Cool Person of the Day

Academic journals require more effort to manage properly than many people outside the academic and research worlds realize.  Managing the process of peer reviews, organizing all submitted research, designing the layout of the journal and finding a means of publication are all very time-consuming activities.  To further complicate the matter, most academic and research journal editors work full time jobs at universities on top of their editorial duties.  Now, cool person in technology Brian Cody has founded a company that wants to help journal editors manage their duties more efficiently.  Scholastica is Cody’s platform for creating and maintaining academic journals online.  With Scholastica, editors can keep track of all works submitted to their journal, manage the peer review process in real time, and publish approved papers quickly and efficiently.  Cody’s goal is to provide professional academics with the tools to maintain a high quality journal online easily.  He also wants academics to be able to do so without needing extensive technical expertise.  Any academics who have difficulty publishing with the platform should make sure to contact a remote computer support service. Read more »

The Internet has become haven for independent and amateur artists, whether those artists work in music, animation or performance.  While social media and the web have made it possible to independently promote oneself and gain traction with a fan base, it is not an easy thing to accomplish.  For people who treat their artwork as a profession and not as a hobby, it is not always viable to simply promote work on social media sites and hope for the best.  Amos Pizzey wants to give professional artists a better tool on the web that can help them not just gain attention, but find paying work.  This cool person in technology founded his company Talenthouse in order to give artists the equivalent of a professional networking site like LinkedIn.  Read more »

Reading can be an expensive hobby.  Hardcover books often cost between fifteen and twenty dollars and many paperback books hover around the ten-dollar area at bookstores across the United States.  However, avid eBook readers know that going digital can save people a significant amount of money.  While eBooks aren’t often cheaper than their physical counterparts upon initial release, digital bookstores provide readers with free and heavily discounted books far more than physical retailers do.  However, readers have to dig through the depths of different eBook stores like Amazon’s Kindle Store, Google Play, Apple iBooks, and Nook’s digital store to find these deals.  Most companies do not heavily advertise these discounts, especially in niche genres that have many digital readers.  Cool person in technology and entrepreneur Josh Schanker wants to make it much easier for eBook readers to find these deals.  In fact, with his company BookBub, he wants to make it completely effortless.  Schanker’s company provides a service that both curates specific eBook deals for its customers and automatically delivers the deals via email.  Anyone who has trouble receiving email will obviously need to contact a remote tech support company for help before using BookBub. Read more »

To say that starting a business for the first time is a difficult experience would be a massive understatement.  Young entrepreneurs with big ideas and dreams come onto the scene every day, but unfortunately, most of them don’t have the experience or knowledge to implement their ideas in cost effective ways.  Some people starting their own businesses have the benefit of a mentor or a dependable source of business advice when making difficult decisions.  Unfortunately, not everyone is so lucky.  Many entrepreneurs make key financial or strategic mistakes in the early stages of their company and it ends up costing them dearly in the end.  Cool person in technology Dan Martell believes he has a better option for these entrepreneurs.  Read more »

Online auctions became popular with eBay during the late 1990’s.  Since eBay’s explosion of popularity, most people associate online auctioning with less expensive or second hand products, which are more common on eBay.  However, cool person in technology Alexander Zacke believes that online auctions don’t have to be a slave to this stigma.  Zacke is the CEO of Auctionata, an online auction house that only puts up items such as high quality art and rare antiques for bidding.  Rather than utilize the populist style of peer-to-peer auctions that populate sites like eBay and its clones, Zacke’s company specifically tries to recreate the experience of high-class auction houses like New York City’s Christie’s.  Zacke’s company uses a patented real-time online auction system on the Auctionata website.  Users can maintain online profiles for easy access to the site when auctions occur.  With Auctionata, art and antique collectors can bid on intriguing high-value items from the comfort of their couches.  Anyone who has trouble setting up an account on Zacke’s website can always get computer support services to help with the issue. Read more »

People often don’t want to speak about what may happen once they’ve passed away because it makes them and those that care about them uncomfortable.  Many people even go so far avoiding the issue that they don’t set up appropriate plans and preparations for when they die, which usually ends up leading to trouble for their loved ones.  Adam Seifer is a cool person in technology who wants to make sure people don’t ignore the important issues that arise when it is their time to go.  Seifer founded his company Everplans to give people a technological tool that will help them prepare and make sure their loved ones don’t have to experience unnecessary stress.  With Seifer’s service, people can organize what tasks they need to accomplish before their death in an online platform that they can conveniently access whenever they want.  Anyone who has trouble creating an Everplan online or logging into one they’ve already made will need cloud computer support for assistance.  Read more »

The Internet has made planning vacations far easier in most situations.  Travel websites have made travel agencies redundant and unnecessary for most people.  However, mainstream travel websites tend to focus on the bare bones of a major trip—such as airfare, hotels, and occasionally a few mainstream attractions.  Cool person in technology Gilad Berenstein believes more is possible with the web and that people should be able to plan dream vacations, fully booked with interesting activities, more easily.  That’s why this cool person founded his company Utrip, which uses artificial intelligence to help people plan trips and vacations they are more likely to enjoy.  Read more »

Gamification is becoming a major trend in the worlds of technology and retail.  Gaining points and rewards for your purchases is now a standard practice for many large chain stores or shopping websites in every retail category.  However, most of the time the goal of earning points simply leads to future discounts on more merchandise from the same store.  While customers might appreciate those discounts, cool person in technology Daniel Todd believes that it would be even better if customers could get rewards from shopping that would not be easily attainable otherwise.  Todd’s company Affinity offers retail companies a system where their customers don’t just receive discounts or merchandise from the same store they are already shopping at, but instead receive exclusive and unique rewards donated by celebrities. Under Todd’s system, people can shop at retail locations affiliated with Affinity and earn points for each purchase at each of those stores.  People can then use those points to get special and unique prizes from their favorite celebrities on the Affinity platform.  Users can access Affinity’s shop through the company’s web platform on their computers or mobile devices.  Any users experiencing difficulty while trying to access Todd’s rewards platform should contact a network services provider for help with their connection. Read more »

Making plans and trying to account for and include all of one’s friends is not always a simple task.  Keeping track of one’s own plans is difficult enough in many cases.  Trying to keep track of every friend’s long-term plans as well is pretty much impossible.  Enter cool person in technology Karl Jacob and his new product Hangtime.  Hangtime is a smartphone app that aggregates local events of all types and allows its users to indicate what events they are definitely going to be at and what ones they are potentially interested in attending.  Once a user and all his or her friends are on Hangtime, making plans with other people becomes far simpler.  For example, if a user sees that there is a concert they want to see in their area, that user simply taps to indicate that they are going.  The app notifies any friends also going or interested in the event so that they can contact the user if they want to make plans to attend together.  Anyone who has trouble downloading Jacob’s program from the App Store should contact iPhone tech support for help.  Read more »

Many people have ideas for inventions that they don’t have the time or resources to pursue on their own.  It takes a significant amount of money, free time and access to specific tools and materials in order to bring an invention from pure concept to physical reality.  Cool person in technology Ben Kaufman founded Quirky to help people without the extra time and resources to turn their invention ideas into reality.  Kaufman’s website lets people share their ideas, concepts, and even fully formed plans for new inventions as well as upgrades to items that already exist. These ideas can be for any type of invention, whether it’s a new computer repair tool, kitchen appliance or smartphone accessory.  Kaufman also helps to turn the ideas with the most traction on his website into actual products that make money for their creators. Read more »