Computer Support Blog

Analytics and data collection is hot area in the technology industry.  There are countless analytics startups trying to help both large corporations and small businesses grow.  However, cool person in technology Rob Mancabelli believes that analytics can help improve more than just business.  Mancabelli is a former teacher and educational technology director that wants to get schools on the analytics bandwagon in order to find better ways to help young students.  Mancabelli’s company BrightBytes has developed a product for schools that provides actionable data that can help institutions improve children’s experiences and increase their learning.  Mancabelli wants to measure how students interact with what’s available at school and seeing what policy changes affect positive change statistically.  If his product can provide these insights, Mancabelli’s analytics could have a major impact on education.  For example, if analytics prove students using the computer lab more often frequently receive better grades, then there is viable data school officials can use to acquire more funds for things like IT support.  Just knowing the most effective ways to spend a school’s limited funds could make serious change in many kids’ educations. Read more »

Many social networking sites claim to connect people and bring them together, but these connections often exist only in the virtual world of the Internet.  Cool person in technology Kate Spivak believes that connections, whether professional or personal, are much stronger when made in the flesh.  That’s why this cool person founded BlendAbout, a new Internet startup that connects people of similar interests online and then also connects them in the real world.  Spivak’s company accomplishes this by matching up people with similar interests and placing them into group dinners designed for personal and professional networking.  BlendAbout meetings connect six people with similar interests according to their profiles and reserve a meal for them at a restaurant they can all travel to conveniently.  People can use these dinners to meet other people in their professional field or others who share their hobbies.  Rather than only posting comments back and forth in a forum or chat room on the web, Spivak’s startup aims to connect people in the physical world as well.  Read more »

Using crowdsourcing to answer questions has been a staple of the web for a very long time. Just look at the prevalence of crowdsourced encyclopedia Wikipedia over the years.  Other companies have recently turned the crowdsourcing model to professional services as well.  Sites like 99Designs have made the model applicable to freelance graphic design work and become very successful.  Now, a cool person in technology named Josef Dunne has founded a company named BabelVerse that takes the crowdsourcing model and applies it to another service—professional translations.  Read more »

Hotels often live and die by their reputation.  The famous star rating system and referrals from previous travelers are what bring most people to the lobbies of hotels all around the world.  Reputation is key in the hospitality business and the opinion of a hotel’s guests dictates its reputation.  Now, there is a cool product in technology that helps hotels connect better with their customers.  GuestDriven gives hotels the tools to engage and provide for their guests to gain insight into what they need to improve their experience.  GuestDriven then also encourages guests to become brand ambassadors, spreading the good word about particular locations to other potential customers and improving overall business for the hotel.  GuestDriven accomplishes all of these goals through mobile technology.  Read more »

Outplacement for employees after layoffs is never easy for anyone.  It means a period of frustrating uncertainty for the unlucky worker and potential public relations or legal problems for an employer if handled poorly.  The difficulty surrounding the state of the U.S. job market only exacerbates this situation.  Whether someone works in the office computer repair, healthcare, sales or anything else, the difficulty of finding new jobs can seem insurmountable.  Fortunately, cool person in technology Sanjay Sathe doesn’t believe that it has to be that way and he has created a product that helps both companies performing layoffs and laid-off employees during the outplacement process. Read more »

The percentage of Internet traffic that comes from mobile users steadily increases every business quarter and every year.  People engage with the web on their phones and tablets just as much as they do through a standard desktop or laptop.  In many cases, people use their mobile devices even more than their PCs or Macs. Companies need to do as much as possible to accommodate the growing mobile marketplace if they want to advertise their products, services or content successfully.  While major corporations have the resources to develop mobile applications  for themselves and their subsidiaries, privately owned small businesses find themselves at a disadvantage in the age of mobile technology These smaller companies often don’t have the internal business computer services and resources to easily develop mobile versions of their website.  However, thanks to cool product PadSquad, these companies have another option. Read more »

Every salesperson knows that repeat business is invaluable when it comes to long-term revenue gains.  Creating a strong customer base with people who consistently come back to the same company for what they need forms a foundation that allows businesses to grow.  Whether the business is a restaurant, office computer repair company, plumbing service or retail shop, this principle remains the same.  Creating repeat customers is one of the most profitable things a salesperson can do for his product and company.  Cool person in technology Kevin Dykes believes he can help online businesses increase their customer retention rates with his new service RetentionGrid. Read more »

Creating engaging advertising is one of the hardest challengers that most marketing teams face.  Banner ads and invasive video ads often do more to turn off viewers than actually interest them in a product or service.  This situation gives marketing professionals a particularly difficult challenge when it comes to advertising on the web.  The good news for them, however, is that there exists a cool product in the tech industry that can help them create interactive ad experiences that are far more likely to get viewers’ attention.  That cool product goes by the name of Jivox. Read more »

Any company that wants to sell to an international audience needs a reliable and scalable way to translate their written contact, whether it be advertising or part of the project itself.  However, bad or awkward translations can be damning to a business that wants to appear professional and legitimate in a new market.  Word-for-word translations and computer software will not be able to create nuanced translations in multiple languages.  It doesn’t matter how much a computer support specialist helps a business tweak translation software. That company will never get software to create high-quality written translations for the written content that they promote.  While software helps with the issue of scalability, the technology is not at a point where it can produce the quality that enterprises need.

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Data entry is never anyone’s favorite task in a sales job.  Sales professionals always prefer to spend more time connecting with clients and working out deals rather than typing details into a computer system.  Filling out forms with customer information, dates, and progress reports often feels like wasted time.  However, these processes remain necessary parts of a sales operation, much to the chagrin of anyone who sells. Read more »