Cool Person of the Day

Email has the unique distinction of being both an essential resource and incredible problem in the workplace.  While it is an essential communication tool for any professional, email often piles up and leads to disorganization.  It’s all too easy to lose an important message when you’re digging through thousands of messages in your inbox.  Cool person in tech Matthew Bellows founded his startup Yesware to help sales professionals not only navigate and handle their emails more efficiently, but also actually leverage email to increase sales conversions.  Bellows and his team have created a Gmail add-on that attempts to tailor the email experience to sales professionals’ needs.  Bellows has Yesware track emails so it can alert salespeople when clients open their messages.  Bellows means for this feature to help keep all active leads fresh in a salesperson’s mind when they utilize email.  It also helps users estimate when clients check and read their email.  This could help users optimize follow-up emails based on when their customers are most likely to see them.  Anyone who has trouble integrating Yesware into their Gmail service can contact office tech support for assistance. Read more »

Underage drinking is a serious epidemic and many bars have run into trouble due to sophisticated fake identification card schemes.  The best way to handle fake IDs is to use an ID scanner, which can read digital signatures attached to specific driver’s licenses and ID cards to determine their legitimacy.  However, investing in an expensive and unwieldy ID scanner that is not only very expensive but also requires upkeep from time to time is not something many bar and club owners are enthusiastic about.  Cool person in technology Benjamin Sibert founded his company Bar and Club Stats to come up with a solution this problem.  Sibert and his team have created a functioning ID scanner for bars and clubs using iPhones, iPods, and iPads.  Sibert hopes that with such a device will appeal to club and restaurant owners who want a cleaner, more streamlined solution to checking identification at the door.  Each of Sibert’s company’s scanners attach themselves around the outside of their respective iDevices like a case.  Any restaurant owner with an unused or broken iPad could easily repurpose their device with one of Sibert’s scanner cases after getting iPad repair. Read more »

Social media has taken many different forms as it has expanded.  People use Twitter for text content, Vine and YouTube for video, and Instagram for photographs.  However, cool person in tech Thomas Clayton believes there is a medium that people have underutilized in social media up to now: voice.  Clayton is the CEO of Bubbly, a social network where users post short voice messages instead of videos, pictures, or statuses.  Clayton’s social network is completely mobile focused.  Bubbly doesn’t even have a basic web based counterpart to its smartphone applications.  In a way, it makes perfect sense.  Since Clayton was creating a social network based on voice communication, why not focus entirely on devices specifically built for voice communication—phones?  Clayton believes that people want to have a literal voice on social media and not just a figurative one. In past interviews, he has described his company’s service as “Twitter with a voice.”  Anyone who has trouble downloading Clayton’s app for their iPhone or Android device will need smartphone tech support. Read more »

Content management is becoming a fragmented experience as more and more storage solutions appear on the market.  It is becoming commonplace for professionals to have data stored locally on their own computers and tablets, on their smartphones, and on cloud-based solutions such as Dropbox and Google Drive.  Navigating through each individual file management system can be cumbersome and time-consuming.  To deal with this situation, cool person in tech Kevin Payne and his company Metago have built a unifying content management app for Android called ASTRO.  ASTRO doesn’t only access one storage system, but connects to both your local network and cloud services to create a single file management system for all of a user’s content.  Payne’s app can connect to services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, SkyDrive and even Facebook.  It can also access any computer that shares its data with a local network.  This means a user could conceivably access all of their files from one user interface on their phone at any given time.  Users that don’t know how to share their computer’s content over a local network will want home computer support for help. Read more »

Static and bad sound quality commonly plague conference calls.  However, group calls themselves are often essential for efficient communication within a company.  Cool person in technology Stephane Giraudie has set out to fix this problem by creating Voxeet.  Giraudie claims Voxeet offers a better solution for business owners than standard conference calling due to the high quality experience that the product offers.  On the company’s website, Giraudie states that users will find a much higher quality of sound when using Voxeet.  Also on the website, Giraudie’s company cites “3D immersive sound” and HD audio technology to remove unwanted static from group calls as key factors in Voxeet’s user experience.  If Giraudie’s product live up to his claims, business owners could avoid miscommunication from misheard calls due to bad sound quality. It’s easy to imagine that most owners and managers would greatly appreciate higher quality audio in their group calls. Voxeet runs as computer software rather than a product you integrate with your phone, much like consumer-focused conferencing products such as Skype and Google Hangouts.  That means businesses will need access to good PC tech support if they have technical issues with the product. Read more »

