Computer Support Blog

Trying to react to how customers interact with and perceive a website is one of the most difficult challenges of modern marketing.  Companies devote extensive time and resources to constantly updating their websites in reaction to how visitors spend time on and engage with their sites.  Usually, companies perform long-term tests, which help them decide on new designs and content for their pages.  However, a new startup has released a product that can help businesses react even more quickly and dynamically to how people use their sites.  Cool person in technology Karl Wirth founded Evergage to create a system where companies can react to visitors on their site in real-time and provide specially tailored content to users depending on their behavior.  Read more »

Many restaurants invest in large complicated websites, but many owners don’t realize that the time and money spent on these sites doesn’t always translate into value for their business.  For one, many of the complicated websites that restaurants make aren’t mobile ready, leading to problems for customers who access the site on their smartphones or tablets.  Another issue is that many establishments don’t realize that the vast majority of customers only visit their websites for a few key pieces of information. Simplicity is often more useful in a site’s design than complexity that inconveniences users.  Cool product in technology Cilantro aims to help restaurants by providing them a more effective web presence using one-page sites.  Cilantro lets companies design a simple site that provides all the necessary information for their potential customers, such as location, menu and hours, without the extra clutter that creates inconvenience for users.  Cilantro makes sure that all the designs that restaurants can create with their service will work well on tablets and smartphones as well.  Companies that experience trouble with their Cilantro sites on mobile devices should seek a mobile IT support specialist. Read more »

New websites evolve through many changes early on in their life cycles.  However, sometimes developers and designers make these changes based only off of gut feelings or from incomplete data.  Idea Informer is a cool product that wants to help website owners make purposeful changes every time they edit or change their sites.  This cool product accomplishes this by giving website visitors a direct line of communication to the owner on the site, allowing users to give specific feedback.  Through Idea Informer, website owners receive a constant flow of comments from users about their projects’ design and functionality.  Designers and developers can then consider the accumulated feedback when altering and updating the site.  Website owners definitely do not want users to have to call for computer support just to navigate their sites.  Idea Informer lets developers and designers find issues and fix them quickly so websites are as cleanly designed and easy to use as possible.  Read more »

It may sound like a small issue, but in truth, the font used for the typeface a company chooses for their website is actually quite important.  Any visitors to a business’s website spend more time reading the content on the site than doing anything else there.  The typeface on a website can make a company seem professional, edgy, bland, cheesy, or intelligent. Any web designer knows how important making the right choice can be to the visual presence of a company.

Fontdeck is a cool product that provides a large variety of fonts that users can integrate into their websites.  On the Fontdeck website, the company keeps a marketplace of different typefaces available for companies to use on their own sites.  Fontdeck has hundreds of professionally styled fonts available at any given time for companies to purchase.  The company prices their fonts individually for any users that wish to use them.  Fontdeck also tries to make it as easy as possible for companies to integrate any purchased typefaces into their websites.  Users only have to input some lines of code in order to render the font they want on the web.  Any companies without the proper technical staff or business IT support will still need help integrating any Fontdeck fonts. Read more »

Late last year, there was a news story that was anything but real news, despite how the technology and business press covered it: Verizon had outages.  Treated as huge news, because Verizon claims to have the “most reliable network,” Verizon was virtually tarred and feathered for having a few bad days last year, wherein the weather contributed to Verizon services going off-line.  What the sensationalists in the media and business sectors neglected to consider was that Verizon’s claim to be the “most reliable network” did not mean that the service would not fail; it is a claim that their network will fail less than its other major competitors!  Verizon, of course, got service back up and running, but there were weeks of analysis – i.e. how did this failure of service happen, who’s to blame for the failure, etc.  Now, it looks like tech sector enthusiasts are likely to endure a series of similar article. Read more »

Have you ever watched a television show and thought an actor or actress looked familiar, but could not quite place them?  Have you ever watched an amazing movie and instantly wanted to watch everything else that director had ever filmed?  Have you ever needed to settle a bet involving the identity of an obscure character actor?  On the Internet, there is a single source for answers to all questions involving television and movies and that is the Internet Movie Database.

