Computer Support Blog

It is interesting to watch how the market reacts to a change.  Sometimes, the influence of a product or service is not realized until the product or service is removed from the marketplace.  Watching the market react to the shutdown of Picnik, a niche market online digital photo editing tool, has been a study in corporate loyalty and opportunism.  Fans of Picnik vociferously resisted the integration of the Picnik tools into Google+.  The market responded with the birth or promotion of several services similar to Picnik.  One of the frontrunners to replace Picnik in the Internet zeitgeist is Aviary. Read more »

The business of doing online business is more vital and robust than ever. Those businesses that are not yet taking advantage of the Internet as an income channel are rapidly finding themselves at a competitive disadvantage.  But setting up an online business can be difficult, especially for those who are not technically inclined.  Few people understand that as well as Mitchell Harper does. Read more »

There are many resources for researching jobs on the Internet.  Between employment sites and social networking sites, there are many ways to find out about both available jobs and employers online.  In fact, many employers now use Internet-based applications exclusively when they hire.  But no site mixes job hunting and social networking quite the way JIBE does.  Informing jobseekers and employers about JIBE and its benefits is the work of Suzanne Flynn Speece! 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 »

There are some combinations of services that you would not expect to work together, but when they do, they work surprisingly well. One example would be airlines’ recent use of social networks to connect passengers. On international flights with a few companies, passengers can now upload their social network profile to the airline website and see other passengers’ profiles.

Read more »

Traditional television service, like any other service, has both positive and negative attributes.   Lately, though, it can be difficult to find the benefits of traditional broadcast television service when the detractions to it are so easy to spot (like weather-related outages).  Even cable television no longer seems as impressive a service, especially when compared to emerging Internet-based television options. Users of Internet television services have discovered that they can pay a fraction of the price to subscribe to Hulu Plus or HBO Go and get a more customized service. Read more »

With the death of Steve Jobs and movies that focus on how Mark Zuckerberg and his friends created Facebook, many in the media are focused on looking out for the next tech sector wunderkind.  With so many of the current crop of rising stars in the tech sector focused solely on their Internet startups or technological breakthroughs, it is easy to forget that historically, the real geniuses of the tech sector have been well-rounded individuals with a lot of interests.  The fact that these creative geniuses who are interested in many things focus on the technology industry to leave their mark does not negate the fact that the inventors, CEOs and envelope-pushers of the tech sector all had more going for them than simply their career.  That is why Martin Kleppmann is the Internet entrepreneur to watch! Read more »

The social network landscape continues to change.  With Facebook going public and changing their privacy policies and the rise of Google+, the media would almost have you forget there are any other social networks on the Internet!  Despite that perception, there are several other Internet social networks and many of them have benefits and intriguing aspects that the major social networks lack.  The differences in how the Internet social networks look, feel and operate are the result of each networks engineering department.  For Yammer, Kris Gale is the engineer in charge.

Read more »

For those who might not have heard of it yet, there is a social network challenging Facebook for supremacy on the Internet.  It’s not Google+, either!  The social network is called Diaspora and it is an open-source alternative to Facebook that was founded on the belief that users ought to control their information and social network experience.  Diaspora is a good idea that has been plagued by problems, not the least of which are a lack of name recognition (outside the hacker community) and the suicide last November of one of the company’s four co-founders, Ilya Zhitomirskiy.  Despite the setbacks, Diaspora is poised to break out into popular culture.  If it does, it will no doubt be in part because of Rosanna Yau.

Read more »

One of the main features of the Xbox and PlayStation lines have been the ability to play online, download additional content, and even digitally download games directly to the console from the Internet. These services have mostly been used by more hardcore gamers because that is the type of gamer these consoles target. Nintendo marketed the Wii, on the other hand, as a console for social gamers of all ages – basically a family gaming console. With that in mind, it did not appear to need the same services as Xbox Live and the PlayStation network provided.

. Alongside the release of the Wii U console, Nintendo is preparing to release the Nintendo Network in order to take advantage of the popularity of mobile gaming on smartphones and social network gaming. This service will function similarly to the Xbox and PlayStation networks in that it will provide extra downloadable content. Digital downloads of full games will be available in the future, but Nintendo was hesitant to say when. There were also hints that the Nintendo Network will support micropayments.

Read more »