Hiring managers often find their e-mail accounts buried in resumes.  Sorting through these documents to find suitable candidates for new positions can be a messy, disorganized process.  This is especially true when trying to juggle other responsibilities.  Cool person in technology Ben Curtis created Catch the Best specifically to solve this exact dilemma.  Catch the Best is a web-based tool that HR professionals can use to keep track of job applications and help hiring managers gather feedback from co-workers on how well specific resumes fit open positions.  Curtis built Catch the Best as a web application so that he could make it easily accessible to a large HR team all at once.  By using a cloud-based system on the web rather than developing a piece of local software for hiring manager’s computers, Curtis was able to streamline the process of sharing resumes with others in a company easy and automatic.  Those who are unfamiliar with cloud-based technologies or who have issues with Internet-based applications should find a cloud computer support service to help them.  Read more »

LinkedIn has proven to be an essential networking tool for many in the business world.  The ability to stay connected with so many business contacts has helped many forward their career and their companies.  However, LinkedIn’s corporate focus on traditional business career paths doesn’t work for everyone.  Cool person in tech Yinon Weiss is a military veteran who found that LinkedIn wasn’t the most appropriate tool for helping military personnel find work in the real world.  Military careers and experience didn’t translate easily to LinkedIn’s design or outline.  This is why Weiss founded RallyPoint, a professional social network designed specifically for both active military personnel and veterans.  RallyPoint helps its members maintain an online presence, network within the military, and apply for jobs.  RallyPoint lets its members apply to jobs in the private sector, but also has options for active personnel to apply for PCS opportunities.  Weiss wants RallyPoint to make networking and job hunting whether someone is still active in the armed forces or not.  Members of the military who want to try RallyPoint but have little experience with social networking might be able to get help from a computer support service. Read more »

The Internet has severely changed the state of being for independent musicians and artists.  Having a web and social media presence is essential to maintaining your career as an artist if you want to stay independent.  Most successful musicians on the web stick to social media sites such as YouTube and BandCamp to promote and sell their music.  That was not enough for cool person in technology Jack Conte.  Conte worked for years as an independent musician with a heavy web presence, both with his solo projects and with his partner Nataly Dawn in the band Pomplamoose.  Conte has drawn a significant following of fans on the Internet thanks to his popular music videos on YouTube, which reveal how he creates the unique sounds in his music.  However, Conte was not satisfied with promoting his work on a social network while selling it elsewhere.  This is why he founded Patreon, a website that allows users to patronize specific artists and fund them for their continued work. Read more »

Compensation in any form is always a powerful motivator, and cool person in technology Jeremy Gelbart counts on that every day as he runs Ultrinsic.  Ultrinsic is a website that allows college students to put up their money for the chance to earn more through their grades.  Essentially, students deposit a certain amount of money to get access to the site.  Once a student has access, they can submit what courses they are taking in a semester and essentially place bets that they will receive A’s in those classes.  When a student comes through and makes the grade, they not only get their deposit back but also a monetary reward and their balance on the site increases.  When students fail to make the grade, Gelbart’s company takes their deposit and places it into a general fund.  Gelbart believes that students can use the site to motivate themselves to perform better and that an immediate monetary stake in their grades will give them a sense of urgency and drive that college students can sometimes lack.  Students that have trouble depositing to the site and submitting their courses should get access to PC tech support for help. Read more »

Many education-based tech startups are trying to offer online courses and content directly to students through their own brand and website.  While these companies do occasionally collaborate with certain universities for course content, 2U CEO Chip Paucek is a cool person in technology believes in a different path for online education. Paucek wants to provide universities the tools and resources they need to create their own online degree programs.  Rather than offer online education directly, 2U works with schools to help them provide online classes and degrees to their students through a university’s own site and with a school’s own branding.   Paucek and his company concern themselves with forming complete courses and programs that fit into a genuine degree track rather than offering piecemeal educational content or single classes.  Paucek wants to help colleges utilize online classes to increase their reach and produce substantive courses that are in line with a college’s traditional offerings.  Because of this, Paucek doesn’t market 2U towards the public or students, but rather at universities themselves.  2U provides both technology and consulting to help colleges integrate large-scale online programs into their infrastructure quickly and efficiently. Read more »