If you are waiting in wings and have a plan to join the cozy club in heaven, now is apparently a good time. Next week signifies the start of the infamous Tetrad that will see four blood-red lunar eclipses followed by six full moons.
It is a cycle that has just started and is slated to end in September 2015. This cosmological event is so rare that NASA confirms it has happened only three times in the last 500 years.
2014 was supposed to be “the year of wearable tech,” but four months in, it seems clear that it’s going to take some time for wearables to go mainstream. The majority of attention is being paid to smartbands and smartwatches, and new entries to the market keep coming. Google has announced their expansion outside of Glass with smartwatch Android Wear, Nissan has unveiled a watch concept that would pair wearable tech with the car industry, Disney has made headlines with their new smartbands for guests, even Will.i.am is developing a smartwatch. The competition to be the star of tech that lives on our wrists is intense, but so far it is unclear whether consumers—even tech-hungry Millennials— are going to embrace these innovations. Research suggests that one-third of those who have purchased wearable tech abandoned their devices after just six months of use, causing some to wonder if the “next big thing” in tech is a harder sell than brands previously suspected. One of the big issues of wristband and Glass technology is that currently it is very noticeable and not necessarily stylish. We wrote that wearable tech would have to be either beautiful or undetectable to be embraced by a broader audience than the techie crowd, and the makers of these devices are heeding the warning, with Google partnering with glasses-maker Luxxotica for more fashionable Glass frames, and Intel working with Opening Ceremony and Barneys New York to create a wristband that actually looks cool.
So what will the future of wearable tech actually look like?
I go into the garage for a hammer.
On my way back into the house, I stop for a cold drink and remember that the kitchen trash needs to be taken out for tomorrow’s collection.
Dropping the can at the curb, I turn and notice that the landscaper forgot to turn on the drip irrigation system, so I trot over and flip the switch. I walk back into the house and realize that I forgot to put the cold bottle of water back into the fridge. I open the door and find my hammer, sitting on the top shelf, chilling next to a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.
I’m glad I found the hammer. The only question is, “What did I need it for in the first place?”
The antidepressant Venlafaxine sold under the brand name Effexor is a pharmaceutical success story; in a single year, U.S. doctors prescribed it more than 17 million times. It’s not without controversy. As Medline Plus points out, it’s among a group of antidepressants that were linked to suicidal behavior in children, teenagers and young adults.
But while that risk has been well reported, most people don’t know that Venlafaxine is also uniquely dangerous to household pets. Especially cats. “Cats love to eat it,” says Dr. Tina Wismer, medical director of the Animal Poison Control Center operated by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals ASPCA. She speculates that it may be something about the way this particular antidepressant smells. “It’s crazy when you think about how hard it is normally to give a cat a pill. But in this case they’ll swallow multiple pills.”
Building a successful business is typically done by trial and error, with many hurdles along the way. And when it’s your first company, every day involves making mistakes and learning something new.
We asked small-business owners around America to tell us the one thing they wished they’d known when they first started their businesses.
We’ve broken out some of the best to serve as a primer on getting as much as possible right the first time around.
One topic I see referenced quite often in personal finance books – especially books focused on retirement – is the idea of rebalancing. It’s often discussed as though the writer assumes that the reader knows what rebalancing is, but given the confusion I sometimes see in reader emails, I don’t think the idea of rebalancing is often clear to people.
So, let’s walk step by step through the story of rebalancing. I’m going to look at this with regards to retirement savings, but it’s true for any kind of investments.
A large opportunity exists for businesses to use ebooks as marketing vehicles. With an emphasis on audience engagement over hitting the best-seller lists, a small business entrepreneur can succeed in ways the competition hasn’t yet pursued.
Five Ways Ebooks Can Help Your Business
1. Share your expertise and assert your excellence: Ebooks are a great way to demonstrate your domain knowledge in an easy-to-read and enjoyable format. Providing your audience more value through an ebook will make them more likely to trust you.
The Lumen is the first of its kind: a bicycle designed specifically for city riding with integrated retro-reflection.
This patented innovation returns any light that hits the Lumen’s frame and wheels directly back to the light source. Available single speed or fully geared, in 5 sizes, the Lumen is the world’s first commercially available retro-reflective bicycle. At night, with direct light, the Lumen’s frame and rims glow with dramatic effect. There’s no on/off switch, no batteries required. This integrated illumination helps identify the rider to surrounding road users.
With more than 1 billion email users worldwide, businesses are realizing email marketing is no longer something they can go without. Instead of spending their time filling a consumer’s physical mailbox, businesses now target inboxes instead. Recent research shows that businesses are dedicating more money to email marketing than any other marketing strategy. From company newsletters to loyalty coupons, businesses are using email marketing in a variety of new ways to connect with their customers. For those just getting started with email marketing, there are a number of services that can provide the necessary software and tools to create and manage campaigns directly from your computer.
Bitcoin is coming soon to a town near you. Or, more likely, it’s already there.
The five-year-old digital currency is increasingly being adopted by brick-and mortar businesses, including dentists, pet boutiques — even a small honey business in Utah.
In 2012, about 1,000 businesses used BitPay, the largest processor of Bitcoin payments. Today, more than 26,000 businesses worldwide use BitPay, said Tony Gallippi, its cofounder and CEO.
