Cool Product of the Day

When most people talk about how difficult the hiring process is, they’re talking about the jobseeker’s half of the equation.  While it’s certainly true that job hunting is no easy task, many people don’t consider the difficulties that companies have when looking for the best candidates.  Combing through different sources to find strong applicants is difficult enough for many HR departments.  The process gets even harder when optimizing the applicant selection and interview process to identify the absolute best candidates.  Greenhouse is a cool product that offers a technological solution to the hiring process.  Greenhouse provides a connected set of tools that streamline the applicant screening and selection process. The product aims to help HR departments struggle less with their hiring decisions.  Businesses that use Greenhouse can keep application sourcing, interview strategies, and candidate review all in one centralized location.  Greenhouse aims to improve the hiring process by reducing wasted time and energy.  To accomplish this task, it keeps every step of the application process together in one piece of software while looking to focus and optimize each task for HR teams.  Companies that have robust business IT support will have a much easier time integrating Greenhouse into their current systems. Read more »

Thanks to sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, many small businesses have made their first products with the help of crowdfunding.  However, due to these popular crowdfunding sites’ openness to the public, those who fund a business’s project cannot get equity from their investment.  Backers can only receive rewards such as products or free services for their contributions.  This practice often discourages backers from offering larger amounts of money to startups since their contribution is more akin to a gift than an investment.  Cool product RockThePost changes the crowdfunding model by applying it to a group of accredited investors rather than the public at large.  On RockThePost, startups that are looking for funding and seed capital can post company profiles and short pitch videos.  RockThePost’s community of investors can then browse through different startup pitches and make funding offers through the website.  This also allows a startup to pitch their company to multiple investors at once conveniently.  This process saves the business important resources in its early stages. The money and time a company saves from finding investors and developing individualized pitches can go into other needs such as office IT support and product development.  Read more »

The more employees a company has, the harder it is to keep track of the details of a business.  Many bosses can attest to how important facts or issues don’t make it up the grapevine to them because they get lost somewhere between a regular employee and a company’s owner.  It’s often not even a middle manager’s direct fault, but a series of miscommunications.  15Five is a cool product that looks to minimize these problems in an organization.  15Five essentially acts as a communication tool in the workplace that coordinates designated time for CEOs and owners to learn what’s happening in different departments.  15Five claims they have an effective system that increases the communication up and down a company’s chain of command based on a simple idea.  15Five works off the concept that If every manager can take fifteen minutes a week to report exactly what’s happening in their department and a business owner can take five minutes to read each report, communication and productivity will improve in a company.  15Five’s software lets managers report their bosses and presents those reports in an organized format for the company head.  Businesses that utilize 15Five will want to have strong office computer support service in case certain managers struggle to adjust to the program. Read more »

Small companies that require design work but don’t have a graphic artist on staff often struggle to come up with funds to get projects completed by a professional.  Cool product DesignCrowd wants to change that situation for small businesses by using the Internet to help them crowdsource designs for many different types of projects.  With DesignCrowd, companies post projects they need completed with a brief description of the reason for the job and what type of design they are looking to use.  DesignCrowd’s community of graphic artists can then make different designs based on a company’s brief.  The situation turns into a contest of sorts, where different designers post ideas and concepts for a company and eventually the user chooses a winning design.  Companies pay an initial fee to DesignCrowd to post their projects on the site.  DesignCrowd itself pays out money to artists for each winning design.  This system potentially gives companies an affordable option that lets them choose from many different designs when they need work done.  Any company who has trouble posting projects on DesignCrowd will need computer tech support for assistance. Read more »

