Computer Support Blog

Influential people such as celebrities, CEOs, former political leaders, and other prominent figures often find that there is a large demand for their time.  People swarm them with fan mail, tweets, e-mails, and other requests for their attention, advice or consideration.  Since this is often overwhelming, people of influence don’t take the time to respond or address these requests for their time in any meaningful way.  Cool tech product Huddlewoo attacks this problem by allowing influential people to advertise their free time and receive offers for personal video chats.  Huddlewoo allows people to charge an hourly rate for their time to keep requests only from those with serious inquiries.  If someone is a particularly famous celebrity, they can even make conversations they have public so others can share the experience as well.  Those who want to connect with influential people via Huddlewoo will need to know how to set up and use a web cam for video chatting.  Those who are inexperienced with video chat should seek an onsite computer support service for assistance to get started with Huddlewoo. Read more »

Kairos is a cool product in technology that utilizes biometrics to form the base for a timeclock system at a place of work.  Kairos runs on a smartphone or tablet and checks employees in and out of their shifts through facial recognition technology.  When an employer uses Kairos, all an employee supposedly has to do to punch in for their shift is look at the smartphone or tablet camera.  Kairos will automatically recognize the employee as legitimate and record their punch-in time.  If this cool product works as advertised it could be seriously advantageous for small businesses.  It doesn’t require any extra equipment beyond a working tablet or smartphone that a company might be able to repurpose.  It can also effectively prevent any type of timecard fraud.  If employees must have their faces recognized by the camera in order to punch in or out of their shift, then it would be impossible for someone to punch in someone who wasn’t on time or absent.  In theory, this would increase the accuracy of timecards and avoid any potential abuse of the system.  Employers who want to take advantage of Kairos but have no experience with smartphones or tablets can seek help from business computer services. Read more »

Video content is a great marketing tool and can be a very engaging experience for users.  However, video content can also be also limited in its appeal.  Users who are hearing impaired or who do not speak the language used in the video are all immediately eliminated from experiencing a video’s content.  This is fine if a company aims its video at a small community or niche audience, but those who want to appeal to people in a global way are stuck.  Cool person in technology David Orban wants to solve this dilemma with his company Dotsub.  Orban is the CEO of Dotsub, who provides companies with the tools and software to caption and translate their online videos for wider user engagement.  Orban’s company provides their software as a service for businesses that want their video content to be accessible to a wider audience.  Users who have trouble operating the software should get remote computer support to help them resolve any issues. Read more »

Have you ever been to a restaurant or retail store and realized the same five or six songs were playing on repeat over the PA?  Cool person in technology Garrett Dodge wants to stop that from happening at restaurants and retail stores.  Many commercial and retail businesses play music while they’re open so their customers can enjoy it, but the vast majority of the time it ends up being a passive exercise.  Businesses simply put on a Pandora station or iTunes playlist and customers eventually tune out.  Dodge created Rockbot to find a better way to use music in commercial business.  Rockbot licenses a database of songs for businesses to use in their stores, but adds a twist to the streaming service model: it also has a mobile app that allows customers to rate and request music played at your business.  This means your customers can help influence your venue’s music selection, incentivizing them to stay longer and engage with your system.  Customers who have issues using the app can get mobile tech support to assist them.  Dodge believes this will help businesses get more productive use out of the music they play. Read more »

Starting any company from scratch is difficult, but founding a hardware startup comes with its own unique set of challenges that make it especially difficult—manufacturing costs, distribution problems, and shipping concerns are just the most obvious of these.  That’s why cool person in technology Scott N. Miller runs Dragon Innovation to help new hardware startups ship their first products.  Miller has run Dragon Innovation for many years as a consultancy firm for hardware startups that need help due to inexperience with manufacturing physical products at scale.  However, recently Miller has taken his company in a slightly different direction to set itself apart from other firms.  Miller has added a crowdfunding aspect to Dragon Innovation’s business model and is utilizing this new trend to enable his firm’s clients to succeed.  Read more »

If you’re a performer or you run a venue that hosts events, you’re well aware that audience members take countless pictures and short videos at shows.  The ubiquity mobile technology allows fans to capture performances more easily than ever.   WESAWIT is a cool product in technology that lets venues, performers or even promoters utilize this phenomenon and take advantage of all the fan-generated content recorded at shows.  WESAWIT integrates with major social websites such as Vine, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Flickr, using geo-tags to collect all the photos and videos that fans take at a particular concert or event.  Venues and performers can then take the collected content and display all of it in one place through a widget on their website.  WESAWIT automates the aggregation of publicly posted fan-generated content so venues and promoters can leverage it for their own purposes. Read more »

E-mail marketing is a useful tool for any business, but it does come with its own set of risks and challenges.  Making your company’s e-mails stand out is essential, as is targeting the correct consumers.  Otherwise, people may not trust your e-mails and regard them as spam before blocking them with Internet security software.  MailChimp is a cool product that helps you design and implement professional, high-quality e-mail marketing campaigns to avoid this.  MailChimp gives customers several tools to create a complete e-mail marketing campaign including everything from format and design to analytics and strategy.  The MailChimp client includes ways to split up your e-mail audience into segments for targeted newsletters and offers.   MailChimp also gives users a drag and drop editor to design e-mails to match up coherently with your business’s brand.  MailChimp wants you to be able to give your e-mails a clean and professional look while letting you plan your campaign all in the same program. Read more »

SAT prep is a major business market with several major players dominating, such as The Princeton Review and Kaplan.  The majority of SAT prep companies use methods revolving around large instruction booklets and classroom instruction.  While some companies have begun using technology to support their curricula, it is often an afterthought and they focus their efforts mainly on web-based testing.  Cool person in technology Michael Weiler believes that a different approach will be more effective on today’s high school students.  Weiler’s company Edupath handles SAT prep with a mobile-first strategy.  Most students these days spend immense amounts of time on their smartphones and tablets so that is where Weiler wants to make SAT prep tools accessible for them.  He believes a mobile-first strategy encourages a constant connection to the materials students need to improve their scores.  Weiler wants to leverage the popularity of mobile technology to help kids get into the colleges they want to attend. Read more »

When your company or organization is holding an event or sponsoring a conference, you want your visitors to engage as much as possible.  Lawrence Coburn is a cool person in technology who wants to help you keep attendees involved at all times by creating special mobile applications for your business’s events.  Coburn founded DoubleDutch in 2010 and since then has been helping companies get a better return on investment for every major social event or conference they hold.  Coburn’s company create apps that aim not only to help visitors get the most out of a company’s events, but also help each company optimize its events as much as possible in the future.  Coburn’s goal is to ensure that each event or conference a business holds provides as much benefit to the business as possible in the long run.  Read more »

Not unlike the trendy online dating services, FounderDating helps entrepreneurs find their match online.  You may have a specific idea you would like to work on, but don’t have the right partner. FounderDating helps connect you to a network of uber talented individuals with complementary skill sets.  Finding someone with a different background and skill set allows you to fit with the right cofounder. FounderDating is in the business of making these kinds of matches. Read more »