Computer Support Blog

Whether the standard options at a specialty store or a large retailer, online, or a professional designer and printer, or even by hand at home, there is no shortage of options when choosing the perfect invitation or card.  There are few ways for those who are not professionals to add a truly personal touch or get the perfect design, however.  PurpleTrail offers a solution to this problem, combining users’ ability to display their unique style and an extremely high standard of quality with speed and efficiency for a low cost.  It provides a unique collection of designs for any imaginable event, and the key is in a users’ complete customization of these designs, which they can personalize in every way to fit their style and theme. Read more »

Many companies use written materials, brochures, slide shows and visual presentations to promote themselves, their products and their services.  However, these methods of delivering promotional content are not always engaging to the target audience.  Static displays such as brochures and even semi-dynamic presentations such as slideshows keep viewers in a passive role and do not encourage them to engage the material.  Cool product in the technology Readz provides companies with the tools and resources to create interactive promotional content instead of static marketing material.  Read more »

Designing and prototyping software and websites is such a tedious and difficult process partially because the two acts require such different skillsets.  Designers are necessary to find the best interface for a positive user experience, but they do not have the coding skills professional programmers have that are necessary to turn a design into a working prototype ready for demonstration. The Marvel app is a cool product in technology that lets teams avoid part of this lengthy process.  The Marvel app helps people quickly create prototypes for new designs without having to code at all.  Instead, the Marvel app has users use the images of the designs themselves to formulate clickable and interactive prototypes to present to clients, investors, or anyone else they want to see their concept in action.  Read more »

New websites evolve through many changes early on in their life cycles.  However, sometimes developers and designers make these changes based only off of gut feelings or from incomplete data.  Idea Informer is a cool product that wants to help website owners make purposeful changes every time they edit or change their sites.  This cool product accomplishes this by giving website visitors a direct line of communication to the owner on the site, allowing users to give specific feedback.  Through Idea Informer, website owners receive a constant flow of comments from users about their projects’ design and functionality.  Designers and developers can then consider the accumulated feedback when altering and updating the site.  Website owners definitely do not want users to have to call for computer support just to navigate their sites.  Idea Informer lets developers and designers find issues and fix them quickly so websites are as cleanly designed and easy to use as possible.  Read more »

It may sound like a small issue, but in truth, the font used for the typeface a company chooses for their website is actually quite important.  Any visitors to a business’s website spend more time reading the content on the site than doing anything else there.  The typeface on a website can make a company seem professional, edgy, bland, cheesy, or intelligent. Any web designer knows how important making the right choice can be to the visual presence of a company.

Fontdeck is a cool product that provides a large variety of fonts that users can integrate into their websites.  On the Fontdeck website, the company keeps a marketplace of different typefaces available for companies to use on their own sites.  Fontdeck has hundreds of professionally styled fonts available at any given time for companies to purchase.  The company prices their fonts individually for any users that wish to use them.  Fontdeck also tries to make it as easy as possible for companies to integrate any purchased typefaces into their websites.  Users only have to input some lines of code in order to render the font they want on the web.  Any companies without the proper technical staff or business IT support will still need help integrating any Fontdeck fonts. Read more »

Infographics have become a very popular medium on social media and on Internet news sites.   Juxtaposing striking images and informative text has proven to be an engaging and effective way of informing the public or promoting an advertising campaign.  However, it takes a lot of skill and research to be able to pump out a quality infographics, and not everyone who needs them has the time to create them.  That’s why cool product Visually exists on the web.  Visually acts as an online marketplace where anyone can commission visual content for an advertising push, awareness campaign, or any other purpose.  Visually has a network of content creation professionals that the site taps into whenever it receives a request for a new piece of visual content.  Visually charges a flat rate for individuals and businesses that use its marketplace.  This pricing plan is in place to avoid disagreements or price fluctuations or changing process as can sometimes happen with design projects.  Visually wants buyers’ experiences to be consistent.  Any interested users who have trouble operating or accessing the Visually website should seek help from an online computer support provider. Read more »

For many years, independent business owners had to spend time learning how to use design tools such as Photoshop if they wanted to create their own business card or letterhead.  With modern mobile technology however, cool people like Ellen Johnston have made it much easier to create a design for a small business that is truly someone’s own.  Johnston founded a company called Makr that creates an iPad app, which provides small business owners with a simple design suite that lets them customize their own paper materials such as business cards, labels, letterhead or anything else.  Johnston works to ensure that the Makr design tools on the iPad app strike a good balance between being simple to use and capable of total customization.  She wants independent crafters and business owners to have no problem creating designs they can claim for themselves regardless of technical knowledge needed for programs like Photoshop.  According to Johnston, no one should ever have to call iPad tech support just to navigate the Makr app and start designing. Read more »

Most professionals have to create presentations for co-workers, bosses, or conference-goers at some point in their career.  For many people however, these presentations are few and far between, but that doesn’t make them any less important.  Professionals that don’t get a lot of experience with creating presentation aides such as slideshows often commit design faux pas in their presentation and weaken it.  Deck is a cool product in the tech industry that looks to make it easy for even completely inexperienced individuals to create visually appealing presentations that can help captivate an audience.  Deck makes it possible to create presentations with little experience with the help of their web-based tools.  Deck’s online toolset presents itself to users as an outline of sorts.  Users fill in each line of the outline, just as if they were taking notes on the paper or subject material on which they’re presenting.  People can also attach images to any part of the outline if they want to include pictures with their presentation.  Once an outline is complete, users select a theme from a list of options and Deck creates an animated presentation automatically.  Since Deck is a web-based tool and not a piece of software, any users who have trouble accessing it will need network support to troubleshoot the problem with their Internet connection. 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 »

Large and medium-sized design teams have to communicate with each other constantly and this leads to enormous amounts of e-mail with design mock-ups and feedback attached.  Sorting through all of this e-mail can potentially be a Herculean task that takes significant amount of time from actual design work.  The problem only compounds itself when you consider that teams often also solicit feedback from investors and developers as well as other team members.  InVision is a cool product that looks to erase this time-sink and help design teams improve their productivity.  InVision provides users with a single environment based in the cloud that connects all the members of a design team.  Teams connected to InVision can upload mock-ups and design documents to the cloud and share them with either the entire team or specific members of it.  The rest of the team can then comment on a document and leave public feedback from which everyone can potentially benefit.  Along with cloud computer support service, this is one of the many applications that advances in cloud computing can provide workplaces.  Read more »