Cool Person of the Day

One of the best gifts parents can give children is a lifelong love of reading. Today’s cool person is Julie Stubblefield. Along with her husband, James, she founded Reading Glue. It enables parents to help young children improve their reading skills and comprehension. For those going to school, the Reading Glue website wants to build on the skills learned in school. The name refers to reading strategies that stick. Reading Glue mainly applies to readers through elementary school age.

Parents can provide reading activities to stimulate and enrich a child’s reading experiences. Beginning readers, which Reading Glue defines as children in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, should know their letters and sounds and read some short words. Books for this group should have many pictures and few words on a page, Stubblefield suggests. Read more »

When you have multiple credit cards and bank accounts, keeping track of all your monthly purchases to ensure their legitimacy can be a time-consuming and harrowing feat.  This is especially true if you are already lacking for free time because of the many hours that your job and family require of you.  This can often cost you money thanks to grey charges—items and services charged to your credit card that you are unaware of but keep piling up because you fall behind on checking your bills.  Yaron Samid, the CEO of Billguard, is a cool person using technology to help consumers combat these grey charges and save money in the process.

Billguard is an iPhone app that keeps track of all your credit card bills at once.  This keeps all your billing data in one convenient place for review.  Arguably more important than that, Samid’s app flags transactions it believes to be grey charges for user review.  Samid is a cool person in technology who believes he can save people a lot of money and frustration by bringing their attention to unwanted charges and helping to make the management of monthly credit card bills easier.  If you have downloaded Billguard for your iPhone but need help getting it to work, iPhone support is the best option. Read more »

It’s one of the most common problems people have: lack of time.  Many of us have so many things to do in our lives that we forget the smaller tasks, even when they’re important.  Only the most affluent among us can hire personal assistants to take care of those smaller tasks and ensure they are completed.  However, Ted Roden is a cool person in technology that envisions a future where his service, FancyHands, allows everyone the benefit of a personal assistant.  FancyHands is an online service that Roden created where members can immediately request the completion of any task that doesn’t require a physical presence.  You can assign any scheduling, research, calls or other Internet and phone-based tasks that you need done to the FancyHands team.  Roden and his team use tech to make this process even easier with a mobile app that simply lets users speak their request into their phone.  Roden has created a system where anyone can free up their time with the help of a virtual personal assistant. Read more »

Designers often need feedback for their work but want more than a limited pool of responses.  Dribbble CEO Rich Thornett is a cool person in technology that has created a social network made specifically for designers to showcase their work.  Dribbble allows designers to post the projects their working on and get feedback from other designers.  It also allows designers to put their portfolio online to increase their visibility in the design community.  Thornett works to keep Dribbble a space where designers can interact, give feedback and promote their own work within the community easily.  The Dribbble CEO doesn’t limit what types of designers can use the service, explicitly stating on the site that the social network is for “web designers, graphic designers, illustrators, icon artists, typographers, logo designers, and other creative types”.  Being open to so many forms of design works towards Thornett’s vision of an open community where ideas can cross breed even across design disciplines.  Non-technical designers that would like to post their work on Dribbble may want to find online computer support for help getting started.  Read more »

Crisis support and counseling can save lives. However, not everyone has support for when they are in a difficult life situation and need advice.  Someone might not be comfortable speaking to someone else about their issues without anonymity.  Heidi Allstop, a cool person in technology, has found a way for people who need help and life advice to get support online confidentially through her website SpillNow.com.  Allstop is the CEO of Spill, the company that runs SpillNow.com, and she has built the site in hopes that those who need help can find an easy way to access life advice and support from others even if they are uncomfortable giving up their identity.  Users “spill their guts” as the site refers to it, posting descriptions of their situation and then asking advice of the larger community.  Others can respond, also anonymously, giving them advice on what to do or even just emotional support based on their situation.  Allstop has made sure the site has guidelines regarding users’ responses to avoid intentionally rude or offensive posts.  Find computer support if you want to try the website but run into trouble posting or replying. Read more »

Employee training is a costly, time-consuming process for most businesses.  Large meetings and in-person training courses take large amounts of time and effort to institute, which severely takes away from your overall productivity.  Fortunately, cool person in technology Donna Wells is working to fix these problems as the CEO of Mindflash.  Mindflash is a company that develops web-based tools to help companies create online and cloud solutions for employee training.  Wells wants to make online training courses an accessible option for most businesses and furthermore, aims to make the process of developing online courses easy for employers.  Mindflash gives employers an online platform where they can quickly create and organize several online courses and quizzes for new employees.    Mindflash allows users to upload their own PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, and PDF files in order to create web courses for their employees quickly.  Employees can then access these courses online whenever and wherever they want.  This potentially eliminates the need for in-person training courses and could help businesses put employees through the training process faster.   If your business needs help using online tools such as the ones Mindflash provides, business IT support probably has the best answers for you. Read more »

Most online shopping websites like Amazon and Overstock have a wish list feature, which allows you to save items you want to buy later in designated lists for organized shopping.  However, these companies naturally limit what you can put on your wish list to items available on their websites.  The problem with this is that most people do not do their online shopping at only one site, so making a list limited to a single online retailer is rather inconvenient.  That’s where cool person in technology Lauren McDevitt has stepped in and created an easy-to-use web-based service to fix this problem. Lauren McDevitt is the founder and CEO of New York based company Wantworthy, which provides a service that lets users create a universal wish list with items from any online retailer they choose.  Rather than inconveniently having to keep track of several lists over multiple websites, McDevitt has developed a service where people can conveniently keep track of everything they plan to buy online in one place and in an organized fashion. Read more »

Libboo Founder and CEO Chris Howard believes that the way people currently discover new books is inefficient for both readers and authors.  It is incredibly difficult for an author to find an audience without spending a significant amount of money towards advertising, storefront space and paying prominent reviewers to read your book.  Many independent writers and authors backed by smaller publishers simply don’t have the necessary resources for such a marketing blitz.  However, Howard is a cool person in technology that believes that he’s found a solution to that problem with his online service Libboo.  Read more »

Keller Rinaudo, the CEO of Romotive, is a cool person in technology that wants to put robots that improve people’s lives in every home.  While you’re probably wondering if this is science fiction, it’s true that Rinaudo has already taken the first steps towards his goal with his company’s first product: Romo.  Romo is a robot that has a tank-like base that contains an iPhone dock and wheels.  The iPhone itself displays the robot’s face when connected. Users can control Romo through an iOS app that allows you to program its behavior.  You can program Romo for basic things such as being happy to see you when it recognizes your face through the iPhone camera. However, you can also have it do more complex tasks, such as rolling away from you to prevent you from pressing snooze when the iPhone alarm goes off.  If you have trouble programming Romo on your iPhone, smartphone computer support is probably a good option for you. Read more »

There are many times startup owners might want to look into a strategic acquisition. However, they are afraid that by putting themselves out there, they are risking their business’s image.  Many people assume that if a company is interested in acquisition that means they are struggling, even if that is not always the case.  However, cool person in technology Jacob Mullins wants to help startups explore their options without worrying about those risks.  Mullins has founded a new company named Exitround aimed at this purpose.  Exitround provides an online service that allows startups to seek potential acquirers anonymously.  Mullins wants to enable companies to learn more about the acquisition process and explore strategic exits without risk.  He has set up Exitround as an anonymous marketplace where startups can list company details in a database that potential buyers browse.  Buyers can indicate interest and then startups only reveal their identity to the possible acquirers that they specifically choose.  Mullins wants to let startups explore possibilities whether they are actually worried about their operations and business IT support costs or are doing well and merely interested in what they might be worth.  Read more »