Computer Support Blog

There are few CEOs whose personal story is as interesting as the biography of Jason Hsuan.  Abandoned as a child in China, the Chinese government sent Jason Hsuan to a labor camp where he toiled from ages fifteen to eighteen.  When he became ill from tuberculosis, Hsuan was deported to Taiwan to be with his remaining family.  While that sort of hardship might crush a lesser man, Jason Hsuan used the experience to grow, learn and develop his corporate philosophy.  Now, Dr. Jason Hsuan is the CEO and Chairman of TPV Technology Limited, the world’s largest manufacturer of computer monitors!

Despite having spent three years in a labor camp, which robbed him of educational opportunities and was largely dehumanizing, Jason Hsuan lifted himself up.  Once in Taiwan, Hsuan began working to improve his lot in life.  While he worked for six years at General Electric, he saw it as his duty to go help his father when the Taiwan Pepsi Cola branch suffered a severe economic downturn.  Hsuan prioritized his family and went to work for Pepsi, serving as a Vice President of the Taiwan branch.  That sense of responsibility served Jason Hsuan exceptionally well when he came to the United States to pursue his education.  At Boston University, Hsuan earned his Master’s in Systems Engineering.  After earning his Master’s, Jason Hsuan went to the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn where he applied his talents to getting his Ph.D. in Systems Engineering.

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Social networks come and go; that is rapidly becoming one of the realities of the Internet.  What is fascinating to see is how the different social networks attempt to appeal to different niches, whether they try to make their appeal from the interface device or to a target demographic.  LinkedIn appeals to professionals, Facebook appeals to friends with shared interests, Twitter appeals to cellphone users who are on the go; each social network has a niche.  Until now, no social network has been built around the sudden prevalence of video technology on smartphones.  That changes with the emergence of Viddy!

Viddy is most analogous to Twitter in that it is a social network built on very short communications.  Like Twitter, Viddy appeals strongly to the smartphone users who love to stay connected and share material through their smartphones.  As a more sophisticated way of social networking, Viddy uses videos as a platform for its network!

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This year, the blind will begin to see again. Well, no…that is not quite true. However, people who have gone blind from retinal degradation will be able to see light/dark, shapes, and faces if the FDA approves a new technology that was created to enable people to regain lost sight.

The Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System from Second Sight Medical Products is a device that will allow some blind people to begin to see again. This technology only works for people whose photoreceptor cells have degenerated, but there are over 200,000 people with that condition in America alone. After 13 years of development, a few test patients have finally been fitted with the device. The company is conducting clinical trials and Second Sight is waiting on approval from the Food and Drug Administration before they make Argus II available publicly.

A small camera embedded into a pair of sunglasses sends an image to a smartphone-sized processor, which converts the image into a black and white picture. This picture is wirelessly transmitted to the receptors surgically implanted around the eye and finally sent on to the electrodes that the surgeon carefully attached to the retinas.

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Apple is not the only company that is working hard to fill in the last size gaps between the smartphone and the tablet computer.  While e-readers once had a niche of their own, with the emergence of the Kindle Fire and the growing rumors about the mini-iPad, it appears that every major mobile computer company is racing to create tablet computers or smartphones with screens in the 5” – 6” range.  One of the first to market is the Samsung Galaxy Note.

The Samsung Galaxy Note joins the Samsung Galaxy line as a smartphone with a significantly larger touchscreen – 5.3”! – than most and it is designed to impress.  With its HD Super AMOLED display, the Galaxy Note presents vivid colors in an incredible 1280 x 800 resolution.  This level of resolution is incredible for a handheld device and means that streaming movies and television will look about as good as they would on a high definition monitor!  With the display screen made of Corning’s Gorilla Glass, the Samsung Galaxy Note resists scratches and breakage.

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The idea of play is an ancient one, so it is a pretty ambitious goal to reinvent the wheel on toys.  In fact, given the billions of dollars that are spent each year producing, developing, transporting and marketing toys, the idea of trying to completely reinvent the marketplace is an audacious one.  When the casual concept for such an idea turns into a viable business unexpectedly, sometimes the innovators themselves are surprised.  That is exactly what happened with Outfit 7 and Samo Login.

Samo Login is the Founder and CEO of Outfit 7, a Slovenian mobile app company.  Outfit 7 is best known for the Talking Tom application, an animated cat that you upload to your smartphone.  The cat repeats phrases you say to it and interacts in a limited digital environment.  Samo Login’s concept for the figure was to create a toy for mobile phone users.  With more than two hundred million Talking Tom apps downloaded, Samo Login’s concept seems to have truly taken off!

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The first things that come up in an Internet search of computers and chocolate are computer-shaped novelty chocolates, but the relationship between computers and chocolate is a lot more complicated than that!  Computers are involved in almost every step of the chocolate manufacturing process.

