and presents companies with an easier option to utilize music on their website or in their games. Read more »

Most online shopping websites like Amazon and Overstock have a wish list feature, which allows you to save items you want to buy later in designated lists for organized shopping.  However, these companies naturally limit what you can put on your wish list to items available on their websites.  The problem with this is that most people do not do their online shopping at only one site, so making a list limited to a single online retailer is rather inconvenient.  That’s where cool person in technology Lauren McDevitt has stepped in and created an easy-to-use web-based service to fix this problem. Lauren McDevitt is the founder and CEO of New York based company Wantworthy, which provides a service that lets users create a universal wish list with items from any online retailer they choose.  Rather than inconveniently having to keep track of several lists over multiple websites, McDevitt has developed a service where people can conveniently keep track of everything they plan to buy online in one place and in an organized fashion. Read more »

It’s a common experience: you turn on your computer, go to Google, Bing or whatever search engine you prefer and you search for local restaurants.  You end up with countless choices to sift through and an immense amount of research to do before even leaving the house.  Tom Copeman, CEO and founder of Nara, is trying to eliminate this problem with his artificial intelligence based restaurant recommendation service.

The most common model for websites and apps that review and recommend restaurants is usually review-based.  There are common listings and individual customers can rate their experiences.  However, this leads to inconsistent data and often times, you’ll enjoy a restaurant that someone else will hate, making their review a hindrance more than a help. According to Copeman, Nara handles recommendations differently. Copeman informed Rescuecom that Nara uses artificial intelligence to mine the Internet for information and make more personalized recommendations for you based on its analysis of your preferences and larger trends.  Read more »