Computer Support Blog

Many people have experienced the phenomenon where you want to go back to a restaurant, hotel, or park, but you can’t quite remember the name of the place, making it impossible to look up online.  Matchbook is a cool product that makes sure this never happens to you again.  Through your smartphone’s GPS technology, Matchbook lets you tag the places you’ve been and the places you want to go.  With Matchbook, when you’re trying to remember where you went for Italian food that one night in January, all you have to do is whip out your smartphone and Matchbook will remind you.  You can tag locations with dates, time, and key words to look up later.  This could save many people frustrating nights of being unable to find the place they want to go because of unclear memories.  If you have trouble downloading Matchbook or getting your phone’s GPS to work properly, find smartphone tech support and get help. Read more »

While there is a plethora of ringtones available for all types of smartphones via online music stores, there are times when you want something more personal as a ringtone but have no easy way to create it.  Fortunately, Audiko is a cool product in technology that gives you the ability to create a ringtone from any audio file that you own.  Audiko offers a simple set of tools that allow users to take a clip of up to thirty seconds from any audio file and convert it to ringtone format.  Users simply go on the website, upload the audio file they wish to use, and edit it directly in their browser before converting it into a ringtone.  Audiko lets you utilize any audio format you want to create your ringtone, including high definition audio formats like FLAC for those who want their ringtones’ sound quality on par with the rest of their music. PC support can always help you if you find yourself struggling to upload a file to Audiko’s website. Read more »

Keeping track of your receipts and warranties can be a serious pain.  It’s all too easy to misplace a receipt or forget how long you’ve had a product.  John Jackovin, the CEO of Bawte, is a cool person in technology who wants to solve these problems with his mobile application.  In his company’s own words, Jackovin wants to “make owning things simple.”  His smartphone app, Bawte, allows you to “tag” products you buy on your smartphone.  Once you tag a product, Jackovin’s app gives you access to warranty information and instruction manuals for that product anytime you want.  This would save customers from worrying about the paper trail when they make purchases and potentially save them hassle later on if they need to find a manual or warranty information quickly.  Bawte makes information about your products accessible whenever you want on your smartphone.  It even keeps track of when a warranty expires for each product you purchase.  For example, you can check the status of the warranties on your computer products and know when you definitely need to go to a local computer repair company for help because your product’s warranty isn’t viable anymore.  Read more »

When you move to a new town or city, one of the most difficult things to handle is the lack of social connections and support that comes with all-new surroundings.  However, there’s now an iPhone app and online service that attempts to solve this problem called Likemind.  Likemind acts as a giant bulletin board where users can post “fliers” inviting others to speak with them if they share a specific interest.  Fliers can be up to four pages long and users can creatively fill them with text and images in whatever layout they want.  Each flier has a specific amount of “tabs” that another user can take in order to contact the poster.  There are a limited number of tabs for each flier so if one flier is particularly popular, that user will not get flooded with extreme amounts of spam or contact requests.  This cool product also allows users to filter who sees their fliers.  You can limit your audience by age or gender in order to target a specific demographic if you wish.  If you have trouble using the app on iOS, iPhone tech support is something you should consider. Read more »

While the rise of the eBook market has made self-publishing a viable concept for new writers, the process of getting your eBook onto online retail stores can still be complicated and difficult.  However, a new company called Tablo is looking to change this aspect of the self-publishing process.  Tablo is a cloud-based company that offers authors tools to not only help format their novels and short stories, but also easily publish them to online retail stores with a click.  This attempt to disrupt the eBook industry could potentially save many writers hours of time and stress if it delivers on its promise of an easier solution.  Authors want to spend more time honing their craft and less time navigating the complicated route to getting their work online.  Tablo is a cool product that’s in a position to capitalize on this market. Read more »

There are many services that provide Internet radio, but the vast majority of these services, like Pandora, focus on the musical aspect of radio as opposed to talk radio or spoken word content.  G.D. Ramkumar and his company Concept.io are looking to remedy this with the release of their new mobile app Swell.  Ramkumar believes that consumers would engage with a discovery platform for talk radio content as much as they have for personalized Internet music services.  That’s why he’s had his company focus on the creation of Swell in an attempt to offer smartphone users an easy way to find great spoken word content tailored specifically to their interests and tastes.  Ramkumar sees Swell as an opportunity to make spoken word content accessible and easy for mobile users to enjoy.  Those interested in Swell that have trouble installing it on their iPhone should contact iPhone tech support.  Concept.io CEO G.D. Ramkumar is obviously a cool person in technology who knows how to find new potential markets and capitalize.  Read more »

While there are a lot of funny pictures or moments that we like to share with our friends on social media, we don’t always want those pictures permanently archived on the Internet.  Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snapchat, has created a mobile application that tries to resolve this conflict between the desire for long-term privacy and the need for social connection.  Snapchat is an app that lets users send pictures they take back and forth in real-time in a conversational manner, but also deletes those pictures forever after specified period of time.  Spiegel’s vision has resonated with consumers all over the world.  This is clear from the fact that Snapchat is consistently a top ten app in Apple’s App Store for the iPhone.  Spiegel has worked to create a space where people can share their day-to-day moments without the fear of long-term embarrassment.  Many users concerned with online privacy and Internet security have clearly been waiting for a service to provide that opportunity.  Spiegel is definitely a cool person in the tech industry who has capitalized on a simple but effective idea. Read more »

Flipboard is a tablet application for iPad and Android that aims to improve the user experience for consuming social media and news.  Mike McCue, the CEO of the company, founded Flipboard in 2010 alongside iPhone engineer Evan Doll.  He branded the app as a “social magazine”, which collects information from a person’s many different social media accounts and specific news sources and places it into a magazine aesthetic for the user.  Users can then quickly flip through the digital pages of their personalized magazine to take in all the information from their media and news feeds in a single place.  This is opposed to the traditional web format of news and social media, which usually involves vertical scrolling and does not consolidate and organize your data the way Flipboard attempts to do. Those who have interest in Flipboard but are struggling with the app should find iPad support for help. McCue has lead Flipboard to great success since founding it.  He has helped to make the application one of the most featured and prominent on both Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS operating systems. Read more »

This week, the U.S. Department of Justice takes Apple to court.  The government claims that the computer technology giant was part of a conspiracy to fix prices in the eBook market along with five major publishing companies.  Allegedly, Apple worked with all of the major publishers to radically change the eBook market and enforce their preferred “agency” model as opposed to the standard wholesale model.  Amazon, the dominant retailer of eBooks before Apple entered the market in 2010, sold eBooks on a wholesale model.  This model involved paying publishers a fixed price for each eBook sold, and then reselling it to the consumer at whatever price a company chose.  The wholesale model allows retailers to choose their own profit margins on books they sell.  The government says that Apple tried to create a new standard by working with publishers to replace this wholesale model. Apple’s new agency model had publishers, not retailers, set a standard retail price for eBooks. Retailers then received a 30% cut of the price specified by the publisher.  Read more »

Most of us have experienced it at one point or another: you’ve finished your meal at a restaurant and its taking far too long for the servers simply to close out your bill.  Many have probably wondered if there was a way for recent advances in mobile technology, like smartphones and tablets, to improve this process.  TabbedOut sets out to do exactly that.  TabbedOut is an app found on both iOS and Android devices that allows patrons to check in to a restaurant and then pay their check when they are finished via their mobile device.  In theory, this could save both the customer and servers valuable time and improve the overall experience of eating out.  While there are many apps and services for purchasing take-out food, TabbedOut is unique in that it focuses on the experience of dining out.  However, if you have problems operating the mobile app, you should ask mobile support for help. Read more »