Computer Support Blog

Stock photos are an easy and free means of finding an appropriate photo online to attach to a blog, Facebook post, or webpage, among a wide range of uses.   Unfortunately, these stock photos are easy to identify as such, very obviously staged, and may only vaguely convey what you are communicating.  Twenty20 is a startup that looks to change this through crowdsourcing.  It offers what its creators call “the world’s largest crowdsourced image catalog.” Along with solving the stock image issue for users, it provides an opportunity for anyone to upload photos and potentially make money on them.  It provides the added benefit that the photos people can find on the Twenty20 website are much more creative and interesting than the ones typically found on similar websites or through a random image search. People who are seeking photos that they can legally add to their blogs can get a subscription at Twenty20 to purchase some at a lower cost than hiring a photographer, while photographers can display their smartphone photos to big brands and marketing agencies. Read more »

Shipping costs can be problematic for many individuals and small businesses. Transporting very large items can even be cost prohibitive in some cases.  However, cool person in technology Everett Steele has founded Kanga in order to make delivering items less costly.  To accomplish this task, Steele has started using a model that has seen great success in other areas of the tech industry—crowdsourcing.  Companies like AirBnB and Uber have shown that having customers provide services to each other can actually be a viable business model if a company facilitates the exchange properly.  Kanga uses crowdsourcing by allowing people to request delivery services from anyone who has access to the proper transportation.  Once users find others able and willing to transport what they need moved, they can book the drivers to make deliveries through Kanga. Drivers on Kanga can charge less than large shipping companies, making the process far easier on people’s wallets.  Steele’s company takes a small cut of each payment for making each delivery possible.  Anyone who has technical difficulty while trying to schedule deliveries through Kanga should contact a computer support service for immediate assistance. 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 »

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 »

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 »

When one considers Facebook’s origins as a college-exclusive social network, one could say that the college environment is the birthplace of modern social networking and digital life.  Facebook leveraged college’s social scene to make mass communication easier.  What if an entrepreneur leveraged the social nature of college to help students with the real purpose of universities—education?  Entrepreneur and cool person in tech Jack Tai founded OneClass to attempt exactly that.  OneClass is an online resource for post-secondary school students that crowdsources study materials and class notes to form a large database of helpful tools for students.  OneClass sources course notes on a wide variety of subjects from students across North America.  It also stores organized study packets and video tutorials for many of those subjects.  OneClass focuses on offering study material provided by other students rather than formal textbook-style material provided by teachers or institutions.  In theory, this makes a lot of sense, as students would likely understand other students’ way of explaining things.  Anyone who has trouble accessing the notes or videos on OneClass should find remote tech support for help with a solution. Read more »