Computer Support Blog

Eating healthy on a budget seems to be much more difficult than it should be.  While some whole foods stores and markets have the healthy items we want, they can be a great deal more expensive than the lower quality foods found at any supermarket.  Conversely, the typical supermarket has lower prices, but it does not have much of a selection of the healthier kinds of foods many people want.   Wholeshare is a solution to this dilemma, serving as what its creators call an online marketplace for local and sustainable food.  It helps those who find that reaching the balance between quality and price is a challenge to achieve, offering higher quality foods cheaply.  Wholeshare makes it possible to bring food that is both healthy and affordable to individuals and their local communities. Read more »

Oftentimes the most useful aspect of technology on the Internet is the ability to combine many features in a way that we could never have done before.  Menuism is an app that does exactly that for food, combining menus, reviews, journals, and social networking in one place.  In fact, its creators have dubbed it the “social network for people who like to eat.”  They advertise Menuism as a place where you can share both where to eat and what to order.  After eating out, you can rate and review the restaurant and the dish you ate as well as sharing pictures, and the key is being able to not only review where you ate but exactly what you ate to give a broader picture than most review sites allow. Read more »

There is an abundance of apps that help people search online through the huge number of cafes, diners, and every other imaginable type of eatery. What these apps do not typically address, or most often address poorly or incompletely, is how to find a restaurant that can cater to an individual’s particular dietary concerns. These can be allergies, religious or conscientious restrictions, or limitations for health reasons. The daily challenge of finding eating options for someone with a food restriction can be a difficult one. Enter Eatfindr, which is improving upon existing technology to help people find precise and helpful reviews with criteria specific to food sensitivities. Read more »

No one likes going to restaurant and having to wait to sit down at a table.  It’s even worse when disorganization or inefficiency makes the wait longer than it needs to be.  Cool product in technology NoWait is a service that uses smartphones to help restaurants seat people more efficiently and quickly.  By making the seating experience better for customers, NoWait is helping both the restaurant patrons and restaurant management.  Read more »

Over time, many people’s grocery shopping become repetitive, and they end up eating the same meals over and over again.  Some may want to expand their palettes but due to budgetary issues or a lack of ideas for new recipes, they remain stuck in the same pattern.  Cool product Kitchin wants to help these people find ways to change up their usual meals without forcing them to change their shopping habits.  Kitchin uses the groceries a person buys to search the web and find new and unique recipes that someone can use with those ingredients.  Users download the Kitchin app, take pictures of their grocery receipts with their smartphones and receive recipe suggestions directly through their phone.  Kitchin uses image recognition technology to recognize what food items are on someone’s receipt.  Kitchin then crosschecks those ingredients against a large database of potential recipes to find new possibilities for the app’s users.  Of course, any users who experience trouble using their mobile cameras should find a smartphone computer repair service before trying the Kitchin app. Read more »

Making meals for a large number of people is never easy or even viable for people without strong cooking skills.  Still, using catering services or take-out orders to feed guests at one’s home often seems impersonal and uninteresting.  Cool person Chris Muscarella founded his startup Kitchensurfing to provide people with a third option: bring a professional chef into your home to cook for you and your guests.  Kitchensurfing users can book professional chefs for one-night occasions where they will cook a dinner for your gathering using your kitchen.  Essentially, Muscarella lets people turn their houses into ad hoc restaurants for an evening by letting people hire chefs for their home the same way they would for a larger event at a fancier venue.  Chefs purchase all the food ahead of time when a user books their services and the grocery costs become part of the overall price to the customer.  Users can search for different chefs on Kitchensurfing by filtering for availability, cuisine type, and price range.  Once a user selects the chef they want, Muscarella’s website puts them in direct contact with that chef to work out the details.  Anyone who experiences problems with the website while trying to find a chef should contact tech support for help. Read more »

Many restaurants invest in large complicated websites, but many owners don’t realize that the time and money spent on these sites doesn’t always translate into value for their business.  For one, many of the complicated websites that restaurants make aren’t mobile ready, leading to problems for customers who access the site on their smartphones or tablets.  Another issue is that many establishments don’t realize that the vast majority of customers only visit their websites for a few key pieces of information. Simplicity is often more useful in a site’s design than complexity that inconveniences users.  Cool product in technology Cilantro aims to help restaurants by providing them a more effective web presence using one-page sites.  Cilantro lets companies design a simple site that provides all the necessary information for their potential customers, such as location, menu and hours, without the extra clutter that creates inconvenience for users.  Cilantro makes sure that all the designs that restaurants can create with their service will work well on tablets and smartphones as well.  Companies that experience trouble with their Cilantro sites on mobile devices should seek a mobile IT support specialist. Read more »

One of the most difficult aspects of trying to lose weight is keeping track of calorie intake.  In order to keep weight off once someone loses it, that person needs to know what foods may help and hurt them as they continue.  A general idea about what food is healthy doesn’t always cut it when trying to maintain a physique.  Cool person in technology Dr. Mark Boguski wants to help people maintain their weight with his company PhotoCalorie.  Boguski’s company gives users a mobile app and web platform to keep a digital journal that allows them to keep track of nutrition information for all the food they intake.  With PhotoCalorie, people can easily search for the nutrition information of the food they eat.  PhotoCalorie’s database contains specific nutrition facts about thousands of different foods.  Users maintain a journal of everything they eat and tag the nutrition information to each entry.  This process lets people find out what helps them lose weight and what hurts their efforts. Any users who experience unexpected problems signing up for PhotoCalorie can get help from a remote tech support provider. Read more »

Many social networking sites claim to connect people and bring them together, but these connections often exist only in the virtual world of the Internet.  Cool person in technology Kate Spivak believes that connections, whether professional or personal, are much stronger when made in the flesh.  That’s why this cool person founded BlendAbout, a new Internet startup that connects people of similar interests online and then also connects them in the real world.  Spivak’s company accomplishes this by matching up people with similar interests and placing them into group dinners designed for personal and professional networking.  BlendAbout meetings connect six people with similar interests according to their profiles and reserve a meal for them at a restaurant they can all travel to conveniently.  People can use these dinners to meet other people in their professional field or others who share their hobbies.  Rather than only posting comments back and forth in a forum or chat room on the web, Spivak’s startup aims to connect people in the physical world as well.  Read more »

Social networks like Pinterest have grown subcultures within themselves where users post and share craft projects and do-it-yourself scenarios.  There has proven to be great interest in social networking as a tool to help people create and not just entertain themselves or communicate.  Foodzai is one such social network that is joining this trend.  This cool product allows people to post, share, and review recipes.  While Pinterest has started to help people create crafts, Foodzai wants to harness similar energy to help people share and create different types of food.  Foodzai encourages users to create personal “cook” profiles and post recipes publicly on the site.  Each recipe contains detailed instructions, an ingredients list, and pictures of the final product.  Cooks can also post pictures of the process on their recipe pages, but that is an optional addition to each post.  Anyone who wants to join Foodzai, but has trouble creating an account can seek the appropriate help through a computer support company. Read more »