All mass production in the chocolate manufacturing industry is done now on assembly lines.  The role of computers in chocolate manufacturing begins well before the first drop of chocolate hits the mold.

Whenever a manufacturer wants to produce a new chocolate, they create computer models of the manufacturing process.  By imputing the ingredients and the desired final shape of the chocolate, chocolate manufacturers can engineer the entire process of making the candy virtually before they start production.  If they intend for the chocolate to have a filling like nuts or nougat, the manufacturer programs additional steps into the computer model.  Through the computer models, chocolate manufacturers are able to accurately project both the cost and time it will take to produce a new chocolate.

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If you are a serious audiophile, or just love music and live in a noisy house or apartment building, there is one essential tool for you: noise cancelling headphones.  For those unfamiliar with the product, nose cancelling headphones operate on a principle much like earplugs.  Noise cancelling headphones eliminate overt loud noises as well as background white noise.  The theory behind the headphones – as opposed to earplugs – is that using noise cancelling headphones creates a clean auditory palate which will leave the music you play sounding extra clear, crisp, and unhindered by other auditory distractions.  For a long time, noise cancelling headphones were a Grail for audiophiles, now they are fairly common.  But arguably the best noise cancelling headphones are the new ones from AKG.

AKG’s new K 495 NC noise cancelling headphones represent the highest-quality headphone for listening to music from portable music devices.  With its 121 decibel sensitivity, you are much more likely to notice flaws in your digital music files than you are with the sound quality from the K 495 NC headphones.  To make that clear, most digital music is compressed and does not contain as much audio information as music does when you play it from a compact disc or over the radio.  With a basic pair of earbuds, though, you might never notice how much is missing from your favorite songs.  The K 495 NC headphones, though, are not a pair of cheap earbuds!  As a result, you will hear the full depth of sound that is in your music files.  When you hear how much is missing from your digital music files, you may feel compelled to upgrade your digital music service and player, just to keep up with your awesome new headphones!

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If you are a serious vacationer, odds are you have a digital camera.  After all, if you are spending serious money on a vacation, you should absolutely get the best possible photographs of the experience.  But most people who have a good digital camera and go on a wide array of vacations are still likely to have serious gaps in their photo albums.  That gap comes from lacking pictures from underwater.  Odds are if you are a serious world traveler, you have spent many great hours in the water – be it swimming in the ocean, wading in a river or enjoying a new beach.  Given that most digital cameras cannot function underwater, it is hard to get great shots to capture your subaquatic experience.  That changes with the new Sony Cyber-shot Digital Camera TX200V.

The Sony Cyber-shot Digital Camera TX200V is a brand new digital camera that features an airtight and watertight shell.  Yes, one of the key selling points for this digital camera is that it is waterproof down to a depth of sixteen feet!  With controls and an interior that are protected from dirt, dust, grime and water, the Sony Cyber-shot Digital Camera TX200V is ideal for shooting underwater.  The TX200V also features an 18.2 Megapixel Exmor R CMOS sensor.  In addition to being very easy to clean, this sensor provides the camera with exceptional image quality, even in very low light.  Low light image quality is especially important when you are photographing underwater and it is essential when you get down below ten feet underwater.

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Even as the recession in the United States persists, there are still some fields that are still employing highly-educated individuals.  In the tech sector, one of the most coveted and competitive positions for new graduates is the position of software engineer.  The online data storage company, Dropbox, continues to hire software engineers.  Just what are they looking for?  You have to be as smart, versatile and fun as Tina Wen!

Tina Wen is a software engineer at Dropbox and a recent graduate of MIT.  With her B.S. and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Microsoft quickly hired Tina Wen.  Intrigued by her thesis on bandwidth-sensitive oblivious routing, Microsoft put Wen on the team that developed Microsoft Outlook for Mac.  If you have Microsoft’s Office for Mac 2011 edition, you have some of Wen’s software!  Working as a software developer engineer was a nice step up for Wen at Microsoft; she had a summer internship there working on script tests for Microsoft TV the summer before she finished her Master’s.

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Learning a new musical instrument is never easy.  But, following the demise of Guitar Hero, there is – as one might suspect – an app for that!  Now, those who want to learn to play the guitar need only a guitar, an iPad, and Wild Chords to get started on a road to musical proficiency!

Wild Chords is an application, currently exclusively available for the Apple iPad, that helps teach you how to play the guitar.  In order to use Wild Chords, all you need is a guitar and an iPad; you do not need speakers or an amplifier if you are using an electric guitar.  In fact, if you are using an electric guitar, you have to unplug it from other equipment – like an amp – because the distortion from other equipment affects the program.  Even if you have never picked up a guitar before, Ovelin – the app’s publisher – is confident that Wild Chords can teach you.

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