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is the world’s most comprehensive site for all things pertaining to film, television and (increasingly) video games, at least as it pertains to work done by legitimate actors, directors, producers and writers.  The IMDb is a powerful tool that contains both the latest legitimate news about all things in the filmed arts as well as massive archives of the body of work of everyone who has ever worked in film in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom.  The IMDb has extensive reservoirs of information for Japanese, Chinese and Indian works as well.

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The Internet is home to innumerable cool websites, most of which are free to use.  As the computer pervades almost every aspect of life in the United States, few off-line pursuits have been as threatened as the lifestyle of a visual artist.  Artists face an escalating threat from the Internet in that the rise of the computer has developed and propagated new forms of visual art, threatening to make traditional visual art obsolete.  While there are many websites for visual artists, including art-themed social networks, no site works as hard to present and develop art careers of contemporary artists like Art.net.

Art.net is a gallery for professional artists and it is entirely free to visit.  As a virtual gallery, Art.net has a distinctly anti-commercial feel to it.  The site won a lawsuit against the state of New York over freedom of speech issues in part because as a non-commercial website, it did not have a way to authenticate visitors’ ages!  The purpose of Art.net is not to sell artwork; it is to display artwork and provide a common platform for artists to share ideas as they improve their proficiency in their medium of choice.

Currently, there are over 450 artists who have virtual galleries on Art.net and just as humor is subjective, so too is art.  While many of the artists on Art.net have embraced some form of digital art, most use their virtual gallery space to present images of physical projects that exist in the real world.  Art.net is a great site to spend hours carefully combing through the works of artists that you might not have a chance to see elsewhere.  While many of the artists do have galleries or studios, most of the artists on Art.net do not have standing showings in the real world like they do on this site.  Browsing through the virtual galleries can open your mind and expose you to some great new artists.

Art.net is not preoccupied with any form of ecommerce, which sets it apart from sites like DeviantArt.  What Art.net offers art enthusiasts is incredible access to the artists you see when you visit the site.  Art.net provides each artist with a mailbox and most every artist’s gallery includes a direct link to e-mail them through the site.  Art.net in no way restricts its users from contacting artists to make offers on any pieces an artist has presented.

If you are on the other side of the creative process, Art.net offers a decent level of exposure to artists at a very reasonable price.  Because the site is entirely nonprofit, a $60/year membership fee is charged to keep the servers running.  In exchange, you get seemingly unending storage space for your art and a platform that has been running since 1994!

There are many individual artists’ websites, but there is no multi-artist platform on the Internet so concerned with the pure creation and presentation of art as Art.net.  That commitment makes Art.net exceptionally cool.

About RESCUECOM:

RESCUECOM provides computer repair and computer support, 24/7: Meeting every tech support need including data recovery, virus removal, networking, wireless services, and computer support for all brands of hardware and software. For computer support or information on products, services, or computer repair, visit https://www.rescuecom.com or call 1-800-RESCUE-PC.

For More Information, Contact:

David Milman, CEO

315-882-1100

david@rescuecom.com

Have you ever tried to connect to a website and wondered if your computer is to blame or if the site you are trying to reach is down?  You might spend several minutes and switch between web browsers in the attempt to find out if the site you want to go to is actually where it is supposed to be on the World Wide Web.  As with virtually everything else, there is a solution to your problem found easily on the Internet.

There are a number of Internet sites that now offer the free service of checking to see if a website you are interested in is actually active.  That is a very cool service and arguably the best of the market are:

Down For Everyone Or Just Me.  Despite the cumbersome name, Down For Everyone Or Just Me remains one of the most simple to use websites on the entire Internet.  Arriving at the main page, users are prompted to enter the website URL they want to access.  They are then directed to an answer page with a very simple answer of “It’s just you” (when the website you are looking for is actually running fine) or “It’s not just you” if the website you are looking for is not operating.  There is space for advertisements at the bottom of each results page, but no one ever seems to buy space there.  From the results page, you may enter another URL or leave the site.  This website is a very simple, very cool tool with no frills and a distinctly helpful and uncluttered format that is refreshing to find on the Internet.

