Category: Tools and Information

Intuit QuickBooks Introduces Tap to Pay on iPhone for Seamless Contactless Payments | Small Biz Trends

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Intuit has announced the launch of Tap to Pay on iPhone for QuickBooks Online customers in the U.S., providing small and mid-market businesses with a streamlined way to accept in-person contactless payments using only an iPhone. The new functionality enables QuickBooks users to manage their business finances more efficiently while improving cash flow and payment processing.

“With Tap to Pay on iPhone, we’re giving customers a competitive advantage that accelerates cash flow, business growth, and customer loyalty,” David Hahn, SVP, QuickBooks Money Platform says. “What makes Tap to Pay on iPhone unique for QuickBooks customers, is that it allows them to streamline their in-person payments and seamlessly connect them to their books and our end-to-end services, putting their full business finances all in one place. This new feature, coupled with our AI-powered platform and ‘done-for-you’ experiences, empowers small businesses to reach new levels of growth and success.”

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Apple MacBook Air 13 (M4, 2025) review: the best small laptop ever | Digital Trends

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In our previous reviews of the Apple MacBook Air, we’ve rated it as the best 13-inch laptop but stopped short of giving it a perfect score. With the advent of Apple’s M4 chipset, which isn’t a sea change over the M3 but is nevertheless significantly stronger, I don’t see any reason to hold back.

We can dispute if a laptop with a 13.6-inch display is officially in the 13-inch category or better belongs to the 14-inch laptop segment. But who really cares? The MacBook Air 13 is incredibly thin, light enough to be highly portable, very fast, and oh-so-efficient. It’s a remarkable accomplishment in terms of making hardware that’s sheer genius, and it doesn’t hurt that the entry level price of $1,000 now applies to the current chipset and includes a more reasonable 16GB of RAM.

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Stop Using Your Business Like a Personal ATM—Here’s Why It’s Killing Your Startup | The Startup Magazine

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Launching a startup is exhilarating. The freedom, the hustle, the endless possibilities. But let’s talk about a silent killer lurking in the shadows of many young businesses: treating your company like a personal piggy bank.

Entrepreneurs, listen up. If you keep dipping into your business funds whenever you need to cover rent, book that spontaneous getaway, or upgrade your lifestyle before your company can handle it, you’re strangling your own success.

Let’s break down why this cash management habit is so destructive—and how you can stop before it’s too late.

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Trump does not rule out recession as trade war escalates | BBC News

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US President Donald Trump has refused to say whether the US economy is facing a recession or price rises in the wake of his administration’s flip-flopping on tariff threats against some of its closest trading partners.

Asked if he was expecting a recession this year, Trump said there was a “period of transition” taking place.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, however, insisted there would be no contraction in the world’s largest economy, while acknowledging that the price of some goods may rise.

It comes after a volatile week for US financial markets as investors grappled with uncertainty from his administration’s U-turn on some key parts of its aggressive trade policies.

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6 Ways to Spot and Capitalize on Emerging Social Media Trends | Entrepreneur

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Social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to small businesses and entrepreneurs. Currently, 84% of all consumers check out a brand’s social media page before making a purchase, resulting in about 20% of all sales coming directly through links from social media. For this reason, entrepreneurs often prioritize getting as much visibility on social media as possible. One of the most effective ways to accomplish this is by creating viral content and taking advantage of emerging trends.

The challenge with trends is that they only create a very short window of opportunity, lasting just a few days or weeks. These trends can be difficult to spot when they are just warming up. Most brands that try to capitalize on trends do so when the trend is fizzling out and don’t get the most benefit. Companies that can jump on the leading edge of a trend can significantly improve their ability to be prioritized by the social media platform’s algorithm and gain massive momentum from going viral. This can result in thousands, if not millions, of additional views to your post or social media profile. A single viral post can completely change the trajectory of your business’s long-term success.

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Best of MWC 2025: The age of ultra-thin phones is upon us | Mashable

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If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that it’s impossible to judge how interesting the Mobile World Congress will be based on pre-announcements and teasers.

Yeah, we knew the Nothing phones are coming, and Xiaomi’s new phones weren’t exactly a secret, either. But at the show floor, we’ve also found some extremely thin phones, some wonderfully weird (but useful!) phone accessories, and we even got the first real-life glimpse of Xiaomi’s new supercar.

Here’s a list of the best and the most interesting stuff we’ve seen this year.

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The housing market has shifted in favor of buyers — depending on where you live | CNN Business

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Americans looking to purchase a home in certain US cities might be pleasantly surprised to find the tide is shifting their way this spring after years of challenging affordability.

There were 3.7 months of for-sale supply on the market in January, the most in six years, according to a recent Redfin analysis. That means it would take more than three months to sell all the homes that were listed for sale in January, given monthly average sales volume.

The findings point to a housing market where sellers are slowly losing leverage after years of having the upper hand. Generally, more than four months of supply sitting on the market indicates a full-tilt buyers’ market.

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Why can’t you tickle yourself? | Live Science

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For many of us, the tickling response is paradoxical — the playfulness it inspires is typically enjoyable, but the overstimulated nerves and loss of control can feel distressing. Whether you find it enjoyable, uncomfortable or somewhere in between, you can’t tickle yourself. But why?

The answer has to do with the brain already knowing about and downplaying the expected, predictable sensation of the self-tickle, experts told Live Science.

“It’s because the brain is always predicting into the future,” David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, told Live Science. “Brains are not just reactive; they are trying to guess ahead at what’s going to come next.”

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10 Leadership Goals You Should Set | Business News Daily

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Being a leader is not just a position in a hierarchy, a higher pay grade or additional responsibilities – it is a skill set that you should be continually developing. Every leader at every level of experience and skill has room for growth, but the thought of setting and achieving leadership goals may leave you wondering where to begin. There are 10 basic leadership development goals that, depending on your position and skill level, you should strive toward. Once you have identified the goal(s) you want to strive for, the next step is to develop an action plan to help you achieve them and track your progress. Following this process will help you become the leader your organization deserves.

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What Lead Qualification Is and How It Works | Business News Daily

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Successful business owners know how to focus on providing great products and services and finding new customers at the same time. Generating new leads is the first step to driving new business, but it’s important to determine which leads are more likely to pay off.

Qualifying your leads can increase the number you convert to customers. Doing so is no small feat; only 1 in 5 leads ultimately becomes a customer. This means that for every new customer you get, there are four who were not persuaded to use your products or services. That’s a lot of time and money lost but smart lead qualification can minimize this concern.

What is lead qualification?

Lead qualification is the process of predicting the likelihood that a sales prospect will become a customer. To inform this prediction, you’ll need to gather data about your prospects through lead capture forms and other processes conducted in the lead generation process. While lead qualification begins at the top of the sales funnel, it doesn’t end there ― it continues up until your prospect becomes a paying customer.

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