Cool Person of the Day

Customer service is important to any company’s long-term reputation as it increases customer retention and improves a brand’s image over time.  Making customer service difficult for users can be a death knell for many companies, especially young startups.  Growth is essential to business and it is hard to grow if customers are unsatisfied and not spreading positive word about the brand.  However, many companies are still relying on old, out-of-date methodology.  Many businesses require mobile customers to contact customer service not in their own app, but through a separate website optimized for desktops.  Cool person in technology Abinash Tripathy believes that customer service needs an update due to the prominence of mobile technology.  As mobile technology becomes increasing influential and popular, it only makes sense for mobile customers to be able to make customer service inquiries directly through the apps on their smartphone or tablet.  Tripathy’s product HelpShift aids companies in making that possible for their own customers.  Read more »

Cloud services are advancing impressively with time and cool person in technology Nikola Bozinovic is pushing them further than ever with his product, MAINFRAME2.  Bozinovic’s service runs any Windows software in the cloud and lets people access and control that software through their browsers.  Users who own Macs, Linux PCs and Google Chromebooks can now run and access any Windows software they choose with Bozinovic’s cloud-based product.  MAINFRAME2 connects people through a simple browser interface that lets users run and interact with whatever Windows programs they want.  Since MAINFRAME2 is cloud-based, users can access their apps and data from anywhere at any time. Bozinovic is making the complete vision of cloud-based computer technology a reality for everyone, allowing people to run any app they want regardless of their local hardware.  If anyone has problems logging into this cool person’s service online, a cloud computer support company may be able to help determine what is causing the difficulty. Read more »

Reinforcing good behavior in the classroom is one of the most effective ways to get students to perform well in school.  However, creating a workable system to promote and reward positive behavior can be difficult for many teachers.  Finding a way to keep track of students’ actions over time so they can earn positive reinforcement requires a significant amount of work when teachers already have a significant amount of responsibilities.  In addition, students may get confused difficulties if every teacher in the school uses a different system, decreasing the likelihood that students will keep any sort of rewards system in mind when thinking about their actions.  Cool person in technology Matthew Rubinstein wants to fix these problems with his app LiveSchool.  LiveSchool presents teachers with a unified system for rewarding their students with the help of mobile technology.  Using a mobile device such as an iPad, teachers can easily mark when their students do something positive to earn “points”.  Rubinstein’s app keeps long-term track of every student’s points.  Kids can then use these points to cash in for rewards and incentives customized by the teachers themselves.  Any teacher who has issues while trying to use the LiveSchool app may have a broken device needing tablet computer repair. Read more »

Teachers want to give their students every tool necessary to make their education worthwhile and help them succeed.  Cool person in technology John Runkles created Bulb in order to help teachers make assignments and lessons more engaging for their students.  Bulb is an online publishing platform designed specifically for use by both teachers and students.  With Bulb, users can create elaborate reports and posts using text, images and video and post them online in a convenient easy-to-read fashion.  Using Runkles’ product, teachers can create supplemental lesson plans for online consumption using mixed media and post them online for students to see.  In response, students can create their own posts on Bulb, easily publishing assignments online as response posts with the ability to use mixed media just as their teachers do.  With Runkles’ product, students and teachers have access to one simple platform that gives them a multitude of ways to create lessons and respond to them accordingly. Students or teachers who have problems setting up free accounts with Bulb should find a computer tech support provider for help. Read more »

Social networking often carries a stigma indicating that it limits people and prevents them from experiencing other aspects of life away from the computer. So much of social networking has to do with sharing content on the web and collecting digital imaginary benefits such as “likes” or “favorites” that it’s easy to see why some people feel this way.  Cool person in technology Justin Parfitt believes that social networking doesn’t have to limit people from experiencing the “real world” but can, in fact, be a useful tool to open people to new experiences.  Parfitt designed his social network HeyLets around the concept of providing people with the chance to discover new experiences they may enjoy while out of the house.  Parfitt’s product doesn’t focus on one sort of experience or event exclusively, but instead allow users to share all types of places and activities they enjoy.  HeyLets users simply post small status updates and photos as they would with other social networking sites, but also frame those updates with data that indicates where their experiences were located and how others can enjoy them too.  Anyone who has issues connecting to HeyLets may want to seek online computer support for assistance. Read more »

One would imagine that fundraising with the Internet would make the process simple and efficient, but for many nonprofits, that simply isn’t the case.  Many fundraising platforms, whether they be locally accessed software or cloud-based services, make things unnecessarily difficult for nonprofits.  Some platforms force donors to redirect to another site before they can input their information to donate.  Others have very rigid rules for the types of fundraising they can support, and a significant number of services take percentages of the donations that their platform processes.  Cool person in technology Roderick Campbell founded CommitChange to be a fundraising technology that actually does make the process more efficient and simpler for nonprofits.  Read more »

Even with advances in recent years that allow apps in Android and Apple to run concurrently so that users can switch between them with a simple gesture the typical smartphone experience still prohibits people from true multitasking.  People can only view apps one at a time on most popular smartphones, limiting their experience. In order to check on services in real time, users must always open individual apps. Cool person in technology Dwipal Desai has founded Terrain in order to break users away from these limitations.  Terrain is a new launcher for Android devices that leads users away from a one-at-a-time paradigm for viewing apps.  Users can download and install the launcher from the Google Play Store.  Anyone who has trouble applying Terrain to his or her smartphone may need help from an Android tech support provider. Read more »

While music hobbyists and casual players often only own one or two instruments, professional musicians often have to manage a huge variety of musical instruments and accessories.  Moving these items from place to place for gigs as well as keeping track of all the necessary accessories and parts is more difficult than many people realize.  Fortunately, cool person in technology Steve Cook founded InstrumentLife to assist professional musicians in managing their countless guitars, keyboards, drums and other instruments. Cook creates products that use computer technology and the web to aid people as they care for their instruments. Read more »

Video has blown up in the realm of social media over the last several years.  YouTube has always been prominent in the area, but now other services such as Instagram and Vine have made an impact on the social video space as well.  With the market growing, new social video companies need to introduce different hooks and concepts to make an impact.  Cool person in technology Jamie Lorenz is doing exactly that with his company FightMe.  FightMe is a social video space that adds a sense of competition to social video.  Read more »

Any medical professional who runs a private practice knows that communicating with patients can sometimes be a major problem.  Patients miss appointments and don’t reschedule accordingly, causing havoc for a practice’s calendar.  Cool person in technology Brandon Rodman is the CEO of a company that’s coming up with a better system to communicate with patients for one type of medical professional: dentists.  Rodman’s company Weave provides communication technology and software to dental care offices with their specific needs in mind.  Rodman designed his company’s software to address specific issues related to dental care practices and their patients.  Rodman’s software connects telephone communication, text communications and scheduling all together for one seamless experience.  Normally, dental practice office workers would have to make calls and work with scheduling and customer directory software separately. Weave combines these systems to reduce hold time for patients over the phone and streamline the process for office workers to avoid careless mistakes.  Any office interested in Weave may be better off having strong business computer services available to them to help with the transition to Rodman’s software. Read more »