Downrightnow.  With its very easy to remember name, Downrightnow is a simple and direct resource for the major social networks.  With a very clear graphic interface, Downrightnow informs you instantly of any service disruptions to Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, YouTube and other popular websites.  The only disadvantage to Downrightnow is that it only lists the major sites, but it is an invaluable tool for checking those sites and learning about service disruptions to the major Internet players.

IsUp.  IsUp.me is an exceptionally easy name to remember when you are frustrated about Internet problems.  IsUp has as simple an interface as Down For Everybody Or Just Me and is as reliable.  The no-frills approach serves IsUp very well; many of the flashier websites that check the Internet for you came up with false positives or false negatives.  IsUp might have a simple interface, but it has great accuracy!

The above sites provide a valuable, free service of checking the Internet for the websites you want to find.  Using them can help you determine if there is a glitch somewhere out on the World Wide Web or if you actually need computer repairs for your computer.  Of course, if you cannot even connect to these sites, you probably need technical support!

About RESCUECOM:

RESCUECOM provides computer repair and computer support, 24/7: Meeting every tech support need including data recovery, virus removal, networking, wireless services, and computer support for all brands of hardware and software. For computer support or information on products, services, or computer repair, visit https://www.rescuecom.com or call 1-800-RESCUE-PC.

For More Information, Contact:

David Milman, CEO

315-882-1100

david@rescuecom.com

Have you ever had an argument with someone you do not trust?  You know the kind, the person with whom you want to settle an issue through the flip of a coin, but you know they’ll find a way to cheat.  Just as the Internet provided us with increased data storage options, Cloud-based entertainment and more sophisticated mapping services, now it provides unbiased coin flips through Random.org’s True Random Number Service.  Settle bets, stymie psychics, or simply confound your friends by showing interest in a random number generator with Random.org’s True Random Number Service!

Random.org is a cool, entertaining, website and the coin flipper is only one interface that the site offers.  Random.org’s True Random Number Service is an esoteric bit of random number generators that may be used for fun or science.  Distinguished from other random number generation sites, the True Random Number Service from Random.org does not come from a complex equation that may be predicted with enough sampling (and a mathematical mindset).

Instead, creator Mads Haahr generates the random numbers through a complex radio receptor array that uses atmospheric noise.  In fact, the software for the True Random Number Service is not available because it requires the non-computer input it receives from the radio wave observations!  This is true randomness and Random.org makes it very cool.

The True Random Number Service has a variety of interfaces, the best of which are entirely free.  The coin flipper presents simple “heads” or “tails” for one to sixteen coins at a time from an inventory of eighty-eight different coins.  Virtually every country connected to the Internet has a representation of its coins.  There are also a few ancient civilizations and novelty coins available.  There is a playing card shuffler which allows those who need to settle an issue through a game of high card (or anything else for which you would select a single card from a 52 or 54 card deck) to randomly pick a card.  There are also random dice rolls, which could make your games of RISK or Yahtzee go much more unpredictably than playing with actual dice.

There is also a very simple, very direct true random number generator at Random.org that may generate columns of random numbers from -1,000,000,000 to 1,000,000,000!  It does not take much playing around with the system to discover just how well it works!

Random.org is an easy site to use and it does not require any additional computer support to operate any of the gadgets and widgets it provides.  With over a billion random bits generated, Random.org is the most stable random element on the Internet!

About RESCUECOM:

RESCUECOM provides computer repair and computer support, 24/7: Meeting every tech support need including data recovery, virus removal, networking, wireless services, and computer support for all brands of hardware and software. For computer support or information on products, services, or computer repair, visit https://www.rescuecom.com or call 1-800-RESCUE-PC.

For More Information, Contact:

David Milman, CEO

315-882-1100

david@rescuecom.com