Computer Support Blog

People often look at social networking sites and public blogs as a way of journaling or recording one’s life online.  However, there is one inconsistency with the “journal” metaphor.  Most people have never posted the content of their physical journals or diaries in a public place for anyone to see and add comments whenever they want.  Meanwhile, social networks and blogging sites such as Facebook and Tumblr set everyone’s status updates and photos to public by default so that anyone can see or comment on them.  Cool person in technology Siqi Chen has created an app that seeks to address this inconsistency by giving users a truly private multimedia journaling experience.  Chen calls this new app “Heyday”.  While users can update their Heyday profiles the same way they would update their social network accounts and even set automatic updates, none of the information on Heyday appears to a public audience.  Chen wants Heyday to be a private experience, unlike so much of what social media is on the rest of the web.  Read more »

While many people consider reading books to be a solitary activity, that doesn’t always hold true in reality.  For lots of readers, books are as social of a hobby as anything else.  People create book clubs, use social media and engage in events such as author signings and Q&A sessions just to meet other avid readers and discuss the nature of their favorite texts.  Conversations range from speculation about character motivations to complex academic discussions about story themes.  Now, a cool product in technology wants to harness this social aspect of book reading for profit.  Bookmate lets readers take notes, leave questions, and copy quotes in every book that they read with the app and then share all their notations with all of their friends on social media.  Users can read their friends’ notations within a certain book as they read it on Bookmate and then engage those friends on social media to discuss how they felt about those notes.  Bookmate integrates with popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter so people can even share their notes with friends who don’t use Bookmate.  Anyone who cannot connect his or her Bookmate account to Twitter or Facebook should get help from a remote computer support provider. Read more »

Mobile technology has changed the way musicians record their art in many ways.  It is now viable to use a smartphone or tablet to record multi-track performances as well as mix and edit the results.  Recording decent audio tracks used to be something limited to only a select few artists who could afford time in a professional studio.  New affordable music recording apps have revolutionized the state of professional music and made it possible for many amateur musicians to record high quality tracks without excessive resources.  Now, cool product in technology WholeWorldBand wants to take things another step forward by letting musicians not only record tracks on their mobile devices, but also collaborate with others on their works in progress.  Read more »

Responsibly purchasing alcoholic drinks in a big city is not always easy.  Bars and clubs continue to raise the prices of their drinks to points that are prohibitive for many people.  However, finding liquor stores with good selection and prices to enjoy some drinks at home with friends isn’t always simple either.  Cool product in technology Drizly presents a third solution: order alcoholic beverages for immediate delivery with a smartphone. With Drizly installed on someone’s iPhone or Android device, he or she can quickly tap their phones to order liquor, wine or beer.  Drizly then delivers the drinks to the user on demand, allowing the customer to spend time with their friends or prepare in other ways before the drinks arrive.  This cool product is ideal for situations where people throw small parties or get-togethers because it frees up a user’s time and reduces one major aspect of planning a party down to a few taps on a phone.  Anyone who has trouble operating the Drizly app will need to contact a smartphone PC support company for service to determine what is causing the problem. 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 »

Most calorie counting technology, whether it’s a smartphone app or a dedicated wearable device, provides people with pure data.  That data usually includes calories burned, steps taken, and numerous other cold hard facts about the user’s daily health statistics.  However, the problem with this system is that most users of these fitness tracking apps and devices do not know exactly what to do about the data they receive.  Without being extremely well educated in the subjects of nutrition and personal fitness, people have no context to what the data they collect actually means for them.   Everyone’s body is different and the same data will mean very different things to people depending on age, weight, gender, athleticism, and various other factors.  Cool product Fjuul is a fitness tracker that tries to solve this problem by taking a different approach.  Rather than provide users with massive amounts of data that they don’t even understand properly most of the time, Fjuul provides people with one easily understandable metric that they can follow: Fjuul points.  Users who want to try Fjuul’s system can download the app on their iPhone or iPod.  If someone has trouble installing the app on his or her device, contacting Apple tech support would be the best course of action. Read more »

Streaming services like Spotify have taken the music industry by storm.  For many users, it’s clear that a monthly subscription to a vast library of on demand music is a great deal, and the subscriber numbers for Spotify and similar services like Rdio prove that.  However, this is not ideal for all types of music fans.  A significant number of people prefer to own their music rather than “rent” it as they would with a monthly subscription service.  Owning digital music files and being able to use them for whatever a user wants is important to many consumers.  However, strictly owning local music files on one computer doesn’t have any of the extra conveniences or benefits that streaming services provide.  Cool product Style Jukebox provides music fans with a system that allows them to own all their own music, but still gain the advantages that streaming services provide, such as online access to a user’s entire music library on any device with an Internet connection. People can upload their music to Style Jukebox on their PC’s and have immediate access to their entire collection on their smartphone, tablet and even other computers.  Anyone who has issues uploading their song files to the service should consider getting cloud computer support for help. Read more »

Augmented reality has many applications in the real world.  People can use it with wearable technology such as Google Glass to create head-up displays for when they perform physical work in an outdoor environment.  However, augmented reality isn’t only limited to wearable tech devices.  Cool product Augment puts the power of augmented reality in the hands of anyone with a smartphone or tablet.  Augment allows people to impose 3D models or prototypes that they create onto the physical world.  Users can view how their models would appear as real-world objects and get a better idea of how they would look before investing money to create a physical item.  Read more »

Making plans and trying to account for and include all of one’s friends is not always a simple task.  Keeping track of one’s own plans is difficult enough in many cases.  Trying to keep track of every friend’s long-term plans as well is pretty much impossible.  Enter cool person in technology Karl Jacob and his new product Hangtime.  Hangtime is a smartphone app that aggregates local events of all types and allows its users to indicate what events they are definitely going to be at and what ones they are potentially interested in attending.  Once a user and all his or her friends are on Hangtime, making plans with other people becomes far simpler.  For example, if a user sees that there is a concert they want to see in their area, that user simply taps to indicate that they are going.  The app notifies any friends also going or interested in the event so that they can contact the user if they want to make plans to attend together.  Anyone who has trouble downloading Jacob’s program from the App Store should contact iPhone tech support for help.  Read more »

Shipping costs can be problematic for many individuals and small businesses. Transporting very large items can even be cost prohibitive in some cases.  However, cool person in technology Everett Steele has founded Kanga in order to make delivering items less costly.  To accomplish this task, Steele has started using a model that has seen great success in other areas of the tech industry—crowdsourcing.  Companies like AirBnB and Uber have shown that having customers provide services to each other can actually be a viable business model if a company facilitates the exchange properly.  Kanga uses crowdsourcing by allowing people to request delivery services from anyone who has access to the proper transportation.  Once users find others able and willing to transport what they need moved, they can book the drivers to make deliveries through Kanga. Drivers on Kanga can charge less than large shipping companies, making the process far easier on people’s wallets.  Steele’s company takes a small cut of each payment for making each delivery possible.  Anyone who has technical difficulty while trying to schedule deliveries through Kanga should contact a computer support service for immediate assistance. Read more »