More Entrepreneurs Needed: Women Hold the Key to Economic Expansion | Getentrepreneurial.com

October 10, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

According to a report conducted by the Kauffman Foundation, supporting women-led businesses could have a huge positive impact on the economic growth of the U.S. Over the last few decades, more women have started to enter the workforce, and they began to outshine males in degrees. This led to women helping the U.S. economy by creating huge economic gains.

However, many have said that the annual economic growth of 3 percent has slowed down with the Kaufmann report suggesting that this could hit a low of 2 percent in the next few years. What’s the answer to boosting this growth again? Women.

Facebook Finishes Its “Secret Conversations” Encryption Rollout to Messenger Users | WIRED

October 6, 2016October 5, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

LAST SPRING WHATSAPP pushed out code adding a new layer of security to a billion users’ apps, creating the largest end-to-end encrypted messaging network in history. Now WhatsApp’s parent company Facebook has finally given people who use its other massively popular chat app the chance to catch up.

A Facebook spokesperson tells WIRED the company just finished rolling out “Secret Conversations” to all 900 million Facebook Messenger users in the past few weeks. The opt-in feature allows users to encrypt their messages so that no one can read them except the two people on either end of a conversation—not even Facebook or law enforcement or intelligence agencies. “Your messages are already secure, but Secret Conversations are encrypted from one device to another,” states a description in the app when users initiate their first encrypted conversation.

Jack Dorsey Is Losing Control of Twitter | Bloomberg

October 6, 2016October 5, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

A few days before Twitter’s Sept. 8 board meeting, as the company’s finance team readied a presentation, it received conflicting directions on a crucial question. Should their slides reflect Twitter’s prospects as an independent company or delve into the benefits of getting acquired?

Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive officer, argued that the 10-year-old company should remain on its current course and work to capitalize on recent product improvements and success in streaming live video, people familiar with the discussions said. Ev Williams, a former CEO who has a history of clashing with Dorsey, was in favor of exploring a sale. Other directors agreed they had a fiduciary duty to consider that option. The board ultimately decided to consider takeover prospects after getting an expression of interest from a potential acquirer, which led it to hire Goldman Sachs and Allen & Co. to evaluate possible bids.

Ex-Tesla rival Fisker rejoins electric car race | BBC News

October 5, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Tesla’s former rival in pioneering electric cars, Henrik Fisker, has re-entered the electric car market announcing two new models.

Mr Fisker’s previous company, Fisker Automotive, founded in 2007, built luxury cars popular with celebrities until its high profile 2013 bankruptcy.

For his new venture, Mr Fisker has announced both a high-end car as well as an affordable mass-market model.

Carmakers worldwide are increasingly focusing on the electric market.

Reviving his rivalry with Tesla, Mr Fisker promised “a significantly longer battery life and range than any battery currently on the market”.

ING Plans to Shed 7,000 Jobs, Invest in Digital Platform | NBC News

October 3, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

ING plans to shed 7,000 jobs and invest heavily in its digital platforms to achieve annual savings $1 billion by 2021, the Netherlands’ largest financial services company said on Monday.

The layoffs represent slightly less than 12 percent of ING’s 52,000 workforce because nearly 1,000 are expected to come at suppliers rather than the company itself.

The job losses are the heaviest since 2009, when ING was forced to restructure and spin off its insurance activities after receiving a state bailout during the financial crisis.

Techstars selects the first class of its New York-based IoT accelerator | TechCrunch

September 29, 2016September 28, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Techstars has selected the first class for its New York-based internet of things accelerator. It’s the first program that Techstars has done with a consortium of industry partners instead of just linking up with a single, large corporate partner.

For the accelerator, the first class is the culmination of a year of work putting the pieces together for the new initiative. One of the big four accounting and consulting firms, PWC, was the first company to sign on to the Techstars vision.

Since the first agreement last October with PWC, General Electric, Verizon, Bosch and SAP have all come on board. General Electric has been pushing hard to remake itself as a more innovative company; while Bosch is making similar efforts. For its part, SAP has announced its own partnership with Bosch, and is aggressively pushing into the Internet of Things to counter moves made by its arch-nemesis, Cisco.

Apple To Abandon Lightning Port? iPhone’s Next Massive Gamble | Forbes

September 29, 2016September 28, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

First they came for the bulky 30-pin docking connector. Then the 3.5mm headphone jack was removed from the iPhone. What will Apple remove next? A newly granted patent published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office offers another clue. In a bid to reduce the physical imperfections on the iPhone’s external design, Apple could drop the lightning port.

Patent #9,453,976 was granted today, and details a system where data could flow between two devices through an optical interface. This would use a series of tiny holes that in concert would allow enough optical information to pass through:

Venezuela crisis: I flew to U.S. to buy toilet paper | CNN Money

September 28, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Carmen Mendoza came to New York to visit her daughter Anabella — and also to buy toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, beans, corn flour, tuna fish, mayonnaise and aspirin.

Mendoza, 66, can’t find these basic goods in her home country: Venezuela.

Venezuela’s deep economic recession has spiraled into a humanitarian crisis. Venezuelans are suffering through severe food and medical shortages while crime skyrockets and massive protests call for President Nicolas Maduro to resign.

Mendoza has spent the past month in New York with her daughter and realizes she’s lost a sense of what normalcy means. In Venezuela, she lived without toilet paper for a month in July, using paper napkins instead

The Bitcoin Revolution is Coming | Getentrepreneurial.com

September 28, 2016September 28, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

How can unrelated parties negotiate securely and transparently without having to rely on expensive intermediaries? Some programmers believe that bitcoin is the answer to that question and that it will revolutionize the way we do business.

What started as a nine page proposal in the white paper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” by Satoshi Nakamoto (whose true identity remains unknown), has now become the way that more than 200,000 transactions per day are done. The rising popularity of bitcoin has caused markets and financial institutions to invest in the development of products based on this revolutionizing technology.

To understand what the buzz over bitcoin is all about and how to make the most of it, we need to become familiar with the concepts of bitcoin and blockchain, the opportunities that they are creating, and the approach that regulators are taking.

FedEx Follows UPS in Announcing Shipping Rate Increases | Small Biz Trends

September 27, 2016September 26, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

FedEx Express, the popular express delivery and parcel shipping service, announced Monday it will increase shipping rates by an average of 3.9 percent for U.S. domestic, U.S. export and U.S. import deliveries. FedEx Ground and FedEx Home Delivery will also increase by an average of 4.9 percent. The new shipping rates will take effect January 2, 2017.

New FedEx Express Shipping Rates

In a nutshell, the recently announced FedEx rate changes include:

FedEx Express rates which will increase by an average of 3.9 percent for U.S. domestic, U.S. export, and U.S. import services,
FedEx Ground and FedEx Home Delivery rates which will increase by an average of 4.9 percent, with FedEx SmartPost rates also changing,
FedEx Express and FedEx Ground U.S. domestic dimensional weight advisor which will change from 166 to 139, and
FedEx Freight rates which will increase by an average of 4.9 percent.