Computer Support Blog

A slew of startups have popped up over the past few years that offer technology-based solutions for large events and professional conferences.  BusyEvent, one such startup based out of St. Louis, is trying to set itself apart with a cool product that leverages mobile technology for event organizers.  While many other companies design individual apps for events, costing an event’s host significant amounts of time and money, BusyEvent offers a way for event organizers to create their own mobile apps.  BusyEvent produces, in their own words, an “app that builds apps” for event organizers and marketers.  BusyEvent claims that their mobile application allows their customers to create event-specific apps “in five minutes”.  Organizers can then personalize their event’s app with different styles, themes, layouts and of course, content.  Users can view and edit the apps they make with BusyEvent through the web, on Android or on iPhone.  Anyone who needs help navigating or working through BusyEvent’s features can get help from a mobile tech support provider. Read more »

PowerPoint presentations, while useful for businesses and professional conferences, aren’t always ideal for educational situations. More often than not, students simply do not find themselves engaged while staring at static lists and bullet points.  Cool product bContext aims to help with this issue with their iPad app.  The application allows teachers to upload static file types such as PDFs and PowerPoint presentations and then transform those documents into interactive presentations.  When a user uploads a document onto their iPad to use it in the bContext app, the app lets teachers mark up the document with their own handwriting.  Rather than requiring expensive projector equipment or smart pen technology, bContext offers teachers a cheap solution for interacting with their presentations through markup and added notes.  Teachers can make notes on their PowerPoint presentation or PDF files as they discuss them in class, creating a more dynamic experience that teachers can use to get students interested.  Teachers who have problems transferring their documents to their tablet will need iPad support to get the app to work properly. Read more »

Social media has taken many different forms as it has expanded.  People use Twitter for text content, Vine and YouTube for video, and Instagram for photographs.  However, cool person in tech Thomas Clayton believes there is a medium that people have underutilized in social media up to now: voice.  Clayton is the CEO of Bubbly, a social network where users post short voice messages instead of videos, pictures, or statuses.  Clayton’s social network is completely mobile focused.  Bubbly doesn’t even have a basic web based counterpart to its smartphone applications.  In a way, it makes perfect sense.  Since Clayton was creating a social network based on voice communication, why not focus entirely on devices specifically built for voice communication—phones?  Clayton believes that people want to have a literal voice on social media and not just a figurative one. In past interviews, he has described his company’s service as “Twitter with a voice.”  Anyone who has trouble downloading Clayton’s app for their iPhone or Android device will need smartphone tech support. Read more »

Rewarding loyal customers for their continued business and even more importantly, turning regular customers into repeat customers are two essential aspects of the restaurant business.  Venga is a cool product that currently offers restaurants and cafes solutions for these problems through technological means.  Venga is a software suite for restaurant management that aims to engage customers, increase loyalty and give restaurants the tools to improve the experience of their patrons in different ways.  Read more »

Researching the fastest way to get somewhere on public transportation can be an extremely inconvenient process.  This is especially true if you need to take more than one form of transportation.  You have to look through several websites to try to find the best route that matches up most conveniently with your schedule.  Catapulter is a cool product that wants to make sure its customers can avoid this burdensome process.  Catapulter finds the fastest and cheapest ways to travel between two points by public ground transportation.  Catapulter surveys multiple ground transportation providers, including Greyhound, Amtrak, and several public transport organizations in major cities.  It then automatically checks each provider’s schedule and comes up with the most convenient solutions for travel scenarios.  Those who want to use the website but have problems connecting or technical issues with their search results can receive help from a cloud tech support service. Read more »

The Internet has severely changed the state of being for independent musicians and artists.  Having a web and social media presence is essential to maintaining your career as an artist if you want to stay independent.  Most successful musicians on the web stick to social media sites such as YouTube and BandCamp to promote and sell their music.  That was not enough for cool person in technology Jack Conte.  Conte worked for years as an independent musician with a heavy web presence, both with his solo projects and with his partner Nataly Dawn in the band Pomplamoose.  Conte has drawn a significant following of fans on the Internet thanks to his popular music videos on YouTube, which reveal how he creates the unique sounds in his music.  However, Conte was not satisfied with promoting his work on a social network while selling it elsewhere.  This is why he founded Patreon, a website that allows users to patronize specific artists and fund them for their continued work. Read more »

It is common for people to have an experience where they remember an item of clothing by its color or pattern, but cannot remember the brand or the store where they purchased it.  ASAP54 is a cool product that solves this conundrum by letting you search through fashion websites and online clothing stores by simply uploading a picture.  If an ASAP54 user wants to find a piece of clothing they see someone wearing, they can just snap a picture, upload it to the app and ASAP54 does all the work.  The app recognizes the image and scours the Internet trying to find visual matches for the item you photographed.  The app provides users with all the matches that it can find, and then lets the user filter further by looking for specific brands, types of clothing, and colors within their results.  Users who have difficulty operating the search filters can always call iPhone support for help navigating the app. Read more »

When Instagram launched in 2010, it changed the way many people approached mobile photography.  While anyone could snap pictures just for themselves and their close friends to see, Instagram offered users a simplified way to make artistic-looking photos that people wanted to share publicly.  Instagram’s filters gave people a sense of performance when taking and uploading their pictures and allowed many people without photo editing skills to feel like pros with their smartphone camera.  Magisto is a smartphone app that wants to recreate this experience on mobile, but this time for video rather than photography.  Magisto is a cool product that lets you upload your mobile videos to its app and choose a “theme” to apply to them.  Each theme dictates an automated editing process, which gives your video a more artistic look.  Themes add different visual filters to your video, not unlike Instagram does with photos, but also actually edits the video itself to make it more dynamic. Those who have have trouble recording videos with their mobile devices can get smartphone IT support to help them with their camera. Read more »

Having a dedicated platform to promote and sell your art can have a significantly positive effect at any stage of an artist’s career.  Getting access to such a platform early on is particularly helpful in the crowded world of fine art.  That’s why cool person in tech Alex Farkas created UGallery in 2006.  UGallery is an online platform that promotes and sells artwork specifically created by artists who are still young in their careers.  Farkas knew the web could be a powerful tool for leveling the playing field between new artists and established ones.  That’s why when he formed UGallery, he chose to target the emerging crowd of painters, illustrators, and photographers rather than chase after established names in the world of gallery art.  UGallery’s model is dependent on newer artists submitting their portfolios to the curation staff at UGallery, which includes Farkas himself.  UGallery selects the artists they want to promote and then help them set up a presence on their site where they can sell their work to interested buyers.  Buyers who have trouble browsing through choices on UGallery can always contact computer support for help.  Read more »

Crowdfunding has deeply affected the way many people look at their entertainment and the artists who create it.  Where popular art, fiction, music, and even games once only came from monolithic institutions that had a disproportionate amount of say over what the public got to consume, now Kickstarter, Indiegogo and its brethren have made it so the public can access and fund any work they want to see or hear, independently of larger industry trends.  Still, most people consider crowdfunding solely as a way to fund the actual creation of a project, not to directly compensate creators for their work.  This is why most art that people fund on sites like Kickstarter are projects that take large amounts of cash to complete such as albums, movies, comics, and video games.  However, cool product Unbound wants to use the crowdfunding model as an alternative to the book industry and, even more significantly, want to use it to compensate authors directly. Read more »