Computer Support Blog

Early each year, the tech world gets turned upside down by corporate shake-ups.  It seems that most businesses in the tech sector wait for the early statistics to come in about the fourth quarter before they change their corporate leaders.  One of the signs of a strong, stable business is that the business will not change many (or any) of its executives.  In 2012, Google made only one addition to its Board of Directors and it was Diane B. Greene who joined the Board! Read more »

Big business transactions happen every day in the tech sector.  As more and more technology companies buy out their competition or diversify to stay relevant in a changing marketplace, it is sometimes tough to understand what specific transactions might actually mean.  Lately, there has been a lot of speculation that Google will pay $12.5 billion to buy Motorola Mobility.  This transaction has created a lot of buzz in both the tech sector and the business world.  There are several factors that make Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility an atypical buyout. Read more »

If you are not hip to all of the latest trends in the tech sector, there are some exciting new technologies and services of which you should be aware.  While technology is changing rapidly, there are some new trends that appear to be here to stay and that you may well want to utilize.  One of the big emerging markets is Cloud storage.  Cloud storage is like a storage locker or a safe deposit box for your files; you transfer your files and documents to a special site on the Internet and they are, theoretically, protected and are available to you from any computer device you use.  The latest major Cloud storage service is Google Drive. Read more »

What is one of the few online services that Google does not yet have? That may be a difficult question with the dozens of products and services Google offers, but the answer is a cloud drive. There are already ways to store information on some Google services, but comprehensive Google cloud storage may be available soon.

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We all hate Spam. Not the processed meat in a can, the email messages that we did not want to receive. Whether they appear as advertisements for products we do not want or emails for services we have no interest in, everyone has received spam at some point. Sometimes, though, spam emails can be far more dangerous than annoying ads – they can contain phishing links that appear to come from a legitimate source.

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In the wake of the Justice Department’s closure of the file-sharing and data backup website MegaUpload, most similar sites began reducing or shutting down their downloading features. The owners of these sites are concerned that they will face the same criminal charges as MegaUpload’s founders are, so they are playing it safe.

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Google Plus has finally opened its virtual doors to the teenagers. Anyone ages 13 and up can now create a Google+ account, although for teenagers, Google has added more safety precautions. It was not that Google did not want teenagers to be able to use the site previously – there was no “mature content” – but simply that Google wanted to get things ironed out and ready before letting in the teens.

Since teenagers and young adults are the more avid social networking users, and the most avid Internet users, it makes sense for Google to allow teenagers to join its social networking site. According to Bradley Horowitz, the Vice President of Google, “We want to help teens build meaningful connections online. We also want to provide features that foster safety alongside self-expression.”

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Facebook versus Google Plus – which side are you on? It is the battle for the future of social networking and the outcome will decide the direction the Internet takes in the coming years. Google+ is still a relatively new social networking site, having only been launched last year, but it shows promise.

Some of the most basic features of Google+ were applauded by the public when first introduced. Facebook did its best to integrate similar features within its own site, but the features on Google+ are far more seamlessly incorporated. These features include the circles, hangouts, and making Google+ part of all other Google websites.

Google+ allows you to easily group your friends the way we do in real life with the circles feature. The best thing about this feature is that no one else knows in which group you have put him or her. The hangouts are the video chat feature for Google+ and this feature allows people to chat with everyone in one of their circles all at the same time.

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Brilliant ideas often need to come at the right time in order for it to be recognized.  Occasionally, there is an invention in the tech sector that fails simply because the marketplace was not ready for it or the supporting technologies did not exist to make it a success.  But the success of online digital photo editor Picnik is the result of a good idea hitting the marketplace at precisely the right time.  Much of the credit for Picnik’s success, then, comes from co-founder Mike Harrington.

At one point in his career, Mike Harrington was best known for the immensely popular video game Half-Life.  Harrington was the lead programmer for Half-Life and he was a co-founder of Valve, the software company that produced Half-Life.  Prior to starting Valve with Gabe Newell, Harrington was a software developer for Microsoft.  His work in the tech sector began in 1985 when he went to work for Dynamix as a programmer.  Following the success of Half-Life, Harrington took a sabbatical and traveled with his wife.

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As companies rise and fall in Silicon Valley, it is no surprise that the big tech companies frequently see employees migrate from one popular company to the next big thing.  While some of the big tech companies actively poach employees from their competitors, other tech companies seem to just attract a lot of employees from the companies with greater name recognition.  In the case of StumbleUpon, the comparatively small Internet company has a surprisingly high number of employees formerly employed at Google.  One of the most significant ex-Google workers who is now vital to StumbleUpon is Japjit Tulsi.

Japjit Tulsi made a lateral move in 2011 when he became StumbleUpon’s Vice President of Engineering from being Google’s Director of Engineering.  While at Google, Tulsi was responsible for creating Google Analytics, which is one of the standard-bearers of online traffic analysis.  That level of programming genius made him very attractive to StumbleUpon.  Prior to Google, Japjit Tulsi was a part of Microsoft’s executive development program.  At Microsoft, Tulsi served as a group manager in the engineering department.  Prior to Microsoft, Tulsi studied at Punjab University where he abandoned a law career in favor of the tech sector.

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