Cool Person of the Day

According to cool person in technology Pascal Mathis, booking activities for your vacation should be easy to do from any computer whenever you want. The travel industry already uses websites to book hotels, flights, rental cars, and most everything else that has to do with tourism. Therefore, it’s no surprise that someone would want to give people a way to browse through and book different tours and location-specific activities online as well. Mathis calls his service GetYourGuide. On GetYourGuide, users can search for specific activities that they would like to book while on vacation. They can also browse by location to see what is available if they already have a destination picked out for their trip. Mathis wants to offer travelers a more convenient way to book activities and plan their trip ahead of time with GetYourGuide. That’s why he gives users the option to add things like hotel pick-up to their bookings. Mathis aims for his customers to be in complete control of their trip before they even leave their homes. Computer IT support is available for customers who have trouble with bookings on Mathis’s website. Read more »

There are many corporatized reading experiences available on mobile devices.  Amazon’s Kindle platform, Barnes and Noble’s Nook platform, and even Apple’s iBooks all offer eBook solutions that connect the shopping and reading experiences for users.  However, none of these platforms has successfully combined the mobile reading experience with the advantages of social networking.  Cool person in technology Henrik Berggren has set out to create such a platform with his company Readmill.  Readmill produces an app that works as both a mobile eBook reader for either iPhones or Android devices and lets book readers interact and discuss what they read in the manner of a social network.  Berggren lets readers review and comment on books they read on his app.  Readmill users can then share those reviews publicly with the rest of the Readmill community.  Users can also comment on others’ reviews to promote discussion around specific books.  This social aspect sets the Readmill app apart from other eBook experiences, which focus almost entirely on the purchasing and personal reading aspects of the experience.  While Berggren is entering a somewhat crowded area with Readmill, he does so while filling a gaping hole in the market—a socially connected eReader app.  Any user who has trouble downloading the app to their phone should have mobile PC support services try to resolve the problem. Read more »

CoachUp CEO Jordan Fliegal played basketball as a kid and while he loved the sport, he wasn’t very good at it—not at first anyway.  On the CoachUp website, Fliegal speaks about how he was lucky enough to find a personal coach to help him train in his favorite sport.  Through the private coach’s help, Fliegal managed to improve enough that many top colleges tried to recruit him.  He even went on to play professional basketball in overseas leagues.  Fliegal attributes his success to his private coach, and that’s why he founded tech startup CoachUp.  CoachUp is an online service that conveniently connects parents and kids with private trainers and coaches to help them with a sport or activity.  Fliegal attributes finding his private coach when he was a kid to pure luck.  It seems he wants to take luck out of the equation and make private coaching available to as many young people as possible with CoachUp.  This cool person in technology is using the connected world to try to help kids achieve more in their athletic activities. Read more »

Being a professional artist is a struggle for many, as young and talented creators saturate the field in today’s art world, making it harder to acquire a fan base.  However, the Internet has become an incredibly valuable resource for artists to reach admirers and carve out their niche in the wider art loving populace.  Daniel Arroyo is a cool person in technology who has built a website that leverages the advantages of the Internet to help artists as they find their audience.  Artgonia acts as a platform for artists who want to share their work and build a network of fans.  Arroyo’s website utilizes social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus in order to help budding artists and photographers reach much wider audiences.  Artists can share their art through unique Artgonia profiles to try to make their work go viral on the web.  Any artist who is interested but doesn’t know how to create social network profiles that help them take full advantage of Arroyo’s site should seek out an online computer support provider. Read more »

Everyone knows that annoying feeling that comes with hearing about news weeks after they should have been aware of it.  Sometimes it’s about a friend, a boss, a business associate, or a celebrity they follow intensely, but it’s almost always something they wish they’d known sooner.  Cool person in technology Axel Hansen created Newsle specifically for people in this situation.  Newsle automatically finds news from hundreds of sources and matches it against each of its users’ specific follow lists to present them with news that only has to do with the people they care about the most. Hansen’s program starts out with users connecting to their Facebook or LinkedIn account and importing their friends or business colleagues onto their follow list first.  This process automatically sets up users so they see news about anyone in their social or business networks the minute it appears on the web. Newsle scours the Internet and finds out when a news outlet reports something about anyone in a user’s network.  Anyone who uses Newsle but can’t seem to connect it to any social networks properly can get assistance through phone tech support. Read more »

