Computer Support Blog

Anyone who has visited a historical site or virtually any tourist destination has seen graffiti.  At many destinations, unsightly graffiti covers most available surface. Often, graffiti is just names and dates from former visitors, but it can be much more than that. Some people even write or carve poems or song lyrics into whatever space they find available. Usually there are several visible layers of the graffiti and more underneath. It can be very tempting to add your own mark to that wall, bench, or tree, but what if there was a better, legal, way to leave a piece of yourself behind? Read more »

Virtually everyone in business knows that discovery and invention are the keys to future success.  Ironically, while most businesspeople know that invention is critical to the future of any company’s long-term health, very few businesses reinvest as radically as they need to in research and development.  The profession of “inventor” is all but dead in the United States.  Intellectual Ventures is one of the few companies that are investing heavily in revitalizing the American spirit of invention.  No one is more committed to the importance of investing in shaping the future than Intellectual Ventures’ President and Chief Operating Officer, Adriane Brown. Read more »

2011 saw some real changes in the world on online video streaming.  As the Cloud rose to prominence thanks to Apple and it advertising juggernaut, some of the traditional leaders in home media found themselves in drastically new positions.  Netflix, for example, was quick to reinvent itself as a digital streaming company, but in the process of price hikes and trying to distance themselves from their DVD subscribers, the company had a much more erratic year than many in the industry thought they would.  With Netflix faltering, Amazon.com was able to make significant strides in the digital video streaming market.  Amazon.com now has a service called Amazon Prime that allows members to stream unlimited videos and receive free two-day shipping on all orders, for only $79 for a year.  Amazon Prime’s video streaming service is now a very cool way to get your movies and television programs on your computer.

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The diverse and specialized markets within the technology sector change with alarming frequency.  With the demands that come with operating within quickly-changing field, it is almost surprising just how many strategies there are for a business to survive.  While some tech sector businesses invest heavily in research and development in order to survive the erratic fluctuations of the market, others make frequent incremental updates to their product line to continue to inspire consumers to spend.  Voxx International has managed to survive the turbulent technology market by buying its competitors.  That is a strategy developed by Patrick M. Lavelle. Read more »

Low wireless reception can become very frustrating when you really need your wireless service. Holding your phone in the air and waving it around looks silly and can be pointless. Sitting in one specific spot in the house with your laptop in order to get wireless Internet can be just as annoying. We may not have to do that for much longer. Chamtech Enterprises, a technology research company that deals mostly with the military, has developed a nanotechnology that it claims can boost any kind of wireless signal exponentially and uses the heat energy a device already generates. Google’s Solve for X conference, where companies present extraordinary ideas and current projects, featured a first public look into Chamtech’s new technology.

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In case you have not yet encountered it, Apple Computers currently has a product available called the Apple TV. Despite what you might think from the product’s name, it is not a physical television.  Instead, Apple TV is a media-streaming device that connects to a television. Apple released the first incarnation of Apple TV in 2007.  The current iteration of Apple TV was released by Apple Computers in 2010 and is more popular and much smaller. Since then, the design and basic capabilities of the Apple TV device have stayed the same, with only incremental updates over the last two years.

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The first big threat to traditional advertising models on television came from the development of cable tv.  Advertisers liked it even less when premium cable channels like HBO, Cinemax and Showtime offered viewers both original programing and advertisement-free television viewing at a price customers appeared willing to pay.  As advertisers struggle with how to monetize streaming television technology, HBO is working to adapt to the digital transmission framework.  For that, they have Alison Moore.

Alison Moore is the Senior Vice President of Digital Platforms for HBO.  In that role, Moore is responsible for all aspects of HBOs online and streaming presence.  It is her job to oversee the creation of a viable online subscription service for HBO, especially marketing its original content on the Internet.  Her responsibilities also include promoting and positioning the HBO digital services to compete with established streaming services like Netflix and Blockbuster Online.

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Everything else is going electronic, why not psychological care as well? There are still some things you just cannot do while mobile and, so far, receiving psychological help is one of those things. Some doctors and researchers would like to change that fact.

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GitHub has become the primary website for democratic open source coding. Open source coding, simply put, is the principle that many programmers work under in which they freely give away their programs and source code (basic programming language) to anyone who wants to use it. Open source software is quite common, though you may not know a program is open source if you are user, as opposed to a programmer.  The Android operating system is a well-known open source program. Google allows programmers to access the root code and write new programs for Android, which makes it open source.  By contrast, programmers who want to write applications for Windows must to access the source code and sign a contract for the right to use the proprietary code.

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It is a rare thing for a company to have a loyal worker who has risen through the ranks of the established corporate structure only to redefine the company when they get to the top.  Far more often, those who start low on the corporate ladder and work their way up become concerned with preserving the corporate identity of the organization of which they have been a part.  But more often than not in the rapidly changing tech sector, survival in business requires flexibility.  The companies in the technology industry that cling to rigidly to a set corporate structure, product line or idea often find themselves hemorrhaging capital when the market changes abruptly.  Belkin was in danger of suffering that type of horrible corporate downturn when Mark Reynoso turned the company around!

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