For many professional careers, including ones in the IT support industry, professional certification and additional training are becoming a requirement to get ahead.  Unfortunately, many working adults cannot find time in their schedules to dedicate to training and additional education, especially if they’re taking care of family as well as working full time.  Cool technology product Simplilearn is utilizing the Internet’s flexibility to offer working professionals training and certification options that they can actually fit into their schedule.  Simplilearn offers users a wide range of courses in multiple fields that adults can take both online and in classroom settings.  They even offer courses that use a combination of the two methods to attempt to fit the needs of as many adults as possible.  Simplilearn also offers a slew of online practice tests for users so they can prepare accordingly for their certifications.  Each Simplilearn course comes coupled with a set of online resources specific to that certain class.  These resources often include online forums for students to interact in and ask questions before their certification exam.  Read more »

A slew of startups have popped up over the past few years that offer technology-based solutions for large events and professional conferences.  BusyEvent, one such startup based out of St. Louis, is trying to set itself apart with a cool product that leverages mobile technology for event organizers.  While many other companies design individual apps for events, costing an event’s host significant amounts of time and money, BusyEvent offers a way for event organizers to create their own mobile apps.  BusyEvent produces, in their own words, an “app that builds apps” for event organizers and marketers.  BusyEvent claims that their mobile application allows their customers to create event-specific apps “in five minutes”.  Organizers can then personalize their event’s app with different styles, themes, layouts and of course, content.  Users can view and edit the apps they make with BusyEvent through the web, on Android or on iPhone.  Anyone who needs help navigating or working through BusyEvent’s features can get help from a mobile tech support provider. Read more »

PowerPoint presentations, while useful for businesses and professional conferences, aren’t always ideal for educational situations. More often than not, students simply do not find themselves engaged while staring at static lists and bullet points.  Cool product bContext aims to help with this issue with their iPad app.  The application allows teachers to upload static file types such as PDFs and PowerPoint presentations and then transform those documents into interactive presentations.  When a user uploads a document onto their iPad to use it in the bContext app, the app lets teachers mark up the document with their own handwriting.  Rather than requiring expensive projector equipment or smart pen technology, bContext offers teachers a cheap solution for interacting with their presentations through markup and added notes.  Teachers can make notes on their PowerPoint presentation or PDF files as they discuss them in class, creating a more dynamic experience that teachers can use to get students interested.  Teachers who have problems transferring their documents to their tablet will need iPad support to get the app to work properly. Read more »

Job-hunting in the current professional world isn’t as simple as sending out a round of resumes and waiting for a call.  Looking for work requires the ability to navigate and keep track of countless job boards on the Internet, keep a calendar of interviews in order, and maintain multiple versions of your resume available for companies with different cultures and hiring processes.  CareerShift is a cool product that came into being to help jobseekers deal with how complex the process has become.  CareerShift presents users with a set of online tools that help them keep track of their job search campaign.  The service aims to be comprehensive rather than focus in on a single aspect of job seeking.  It offers multiple tools and features for users to organize and store their job documents like cover letters and resumes on the web, keep track of the companies a user gets in touch with, and to distribute the resumes and applications a user has put together.  Users who have trouble sifting through CareerShift’s large feature set may want online tech support to help them through the process. Read more »

Rewarding loyal customers for their continued business and even more importantly, turning regular customers into repeat customers are two essential aspects of the restaurant business.  Venga is a cool product that currently offers restaurants and cafes solutions for these problems through technological means.  Venga is a software suite for restaurant management that aims to engage customers, increase loyalty and give restaurants the tools to improve the experience of their patrons in different ways.  Read more »

Bands and musical artists have used photos from concerts as promotional items for years.  However, getting good pictorial content from gigs can cost a lot of money and require a lot of resources for artists, especially if a major label doesn’t back them.  Bands need a paid photographer to get the content and need to put up on their website or across social media.  Cool product Vivogig wants to take the effort out of this process by allowing bands an easy way to use their fans best photos for promotional and marketing content.  Fans download the Vivogig app to their phone and upload their gig photos to a band’s profile, where other users can vote on and rate their photographs.  This system creates competition between fans to upload the best photos and get their content featured on the app.  Competition like this ensures that Vivogig only features the best quality fan photos on a band’s profile page.  Fans who use the app but have trouble with their phone’s camera may need smartphone computer repair to fix the issue. Read more »