Computer Support Blog

Frequent online shoppers know that keeping up with their orders and can be an exercise in frustration, especially when ordering items from multiple sites.  With each order they place, customers receive new receipts in their inbox.  Someone making numerous online purchases a day can often find themselves lost in online confirmations and receipts and unable to keep track of when they bought what items.  This problem becomes exasperated if a shopper already has a flooded inbox due to their work or social life.  Cool product Slice offers people a solution that will prevent them from having to search through their email every time they need to find the details of a specific online order. Read more »

Many entrepreneurs and young businesses waste time on faulty business models or make early mistakes that all but destroy the potential of a promising core idea.  One of the best steps in forming a new company is creating a detailed business plan that lays out every step of a startup’s business model, as well as the purpose behind each step. Detailed business plans can help people gauge the potential costs of their company, including things like business computer service and operation costs.  When a startup team has this information laid out, challenges and opportunities become clearer to them. However, the process takes an extensive period of time, and it’s difficult to find ways to gauge a plan’s success before implementing it. Cool person in technology Cynthia McCahon founded Enloop to help businesses gain insight to their potential success based on their plans.  Read more »

The computer programming field looks about as exciting to most people as mowing their lawn with a pair of scissors. We imagine a field dominated by spastic geeks, hovering in lightless rooms over screens full of green Matrix code zooming past their eyes while they somehow magically decipher it. CodeNow is a nonprofit that decided to make computer programming accessible to inner city high-schoolers by making it fun!  Read more »

Many people assumed that smartphones would make life easier to manage.  However, in many cases, all mobile technology did was replace physical address books, appointment books, and travel itineraries with virtual versions of the same things.  People still have to manually manage their contacts, calendar, and travel plans.  They just manage them by tapping on their phone instead of writing in a notebook or typing on a desktop.  Cool product EasilyDo aims to deliver users a way to manage their lives that actually does change how people do things.  Read more »

Many professionals have useful skills that they could pass on to others, but they don’t have the time or credentials for an official teaching position.  Cool person in technology Michael Karanjanaprakorn wants these skilled professionals to have an outlet where they can spread their knowledge.  That’s why he founded Skillshare, an online platform where professionals can apply to teach short video classes in subjects ranging anywhere from archery to sound mixing.  Karanjanaprakorn’s site doesn’t cater to one particular niche or industry, but to a wide variety of disciplines.  With experts teaching their disciplines on SkillShare, Karanjanaprakorn looks to build a more skilled global workforce.  This cool person’s website has video classes that can help people land new jobs or do better in their current roles, regardless of whether those people are laptop repair professionals, marketers, or even entrepreneurs themselves. Skillshare’s main goal is to spread knowledge by allowing experts to share what they know online easily. Read more »

Technical skills have become an essential aspect of what makes job candidates desirable and what makes employees valuable.  While skills are teachable and hardly the only metric by which a company should measure employees, it is always important for companies to track what immediate value a person has for them.  Cool person in technology Mike Kowalchik founded his startup Smarterer to give companies a method to measure both employees’ and job applicants’ skillsets.  Smarterer creates and provides enterprises with tests that they can use to measure people’s aptitudes in different fields and subject material.  For example, Smarterer tests can be about website coding, Microsoft Office, Google Apps, mobile app development or any other skillset.  Read more »

Searching for and applying to colleges is one of the most stressful experiences in a teenager’s life.  Finding the school that gives a student the best chance for his or her success is a difficult and intimidating process.  Despite this fact, many students find themselves applying to schools on their own, without outside help or resources.  Cool product CollegeSolved exists to give these students the resources they need to find good schools that are right for them.  The site aims to empower students to gain acceptance to their school of choice.  CollegeSolved provides students with a complete database of universities to search through while on the site.  Users can filter search results based on their personal SAT scores or high school GPA.  They can also filter results by a school’s tuition price and location.  Each university profile contains complete statistics relating to the school as well as recommendations for similar colleges.  Students who have trouble with the search function on the CollegeSolved website should seek online computer support. Read more »

Social good programs and nonprofit organizations often don’t have the same monetary resources as large businesses, but they still need skilled professionals in accounting, healthcare, finance, law and many other practices to help them accomplish their goals.  Fortunately, there are thousands of talented professionals who are willing to volunteer their services for good causes.  The problem for many nonprofits, however, is finding the professionals with the right skillset for the positions they need.  Enter Rachel Chong, who is both a cool person in technology and the CEO of Catchafire.  Chong founded Catchafire to be an online service specifically dedicated to matching up skilled volunteers with organizations that need their help. Read more »

Imagine walking into your neighborhood pharmacy and having your body’s calcium, cholesterol, and sodium levels tested by a lab technician on the spot. Then imagine receiving a total medical bill of $9.85, covered by your insurance, with tests results in a matter of hours. Sounds like science fiction, but it’s already happening at select Walgreen’s stores. The Theranos Wellness Center is an innovative new CLIA-certified lab, partnered with Walgreen’s, and offering nearly 200 lab tests with no hospitals, no waiting rooms, and no needles! Read more »

Even when someone is generally a charitable person, life can be chaotic and prevent that person from donating to charitable causes very often.  Some charities offer donation plans where people pay on a monthly basis in the style of something like a computer tech support subscription.  However, these subscription plans are hard to market without a product and can flounder when trying to gain traction.  Cool person in technology John Ludlow presents a unique solution to this problem with his startup Snoball.  Snoball allows people to donate automatically on a regular basis, but uses a unique hook to draw more people to its program.  With Ludlow’s company, donations to charitable organizations trigger when a particular event that a donor chooses happens.  For example, a nonprofit could use Snoball to create a system where every a certain basketball team wins a game, people donate ten dollars to a special cause or foundation.  Read more »