Computer Support Blog

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 »

With so many digital photography services online, it can be very hard for a new, emerging, or revamped service to effectively sell itself to its target demographic.  Digital photographers have a lot of choices these days, but with the rapidly changing nature of the Internet, recently several online photo editors and storage sites have been shut down, while new ones have sprouted up.  Making your online digital photo service seem fresh, new, and vital can be as much a marketing challenge as it is an issue of programming your service the right way.  For Shutterfly, the challenge of marketing the website and its many services falls to Katelyn Watson. Read more »

This year will see some exciting new sites and developments on the Internet and in the world of mobile computing.  As Microsoft prepares to return to the tablet computer market, Apple leaks rumors of its iPhone 5 and the giants of technology sue one another repeatedly over alleged patent violations, many exciting new start-ups are readying for public launch.  One of the applications that is generating a great deal of buzz already is Vizify, a service that will cull your social networking information to allow you to create an uber-profile that puts the best of you at the forefront of the Internet.  Vizify is nearing completion and taking it the last steps to launch is what Eli Tucker is entirely focused on these days! Read more »

Good ideas are only executed as viable business endeavors when the founder of a start-up assembles a team that can make that vision become a reality.  Recently, Vivian Rosenthal won a Next Generation Award for being one of the top five female leaders in the tech industry as honored by L’Oreal.  Rosenthal won her award for founding and managing GoldRun, a website that allows users to place images of real world people and objects into a digital setting based on GPS technology.  The ambitious project has allowed users and advertisers to interact in exciting new ways.  Rosenthal’s vision created GoldRun, but people like Tiffany Grace Ng built and maintain it! Read more »

Security is a concern in the tech sector that only continues to grow.  The growth of security services pertaining to computers, smartphones and mobile computing devices is not a reflection on the industry’s unwillingness to adapt; technology continues to change at such a fast rate and hackers continue to adapt as well, necessitating an almost-constant development of new security-related products and services.  While many computers have been protected by the most robust anti-viral software ever created, as hackers take on smartphones and mobile computing devices, many of the major software developers have been slow to react.  Instead, consumers are discovering the benefits of mobile computing protection software, like Reliaty55. Read more »

As more and more people get cooler and more expensive home electronics devices, it is hard not to feel insecure leaving home.  While the obvious solution would be to get a security system, the media portrays home security systems as drastically ineffective.  In fact, most people would be hard pressed not to be able to recall a time when they watched a movie or television program and a security system was compromised by cutting the wires from the cameras to the monitors.  One of the obvious, real-world, solutions to that problem is to assemble a security system that does not have wires that can be cut.  For that, you might want the Uniden Guardian Wireless Video Surveillance System. Read more »

At last week’s Google I/O conference, many new products were introduced, not all of them ready for the marketplace just yet.  Most of the products were very much to be expected from the search giant who now seems to have its hands in everything.  Google, through its Android operating system has become more associated with gadgets in recent years, instead of just being considered an Internet software/search pioneer.  As a result, the fact that the I/O conference was used to generate enthusiasm (and preorders) for new products like Google Glass and Nexus devices was predictable.  What was truly audacious was the way Google declared war on Amazon and the Apple iTunes store by unveiling a new shopping platform: Google Play Store. Read more »

In the course of a company’s stock, there is a natural movement; no goes constantly up.  It is perfectly natural for stock values to rise and fall based on any number of a multitude of factors.  Yet, within the last twenty years, there has been an unrealistic expectation that tech sector stocks will go homogenously upward, even though there is ample evidence to prove that the stock market, especially as it pertains to the tech sector, is far more volatile.  Perhaps no tech sector company offered stock with more expectations and more difficulty in recent memory than Facebook. Read more »

In the tech sector, there does not appear to be any belief in the adage, “Can’t we all just get along.”  Competition is fierce and the biggest players in the tech sector are fighting one another over every niche.  Two of the biggest companies, Apple Computers and Google, have had a recent series of spats that illustrates just how high the stakes are and how hard both companies are working to dominate the tech sector.  Google remains the world’s most-used search engine and smartphones powered by Google’s Android operating system still have the largest market share in the United States.  Apple is anything but complacent now that it is the world’s most profitable company.  In order to keep its place at the top, Apple is working to weaken Google. Read more »

Privacy rights are some of the most contentiously debated human rights.  Most people in the United States and other free societies treat privacy as an innate human right, a position which comes into conflict with the views of other governments, agencies within the United States government, and Constitutional literalists (there is no explicit Freedom of Privacy guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution).  As technology has improved, the debate over privacy rights has only become more divisive.  That debate was what inspired Phil Zimmermann to create Pretty Good Privacy. Read more »