Anyone who has ever tried to plan a trip as part of a large group can tell you that the process becomes tedious and difficult.  Sending emails back and forth constantly amongst a large group of friends is not the most convenient way of making plans.  That’s why cool person in technology Paul Watts has built Gatherball.  Gatherball is a set of collaborative tools on the web for groups to use when planning either a long vacation or a short getaway.  Watts’s website works at every step of a trip-planning project—from concept to booking.  Users who want to plan a trip or have an idea can use Watts’s service to send invites to specific friends.  Those who receive an invite then read a pitch on the Gatherball about a getaway or vacation idea from the original user.  These new users then agree to join, opt out or send messages to the trip creator to iron out details.  Any user who has had trouble with websites like Gatherball linking with their Facebook account will want to have access to online tech support in case they run into problems. Read more »

Amos Elliston is, first and foremost, a software engineer.  However, his career has grown significantly over the years and turned him into a highly successful leader as well.  Currently, Elliston is the Chief Technology Officer of PocketChange, a company that rewards users of specific mobile apps with loyalty points.  Elliston’s current position offers him a serious challenge, as he has to work to make the PocketChange loyalty rewards system integrate with hundreds of different mobile applications.  He also has to coordinate teams that work with two different mobile operating systems: Android and iOS.  Fortunately, Elliston has a significant amount of experience handling large engineering and software projects.  This cool person in technology has held upper management positions at two other major software startups besides PocketChange over the last seven years.  This is not a man who would ever need onsite computer support to solve his computer problems like most people.  The evidence heavily suggests that Elliston is a man who knows what it takes to succeed in the tech industry. Read more »

Communication in any large organization or business can be a hassle when there are hundreds of employees.  In a hospital or other healthcare workplace, things are often even more chaotic due to the constant intake of patients and sudden emergencies that can occur.  Cool person in technology Sunny Tara founded docBeat in order to attack this problem by improving communication in hospitals.  Tara’s product, docBeat, is a mobile platform that facilitates quick and secure communication between workers in a healthcare institution.  Tara lets doctors and other healthcare professionals install docBeat on the smartphones they already own.  This makes integrating docBeat into a workplace easier, although hospitals should still have onsite tech support available to ensure the system works smoothly.  Read more »

Passwords are the bane of many people’s Internet existence.  This is especially true in recent years as the number of websites, online services, and mobile apps people commonly use that require usernames and passwords has increased.  That’s why cool person in technology Daniel Robichaud founded PasswordBox.  Robichaud believes there should be an easier way to deal with someone’s numerous usernames and passwords.  His product integrates with users’ browsers so that it automatically stores each password they create.  When a user wants to log in or out of any specific website or service, they open PasswordBox and find themselves presented with an organized list of their accounts.  Users simply click on the accounts they want to sign in or out of, and they can avoid login screens on all the websites they visit.  Robichaud’s solution avoids memorization and record keeping.  It might also save users a significant amount of time while they’re browsing the web.  For those worried about Internet security, Robichaud states on PasswordBox’s website that the encryption he uses for his program is high-level and similar to encryption used for military software.  Read more »

The video games industry has been experimenting with new business models over the last several years.  These models have included downloadable content to add to already released games as well as “freemium” models where a game is free but users can purchase items or upgrades within a game. However, these models are not foolproof and many game companies have had trouble optimizing their product to get the most out of their market.  Cool person in technology Dr. Dmitri Williams founded his startup NinjaMetrics to give game companies analytic tools that allow them to get the best return on investment for their social games. Read more »