Cool Person of the Day

Retail chains with franchised stores often struggle to keep a consistent experience across all of their locations.  While a store in one city may have excellent staff who keep up with many issues, another may have rude staff or have problems with tracking inventory.  Corporations spend millions of dollars each year at trying to get all of their different stores to give customers as similar experiences as possible.  Still, it’s impossible for companies to fix problems when they are unaware of them.  Cool person in technology Bob Bahramipour wants to make sure that retail chains never miss issues in their retail stores again with his company GigWalk.  Read more »

Using crowdsourcing to answer questions has been a staple of the web for a very long time. Just look at the prevalence of crowdsourced encyclopedia Wikipedia over the years.  Other companies have recently turned the crowdsourcing model to professional services as well.  Sites like 99Designs have made the model applicable to freelance graphic design work and become very successful.  Now, a cool person in technology named Josef Dunne has founded a company named BabelVerse that takes the crowdsourcing model and applies it to another service—professional translations.  Read more »

When someone buys or rents a home, one of the most personal and gratifying aspects of the process is designing the interior of the house or apartment.  Everyone imagines things in their own personal style and wants to make their home their own.  Of course, interior design is not always practical or easy, which is why professionals exist to help people when deciding how their home should look.  However, hiring an interior designer for personal purposes is prohibitively expensive for most people.  Read more »

Having to live far away from loved ones at any given time, whether it’s someone’s parents, siblings, or significant other, can be very hard to handle on a personal level.  The Internet has made the struggle much easier to cope with thanks to all the communication tools it provides.  Video calls, instant messages, and social networks all provide communication with loved ones when they are far away.  However, one of the original forms of Internet communication remains one of the most popular for long-distance communication—email.  Now, a cool person in technology wants to turn all the email conversations people have with their loved ones into meaningful mementos. Read more »

While many creative professionals have benefitted immensely from cloud-based services, product designers and concept artists who render their work in 3D have been stuck using the same complicated and expensive software that would require extensive tech support for any non-professional to use.  Products like Google Docs and Adobe’s Cloud Suite have allowed writers and designers, respectively, to do all their work without even needing a native program at times.  While dedicated programs like Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop are more robust and provide more overall options, many writers and designers take advantage of cloud alternatives every year.  Creative workers who use software that requires more computing power, such as product designers who create 3D rendering of prototypes, have had to deal without such convenient alternatives.  However, that does not appear to be the case any longer.  Cool person in technology Thiago Costa founded his company to provide photo-realistic 3D rendering in the cloud.  Finally, product designers and 3D artists can experience the same conveniences enjoyed by other creative professionals. Read more »

Outplacement for employees after layoffs is never easy for anyone.  It means a period of frustrating uncertainty for the unlucky worker and potential public relations or legal problems for an employer if handled poorly.  The difficulty surrounding the state of the U.S. job market only exacerbates this situation.  Whether someone works in the office computer repair, healthcare, sales or anything else, the difficulty of finding new jobs can seem insurmountable.  Fortunately, cool person in technology Sanjay Sathe doesn’t believe that it has to be that way and he has created a product that helps both companies performing layoffs and laid-off employees during the outplacement process. Read more »

In many editorials, news articles, and other media, writers cast the Internet as a well of knowledge for people in the modern age.  However, many people’s experiences with the web have been anything but informative or educational.  The Internet is currently a place primarily full of media consumption sites such as Netflix and Hulu, social networks focused on self-promotion and communication such as Facebook and Twitter, and ecommerce sites where people can buy whatever their heart desires and have it conveniently shipped to them.  There are cool people in technology still making companies and websites to make the Internet a destination for knowledge and education.  One of these cool people is Justin Kitch, the founder and CEO of Curious.com. Read more »

Dealing taxes and tax law compliance is a nightmare and a headache for small businesses everywhere.  Every state and county has different sales tax regulations.  It can become even more complicated when one starts to consider issues such as tax-exempt customers.  Just as companies hire business IT support services to help with complicated computer issues, they also have to hire special consultants to deal with sales tax compliance quite often.  Cool person in technology Scott McFarlane believes that there is a better way to handle sales tax compliance when running a small business.  He founded Avalara to help companies who sell products nationally to handle tax issues without headaches or unnecessary difficulties. Read more »

Repair costs and quality for any type of machinery can be seriously nerve-racking.  Whether it’s computer repair, appliance repair or anything else, there is a general fear among consumers that repairs will cost too much or not last for very long once complete.

Cool person in technology Art Shaw knows this issue is especially prominent when it comes to automobile repair.  Shaw founded RepairPal to aid consumers in finding good quality car repair for fair prices.  Shaw’s company provides people with an online directory of mechanics, all with grades on quality from both RepairPal and previous customers.  Shaw wants people to use RepairPal to become more educated on care repair shops and avoid an unfortunate situation where a bad shop rips a customer off with poor work on their automobile.  In theory, by using RepairPal consumers will be able determine which shops produce excellent repair work. Read more »

Every salesperson knows that repeat business is invaluable when it comes to long-term revenue gains.  Creating a strong customer base with people who consistently come back to the same company for what they need forms a foundation that allows businesses to grow.  Whether the business is a restaurant, office computer repair company, plumbing service or retail shop, this principle remains the same.  Creating repeat customers is one of the most profitable things a salesperson can do for his product and company.  Cool person in technology Kevin Dykes believes he can help online businesses increase their customer retention rates with his new service RetentionGrid. Read more »