Computer Support Blog

For the Holiday Season, 2011, one of the hottest gifts on the market was the Amazon Kindle Fire.  Amazon released the right product, at the right time, to compete against Apple’s iPad and the Barnes & Noble Nook line.  Moving out of the pure e-reader market, Amazon moved closer to a full tablet computer with the Kindle Fire e-reader.  Their gambit (and marketing) paid off: the Amazon Kindle was one of the most-bought, most-desired electronic devices of the fourth Quarter, 2011. Read more »

Companies in the tech sector most frequently rise using a single service or main product line.  With success comes emulation – or imitation – and many times, the pioneers in a field find themselves surpassed by new companies that offer a newer or better version of what the pioneering company originally innovated.  Companies that want to remain viable in the tech sector have to adapt and usually diversify in order to grow and survive.  Yahoo! has been having a rough couple of years in the shadow of Google’s ascendency.  But Mickie Rosen is working hard to turn Yahoo’s fortunes around. Read more »

For many people, the idea of teleconferencing was a novelty idea in television shows like Star Trek and Mission: Impossible!  In one of the most pragmatic translations of science fiction into technological fact, communicating virtually instantaneously using both visual images and an audio transmission is now a reality.  One of the coolest pieces of hardware that makes this possible is the Polycom Unified Conference Station. Read more »

Jargon, words specific to an industry, profession, or setting, tends to pop up with what a layperson might find to be an alarming frequency in articles that pertain to developments within the tech sector.  As a result, readers are bombarded with numbers and terms that many writers simply assume their readers are familiar with: USB, FireWire, Ivy Bridge, etc.  To help demystify the tech sector and make technical jargon more accessible to non-tech readers, we occasionally explore a common jargon term.  Today’s exploration is API. 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 »

One of the nice aspects of a successful product or service offered through the Internet is that frequently, clones pop up!  Every good idea offered by the Internet seems to be replicated for a different market or niche than the original site and it is interesting to see which services survive the competition and where the derivative sites outdo the original.  Netflix, for example, moved into the digital movie streaming business and when it found success with that, Amazon Prime and other, smaller, services were developed by competitors.  Now, there are many video streaming sites on the Internet, many of them specialized for a specific, niche.  For television lovers who want to be able to stream their favorite shows, there is Hulu Plus. Read more »

At last week’s Google I/O conference, many new products were introduced, not all of them ready for the marketplace just yet.  Most of the products were very much to be expected from the search giant who now seems to have its hands in everything.  Google, through its Android operating system has become more associated with gadgets in recent years, instead of just being considered an Internet software/search pioneer.  As a result, the fact that the I/O conference was used to generate enthusiasm (and preorders) for new products like Google Glass and Nexus devices was predictable.  What was truly audacious was the way Google declared war on Amazon and the Apple iTunes store by unveiling a new shopping platform: Google Play Store. Read more »

California is the home to so many tech sector jobs that it is almost hard to believe that anywhere else in the country would have any tech jobs that needed filling!  Part of the reason so many start-ups and enduring tech sector businesses take root in California is because of the colleges.  Some of the world’s most renowned universities for science and technology are located in California: UCLA, Stanford, and the University of California at Berkeley, to name a few.  Many businesses work to recruit ambitious, technical-minded employees right out of college.  That is what happened with Alicia Chen. Read more »

Social networking is, truly, one of the benefits of the Internet that were not entirely conceived when the World Wide Web was first being conceived as a communications tool.  The reality, however, is that human beings are social animals and Internet social networking allows people to connect in ways they never were able to before.  The result is that the Internet is now home to massive social networks like Facebook, Myspace, and Google+, and obscure, theme-based social networks like the artist community Elftown.  What is fascinating to see is how sites that begin as one type of website, like a sale’s site, can quickly turn into a social networking hub.  That is what happened with Ju-Ju-Be.com. Read more »

Not long ago, we presented a list of common computer components that wear out as part of the natural use of one’s computer.  While power supplies, monitors, charging ports, and CPU fans are frequent causes of headaches for computer owners, they are not the only computer parts that are likely to fail over time as you use your computer.  Other computer components that frequently fail include: Read more »