Computer Support Blog

Selling artwork or photography is not an easy profession.  Finding interested buyers, promoting one’s work and finding a viable model for distribution are all obstacles for visual artists trying to make a living off their work.  The Internet provides an opportunity for photographers to reach a wider audience and sell more pieces, but setting up the infrastructure needed to do those things is not always part of an artist’s skillset.  Cool person in technology Matt Munson has created Twenty20 in order to solve this problem.  Twenty20 is an online marketplace where graphic artists and photographers can sell their work with little to no technical expertise.  Twenty20 lets users create galleries where they offer the public either digital copies or physical prints of their work.  Munson’s company handles the printing and shipping of each physical item and splits the profit of each sale with the artists on the site.  Read more »

People often find themselves in unfortunate circumstances when traveling with their cellphones and ending up with no signal.  When driving long distances or heading to remote locations without wireless network connections, smartphones essentially turn from incredible tools of communication into fancy paperweights. However, there is now a cool product in technology called FireChat that allows users to chat wirelessly on their smartphones without any Internet connection.  FireChat is a smartphone application that uses a proprietary technology called “mesh networking”. Mesh networking lets smartphones communicate with other mobile devices in proximity even when there is no Wi-Fi or mobile signal connection available.  FireChat does not completely replace the need for an Internet connection or allow users to text people from very long distances without a connection.  Still, this smartphone app has many potential applications for consumers who travel.  Read more »

While many people use digital projectors at home for their excellent pictures and cinema-like feel, most home projectors are less than convenient.  While the machines are small, the requirement for users to install large viewing screens into their houses makes them a problem in many cases.  In addition, many projectors require special remote controls sold separately, making it more expensive if users want to control their devices from a distance.  Cool person Pierre Lebeau has founded his company Keecker to create a new product that changes the status quo for home projectors.  Lebeau has reimagined the product from the ground up to try to give users an easier and overall more satisfying experience.  Read more »

Most calorie counting technology, whether it’s a smartphone app or a dedicated wearable device, provides people with pure data.  That data usually includes calories burned, steps taken, and numerous other cold hard facts about the user’s daily health statistics.  However, the problem with this system is that most users of these fitness tracking apps and devices do not know exactly what to do about the data they receive.  Without being extremely well educated in the subjects of nutrition and personal fitness, people have no context to what the data they collect actually means for them.   Everyone’s body is different and the same data will mean very different things to people depending on age, weight, gender, athleticism, and various other factors.  Cool product Fjuul is a fitness tracker that tries to solve this problem by taking a different approach.  Rather than provide users with massive amounts of data that they don’t even understand properly most of the time, Fjuul provides people with one easily understandable metric that they can follow: Fjuul points.  Users who want to try Fjuul’s system can download the app on their iPhone or iPod.  If someone has trouble installing the app on his or her device, contacting Apple tech support would be the best course of action. Read more »

Therapy and professional psychological help can be very beneficial to the long-term mental health of many people.  However, certain factors often prevent people from seeking the help they need when it comes to psychological matters. People often feel embarrassment over their difficulties at first and don’t want to take steps to address whatever issues they may be facing.  Cool product Talkspace wants to use a web-based chatting system to address this problem and provide people with therapy online.  With this cool product, people can anonymously log in and seek help from professional doctors from any computer or smartphone.  The first few exchanges with a therapist are free to determine if a user is comfortable with a specific doctor before continuing.  Talkspace encourages users to ask about almost anything, (although they do direct any life-threatening issues to a suicide prevention hotline).  Each therapist on the website is a professional who has extensive experience treating patients for a variety of problems.  Anyone who has trouble accessing the chat system on Talkspace with any of their technological devices should seek home tech support for help with connecting.  Read more »

The Internet changed the nature of healthcare in many ways and one of the biggest ways was the amount of medical knowledge available to the general public.  Sites such as WebMD have allowed people to save time by checking for medical information and advice about minor and major health issues.  Online medical sites have even saved lives in some cases by giving people information that alerts them to potential health problems they could have without realizing it.  Furthermore, sites like WebMD help people with chronic medical conditions deal with issues by allowing them to learn more about how to handle their health problems appropriately.  However, when children experience serious medical issues and have trouble understanding, online medical sites aren’t much help to them.  Places like WebMD explain things in advanced language and use terms that children will not understand generally.  That’s why cool person in technology Dr. Kim Chilman-Blair founded Medikidz.  Medikidz provides children with a medical website that explains different medical conditions to them in ways they can understand.  Anyone with a child who wants explore the Medikidz website but can’t seem to connect to the web will want to see if they can get home network support to fix the issue. Read more »

When people decide to start building their families, they have to take into consideration an immense amount of information.  One of the biggest concerns with having children are the potential risks involved regarding genetic disorders.  Cool product Counsyl helps potential parents determine whether their children would be at risk for any of these disorders.  Many people have elements in their DNA that create a higher risk for their children to have genetic conditions, even if they do not have any issues with their own bodies.  Counsyl allows people preparing to have a family to assess the risk that their children might inherit any conditions.  Read more »

Academic journals require more effort to manage properly than many people outside the academic and research worlds realize.  Managing the process of peer reviews, organizing all submitted research, designing the layout of the journal and finding a means of publication are all very time-consuming activities.  To further complicate the matter, most academic and research journal editors work full time jobs at universities on top of their editorial duties.  Now, cool person in technology Brian Cody has founded a company that wants to help journal editors manage their duties more efficiently.  Scholastica is Cody’s platform for creating and maintaining academic journals online.  With Scholastica, editors can keep track of all works submitted to their journal, manage the peer review process in real time, and publish approved papers quickly and efficiently.  Cody’s goal is to provide professional academics with the tools to maintain a high quality journal online easily.  He also wants academics to be able to do so without needing extensive technical expertise.  Any academics who have difficulty publishing with the platform should make sure to contact a remote computer support service. Read more »

Streaming services like Spotify have taken the music industry by storm.  For many users, it’s clear that a monthly subscription to a vast library of on demand music is a great deal, and the subscriber numbers for Spotify and similar services like Rdio prove that.  However, this is not ideal for all types of music fans.  A significant number of people prefer to own their music rather than “rent” it as they would with a monthly subscription service.  Owning digital music files and being able to use them for whatever a user wants is important to many consumers.  However, strictly owning local music files on one computer doesn’t have any of the extra conveniences or benefits that streaming services provide.  Cool product Style Jukebox provides music fans with a system that allows them to own all their own music, but still gain the advantages that streaming services provide, such as online access to a user’s entire music library on any device with an Internet connection. People can upload their music to Style Jukebox on their PC’s and have immediate access to their entire collection on their smartphone, tablet and even other computers.  Anyone who has issues uploading their song files to the service should consider getting cloud computer support for help. Read more »

The Internet has become haven for independent and amateur artists, whether those artists work in music, animation or performance.  While social media and the web have made it possible to independently promote oneself and gain traction with a fan base, it is not an easy thing to accomplish.  For people who treat their artwork as a profession and not as a hobby, it is not always viable to simply promote work on social media sites and hope for the best.  Amos Pizzey wants to give professional artists a better tool on the web that can help them not just gain attention, but find paying work.  This cool person in technology founded his company Talenthouse in order to give artists the equivalent of a professional networking site like LinkedIn.  Read more »