Computer Support Blog

With music services so fragmented, listeners often have to inconveniently sort through many options when they want to share music with others.  If you want to share a song or album with someone, do you use Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, or link them to YouTube?  It becomes even more difficult if you don’t know exactly what services your friends use.  Cool product Herd.fm aims to solve that problem with its mobile app.  Herd.fm keeps a database of songs, of which you can add to at any time through your phone’s music library, and lets you send them to your friends through social networking in a streamlined fashion that eliminates worries about different services.  Herd.fm lets users share their music with one unified system that lets them message their friends directly through text message or through services like Facebook. Recipients receive immediate access to the music via streaming and can even receive “mini-mixes” of multiple songs if the sender so chooses.  If you have trouble receiving text messages, find a phone tech support service to help you. Read more »

Privacy is becoming a more and more frequently discussed topic these days.  This is likely because online services like Facebook and Google continue to collect large amounts of data on their users.  Some users do not seem to mind trading a bit of their privacy for free online services. Others have been less than enthusiastic about the way users seem to be paying these companies with their personal data instead of cash for their services.  Brian Kennish, cofounder of Disconnect, is most certainly in the latter camp.

Brian Kennish formerly worked at Google as a software developer.  However, in 2010, Kennish left Google due to increasing dissatisfaction with their mass data collection and the secrecy around how that data is used.  That is part of the reason Kennish developed Disconnect, a browser extension that blocks third-party sites from tracking you when you use the web.  Disconnect is available to download for four different browsers—Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari.  If you have trouble installing Disconnect, you can always ask computer support for assistance.  Read more »

Information is everywhere with the Internet these days, but what if you don’t want to be exposed to some of that information while you’re online?  It may seem like an odd problem, but this issue has affected many people.  The most prominent example is encountering TV show or sports “spoilers” when people post a plot element or game outcome in your social media stream before you get a chance to see for yourself.  Zack Shapiro has created a Google Chrome browser plugin that attempts to solve this problem.  Named Silencer, Shapiro’s software actually blocks social media posts on websites like Twitter and Facebook that contain words or phrases that users want to filter out of their stream.  For example, if you recorded the World Series game on your DVR because you missed it while at work but still wanted to go online without learning the outcome, you could block phrases like “World Series” or the names of the teams on your Facebook and Twitter feeds.  This tool could possibly prove useful if one wanted to use social media without fear of ruining the outcome of a game or TV show. Read more »

Both on-demand music streaming and Internet radio services seem to be taking the music industry by storm.  Many streaming service options have flooded the market, including Spotify, Rdio, and Rhapsody, among others.  However, these services don’t do much to distinguish themselves.  They all tend to offer mostly major-label music, and they split their services into a limited free option that includes many advertisements and a paid option that limits the devices on which you can stream your music.  Joey Flores, CEO of Earbits, believes in a different model for Internet music streaming.  Earbits.com offers both Internet radio and on-demand music streaming free of cost but focuses on new and independent artists as opposed to the usual major-label music you find elsewhere. Read more »

Managing a company in the tech sector can be extraordinarily difficult, even for a seasoned businessperson.  Given how many tech sector geniuses peak early with their industry-changing ideas, many CEOs in the tech sector rely upon the expertise of more established leaders in business.  Facebook, for example, was a great idea that did not begin to rise to its financial potential until Mark Zuckerberg hired Sheryl Sandberg.  But Sandberg is not the only financial expert using her talents in the tech sector.  Mark Rubash, for example, is an impressive voice for Heartflow, Inc. Read more »

The notion that each person wears many different masks in the course of their lifetime and in different groups, is a very old idea.  How you interact with other people and what you choose to show one group of person in your life changes based on very old social mandates and ideas.  With the rise of the Internet and the subsequent explosion of social networking sites, you put quite a bit of information about yourself online every year.  Unfortunately, all of that information may create a much jumbled view of who you are and may be mixed in with information about other people who happen to share the same name as you.  Now there is a new site that has the sole goal of helping you create a single, focused, online profile that collects all of your disparate elements in one place.  That site is Vizify and it is very cool. Read more »

Even though Facebook continues to grow and dominate the social network market, the Internet giant has had a pretty rough first half of the year.  The Facebook stock offering was fumbled and the value of the company remains below where it was when the IPO occurred.  Even before Facebook went public, one of the nagging concerns to both the corporate executives and potential investors was how Facebook was monetizing on mobile platforms.  No company, Facebook included, has yet produced a reliable, consistent, and strong revenue stream from advertisements launched on smartphones and tablet computers.  However, Facebook may be prepared to change that, which is making Facebook users wary. Read more »

So far, 2012 has been a particularly brutal year for patent fights within the tech sector.  It is almost as if every software giant and major manufacturer of electronic devices, tiring of having to produce new products, equipment, and programs, collectively decided that they were just going to try to sue their way to continued financial growth!  All of the major tech companies – Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. – have been going to court the last few months to menace one another with lawsuits over violations to patent laws with huge dollar figures attached to the motions.  Apple Computers, seeing the Samsung Galaxy Nexus as a genuine threat to its iPad, sued Samsung and won an injunction to have the device (temporarily) removed from Google Play.  This was a significant move as Google is counting on the Galaxy Nexus, which utilizes the Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, to boost end-of-Quarter sales.  While many of the fights over patents have been convoluted, mean, and ultimately unprofitable, two companies have decided to suspend hostilities over patents.  Yahoo! and Facebook announced late last Friday that they have declared peace on the patent front. Read more »

Every year, Time Magazine does a “Man Of The Year” spotlight feature in December.  While the feature article has morphed into “Person Of The Year,” “Woman Of The Year,” and “People Of The Year” over the decades and individual issues, the criteria for the newsworthy person to nab the prestigious cover article has remain unchanged.  The Time “Man” Of The Year is the person who received the most news coverage in a given year, which is why both beloved U.S. Presidents and despised world leaders have frequently made the Man Of The Year list multiple times (Joseph Stalin, for example, was a Time Man Of The Year twice and FDR received the honor three times).  If a similar principle were to be applied to the stock market, it is hard to imagine a Stock Of The Year for 2012 other than Facebook. Read more »

No company, within the tech sector or outside it, is able to handle rapid growth without having an incredible staff in place or hiring individuals who fast become a team that achieves amazing results.  Neither the assembly of a great staff over time or its rapid development happens as an accident; it is the result of great human resources management.  Choosing personnel who will be successful and might make your company successful is a skill that is mastered by individuals who understand people, understand the specific workplace for which they are hiring, and have incredible instincts.  Michelle Lo has a great track record in staffing tech companies for exactly those reasons. Read more »