Our next generation of innovators is now sitting in classrooms designing with popsicle sticks or pipe cleaners. Or perhaps they are at home with a Lego set, hard at work creating fun. Or just maybe they are using littleBits, color-coded “bits” that snap together magnetically, building simple circuits and inventive projects complete with blinks and beeps. 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 »
Keeping track of all the press your company gets can be a difficult and time-consuming task. When you’re building a startup, you barely have time to sleep, much less analyze your company’s press and social media coverage in serious depth. However, Matt Allison is a cool person in technology who wants to solve this problem. Read more »
Poor user engagement can kill an enterprise’s website performance. Even if your company’s website gets high traffic, you’re not getting the most out of your site if users aren’t staying and digging deeper into it. Cool person in technology Murray Galbraith knows how much of a problem this is for many businesses. That’s why he built Youneeq. Youneeq tracks the behavior of users on your website and keeps them engaged by only showing them the content they want to see. Galbraith’s company uses its data to filter your site’s content on an individual level so that when someone visits the site, they only see what interests them specifically. In theory, this increases engagement on the site and prevents users from leaving due to having to filter through too many things that they have no interest in viewing. Read more »
Navigating large airports when you travel can be an excruciating process. Often times, you don’t know where the nearest restroom is, you choose a poor place to get a meal just because it’s on the way to your gate, or you can’t find the currency exchange before your international flight. Cool person in technology Mark Wagner knows that these issues plague travelers all the time and that’s why he’s created the AirportChatter app for the iPhone. AirportChatter helps users manage their airport experience more effectively. Wagner created the app to give travelers the resources they need to make their time spent in airports a much better experience. Wagner’s app has a complete listing of shops, restaurants and ATMs in each of the U.S.’s thirty largest airports. Each listing has spaces for customer reviews, so users can find out which restaurants and stores are their best bets as they wait for a flight. The app can even tell you where the nearest restrooms are to your location within the airport. If you have problems navigating the app, finding iPhone support should be your next step in getting it to work. 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 »
There are many travel websites that allow you to compare prices for airfare and hotels when you’re making a trip across the country. However, there aren’t many options when you want to avoid air travel for any reason—maybe because you’re afraid of flying or because you simply want to save money. Polina Raygorodskaya is a cool person who is changing this predicament with her website and online service Wanderu. Wanderu is an aggregator for bus and train companies who provide inter-city travel options. Users simply log on to the site, search for a starting point and a destination and Wanderu gives them a list of the best options for travel by train, by bus, or even by a combination of the two. Raygorodskaya wants to make finding the best deal for train and bus travel online as easy as it is for air travel. She is working to make Wanderu the easiest way for people to book inter-city ground transportation between any two points in North America. It’s a lofty ambition, but Wanderu appears to be on the right track for now. Raygorodskaya has made her website fairly simple to use, though if you do have trouble IT support is always an option. Read more »
Campus safety is an important issue as crime rates continue to be a cause for concern for many universities. Most people wouldn’t immediately think of mobile applications as a technological tool that could help students remain safe on campus. However, Dr. Gary Margolis is a cool person in technology that has developed exactly that—a smartphone app that students can use to keep safe while they’re at school. Margolis and his team have developed Campus Sentinel, which gives college students a number of resources and tools to help them remain safe on campus. The app lists detailed crime statistics for over 4,400 schools to help students remain informed about what’s going on around them. This will hopefully help them make safer decisions as they go about campus life. Read more »
Companies have given smartphones a myriad of functions as they’ve grown more powerful and versatile over the years. Smartphones can now be your GPS and navigation device, mobile computer, weather tracker, and gaming device. Max Perelman sees a lot of potential is smartphones as well, but not simply as personal consumer devices. Perelman is a cool person in technology that’s working to make it possible to turn a smartphone into a portable DNA diagnostics lab. He and his team envision a future where you can connect your smartphone to a small device wirelessly and immediately have a solution for genetic diagnostics and on-site disease tracking. If Perelman’s vision comes true, it could be much easier and much cheaper to track developing diseases and treat them more efficiently. Perelman also wants to keep his device simple to use. He doesn’t want lab assistants having to call tech support just to hook up their smartphones and run tests. It’s an ambitious project, but if successful, Perelman and the team at Biomeme could make a huge difference in the future of public health. Read more »
With the advent of MP3 players, music streaming sites and smartphones that contain entire music libraries in the palm of your hand, music has become an increasingly individual experience over the last decade. Billy Chasen is a cool person in technology who wants to use his online service, Turntable.fm, to make music a social activity once more. This may seem counterintuitive, as most online music services, such as personal Internet radio sites Pandora and Slacker Radio, focus on making music a personal experience. Chasen wants to people to interact while listening to music. That’s why Turntable.fm combines the concepts of chat rooms and Internet radio. Users log into rooms designated by genre or mood and interact while through chat while music plays in the background. Users, as oppose to algorithms, also choose the songs that play in each room. People fill in specific “DJ spots” in each room that allow them to pick the upcoming songs for everyone to listen to and (hopefully) enjoy. This allows groups of people to share their tastes and potentially discover new music through their friends. If you have trouble connecting to the Turntable.fm service online, finding PC tech support is essential. Read more »