Computer Support Blog

One of the most common ways that people find new restaurants to frequent is through the recommendations of friends and other peers.  Whether it’s for a one-time event or for more regular visits, people trust the recommendations of people like them when it comes to food.  This fact is what has driven cool person in technology Shane Quigley to found his company Foddr.

Foddr is an online web tool that connects to social networking in order to provide users with restaurant recommendations based on where their friends and the friends of their friends are going to eat.  Through the use of algorithms and a connection to customers’ Facebook profiles, Quigley’s web tool scans different statuses and geotagged locations from a person’s social networking connections.  Foddr then uses this data to provide Quigley’s customers with recommendations for their next night out on the town.  Foddr currently requires a connection to Facebook in order to work properly.  Anyone whose Facebook profile does not properly connect to Foddr to give them recommendations can seek help from an online tech support professional.  Read more »

With the advent of digital music and especially the popularity of digital singles, the album is becoming an antiquated musical format in many ways.  Consumers no longer purchase entire albums based on how much they like a specific song they heard on the radio.  They purchase individual tracks that they enjoy.  With less people listening to full albums, artists and bands can have trouble when they want to make a record that’s a complete experience, more enjoyable as a whole than in individual tracks.  Read more »

Productivity can take a hit when a company’s staff spends a significant amount of time on little tasks that don’t have to do with their primary work.  Copies, data entry, taking surveys, going out and buying supplies, and even just cleaning the office space can take precious time away from employee’s important work.  This problem caused cool person in technology, Tim Fung, to found a startup dedicated to helping companies take care of these small tasks.

Fung is the CEO of Airtasker, which provides both businesses and individuals with freelance help for the extra tasks that distract people from their primary goals.  In theory, Fung’s company supplies a business with workers who will efficiently handle smaller tasks and allow full-time employees the ability to focus on what they need to finish rather than the extra tasks that normally fill up their time.  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 »

When professionally producing a video content such as a film or TV show, keeping that content under wraps is a must, especially with Internet piracy as rampant as it is today.  Because of this need for secrecy, many media professionals make physical copies of the video content they produce when they need to screen it for others.  They believe that sending files digitally, while more convenient, is too risky for security issues when compared to DRM encrypted DVDs.

Cool person in technology Jason Deadrich wants to provide a solution to this problem with his company Fordela.  Fordela provides media professionals and companies with a cloud-based media management system.  This system allows Fordela users to deliver professional video content through streaming in a safe manner that is as risk-free as an encrypted physical copy.  Since Fordela keeps copies of any professional media on their cloud system, users don’t have to risk sending a complete file to anyone else.  Deadrich’s company lets people stream the media they need to show to anyone through the Internet thanks to their cloud solution.  Anyone who has trouble streaming media over their network should seek network services to fix the problem. Read more »

Smartphones can sometimes seem like a contradictory term, because while these devices have added many smart features, the phone aspect of their function mostly remains unchanged.  The only real advantage that smartphones have over regular phones is the transplanting of an alphabetical address book into digital format.

Cool product Brewster believes that more is possible when it comes to changing how people use the phone aspect of their mobile devices.  Brewster socializes and makes a user’s contact list “smart”.  With this cool product, someone’s digital address book doesn’t simply organize alphabetically, but through the relationships that person has.  Brewster categorizes users’ address books based on how often they contact each person in them and the relationships that the users have with their contacts.  Brewster pulls information from your social networking profiles in order to organize your address book appropriately.  Through connections with services such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google Plus, the team at Brewster claims it can create an address book that is more suited to each individual user than the standard alphabetical format.  People who have trouble connecting their social networking accounts to Brewster can get help from a mobile tech support specialist to fix the problem. Read more »

In 2005, three ex-PayPal employees founded a site that changed content distribution and viral marketing on the web forever.  They named that site YouTube.  YouTube popularized the practice of everyday users creating content and posting it on the web.  YouTube kept the content specific to the video format, but still managed to change the way people thought about the web.  YouTube videos are now essential for many companies, public personas, celebrities, and artists in order to have a serious presence on the web and gain a strong fan base.  However, not all content marketing is best through a video format.  That’s where cool person in technology Scott Annan steps in with his company Accel.io. Read more »

While ridesharing apps like Uber and Lyft have gained significant momentum, the most common way for most people to get a ride in a major city is still an old-fashioned yellow cab.   There is still a way to use technology to make it easier for people to find a ride even when they want to take a taxi.  Cool product Hailo is a mobile device that allows users to hail cabs with their smartphones or tablets.  Rather than calling a taxi company and potentially ending up on hold for a long time, people can just open up their phones and tap away to call a ride right away with Hailo.  This cool product wants to erase the uncertainty of trying to find a cab on the street.   The app lets people call cabs specifically for them, rather than hope to catch taxis that are simply passing by the area.  Hailo wants to revolutionize the urban transportation industry in order to get people service in an on demand capacity just as many other industries, such as remote computer support, have in recent years. Read more »

Much like the fields of online computer repair and mobile technology, medical research is an area where things move fast and it’s important to keep up with the latest developments.  Cool person in technology Mitesh Patel founded DocPhin to help doctors and other medical professionals keep up with the latest research from medical journals. DocPhin connects doctors with a large array of medical journals and keeps all the articles a doctor wants to read all in one place.  Patel wants doctors to have easy access to recent medical research at any time.  The goal is to make it difficult to fall behind on new articles or research when a medical professional is using Patel’s app.  The app collects and archives all the major medical journals doctors read so they can quickly browse through them on mobile devices.  Doctors can save space and time when using DocPhin, as they’ll avoid letting unread medical journals pile up in their office or home.  With DocPhin, doctors can easily find the articles relevant to their field or that interest them in particular.  Patel hopes that DocPhin can make doctors’ lives easier by providing such convenient access to new research. Read more »

The QWERTY keyboard layout debuted on the typewriter in 1873 and has been the standard for typing since that time.  This wide adoption was mostly due to the popularity of the Remington model of typewriter that used the design.  Due to the popularity of the QWERTY layout, personal computers also adopted it early on in the development of the technology.  Most have never questioned it due to the similarities between word processing on a computer and typing on a typewriter.  However, once the QWERTY keyboard became a standard for touch screen mobile devices, some disadvantages became apparent.  The confusing layout lost the advantages it had on tactile systems when transferred to the confined space on a mobile phone screen.  Since most users were only using their thumbs or a few fingers to type, the QWERTY keyboard was no longer optimal.  That’s why cool product Dextr wants to challenge the QWERTY keyboard standard on mobile devices and replace it with an alphabetical layout. Anyone who wants to try Dextr’s new style of mobile keyboard but has trouble setting it up on their phone can ask a mobile tech support professional to help them install this cool product. Read more »