It makes sense: New parents are already in the mindset of spending, given how expensive a baby is. And the classic helicopter parent is one with plenty of free time and disposable income to harass the middle school principle with. Here are a couple ways that gadget companies are poised to swoop in. Nest Is Moving in On “Thoughtful Home” Products Nest just filed a patent for a “smart” baby crib, Recode reports....

As an aside: This is why nobody should care about how unique an idea is. Just being unique won’t help a startup, and the ones that think they’re the most unique are usually the ones that are the most likely to fail immediately. Last week, the community at /r/Entrepreneur settled in to figure out which startup ideas fail the most often. Here’s the cream of the terrible idea crop....

You can easily find a product manager who’s a great fit for a startup at the validation phase but a terrible fit for one at the scaling phase. Picking the right one for your company can be a slippery slope. But it’s definitely possible to line up the right ones at the right times. To make this easier for you, here are six phases of startups and the type of product manager that best corresponds with each:...

The report evaluated the number of startups based in 10 US cities. While the Bay Area reigns supreme with double the next closest competitor, cities like New York, Boston and Washington DC are making a push to compete with the startup haven. And with a weak score among some connectivity factors on the part of the California area, these cities could be higher up the list before you know it....

Shortly after that, Google Home fully established itself in the market with a product that can integrate with all your Google accounts and a notably persistent marketing campaign. Considering many tech enthusiasts already have a Gmail account, a Google calendar, and maybe even a Google Play Music account, their second place status didn’t hinder their ability to make moves in the voice assistant race to the top. Now, another tech giant is throwing their name in the ring, as Microsoft’s voice assistant Cortana has found a home in Harman Kardon’s Invoke speaker....

The mobile app was designed to be a stripped-down version of the main YouTube app, available on Android — its features are limited so that it better functions in locations with bad or costly data connectivity. But, the reasoning goes, the app hasn’t proved useful and popular enough to keep around. Current YouTube Go users are encoraged to download the non-stripped-down YouTube app instead. YouTube Go’s Time Has YouTube Gone YouTube Go will begin sunsetting in August, though there’s no word on how long the process will take....

Scams have become a regular part of online life in recent years, which means that finding ways to protect yourself is key to your continued enjoyment of the world wide web. Between ransomware attacks holding your data hostage to phishing emails tricking you into giving it up yourself, knowing what kind of scams are out there is the first step in protecting yourself. That’s why we’re getting the word out that a new scam is using keyword-laden PDFs to get your personal information with you even realizing it....

We’ll all bite the bullet on the service charges because we love music, but that doesn’t make extra fees any more fun to deal with. It has this macabre way of killing the buzz a little bit knowing that your $7.00 ticket really cost $10 and some change: hey, that’s the price of a beer most places. Ticketleap knows exactly what I’m talking about here. They can relate because they try to move a lot of these cheaper tickets for smaller, community events and some people aren’t as forgiving with service fees....

The TikTok saga has been an interesting one. From an outright ban in India to the political firestorm it’s caused in the US, the video-sharing app has consistently been a source of controversy. Due to security concerns stemming from its Chinese parent company ByteDance, the White House stated the company must be sold to continue operations in the US. Now, it would appear the saga is coming to a close, with Oracle winning the bid to acquire TikTok....

Social media management can be a thorn in the side of many businesses — especially small ones without tech-savvy employees — so more support from apps like TikTok will lower the barrier of access to thousands. With Facebook no longer the epicenter of social media marketing (at least not for Gen Z), it’s no surprise that apps like TikTok are looking to make their app more amenable to business audiences....

It is not just your marketing department that has access to this information, of course, but also your buyers. The result has been a major disruption over the past few years in the way that products are sold. Now your buyers learn about your products, their market perception, and what the competition is offering through social media and many other sources—not your sales reps. While that has forever changed the battlefield, marketers now can make a huge impact on sales revenue using two very effective tools: Big Data and Social Selling....

And we’ll get right back to our gadget gift guides in a second, too. But for now, take a break to feast your eyes on this quick look at the absolute worst gadgets that will wind up beneath Christmas trees across the nation this year. The List The data behind the worst gadgets of 2017 comes from Giftcards.com, which polled 1,000 shopping Americans to find out which ones want what....

Check out this selection of apps to get ready for Halloween the right way: Jumpy Rope This endless arcade jumper game featuring low poly-graphic and super simple gameplay mechanics is just great to fill up a few minutes. As its title already reveals, Jumpy Rope is focused around one simple task: jumping the rope. It sounds like an easy task, but if you’ve jumped the rope before, you know that it isn’t....

It’s called TractionTank, and at its core it was designed to be entirely different from any other accelerator. Epperson and Morrow built it as a lean accelerator, narrowing down the field of their focus into one market niche – we’ve actually been seeing a lot of new accelerators do this. TractionTank focuses exclusive on product-market fit, market testing, and generating provable market traction. However, these two took it beyond a niche to distinguish TractionTank from the pack....

Offering impeccable customer support in the days of fast fleeing social media updates and immediate rants becomes quite a challenge, especially for small companies with limited personnel. Taking this into account, Trakdesk has developed a new way to manage customer expectations and turn your customer reps into a ninja team. How Trakdesk Works Trakdesk software is action-packed with multiple support features, which help you to keep the support team relatively small, yet highly efficient....

But concerns have been raised around data, privacy and security. So what is the Verily company? How does the screening site work? And what has the reaction been like to the launch? What is Verily? Verily is a healthcare and life sciences company. It’s a part of Alphabet, Google’s parent company. It’s been reported that staff from Verily, Google and Alphabet worked on the screening site project. Verily was started in 2015, aiming to utilize health data to help people live more healthily....

Village Capital, in collaboration with Kaiser Permanente Community Health, has launched Health: US 2018, a unique venture program focused on supporting early-stage companies that are solving the critical challenges that older Americans face as they age. They hope to address the barriers that must be overcome to solve these problems, all while supporting the innovation of these new technologies. According to their website, they specifically hope to: Enable aging in place;Create workforce opportunities for an aging population and tap into the potential latency of seniors;Plan and communicate an individual’s last wishes;Decrease isolation and increase social engagement;Improve the social, emotional, and/or educational support for caregivers;Improve access to health services;Assist in managing the financials, such as paying bills and handling investments and social security, for the individual as they age and/or for the designated caregiver; orFind and organize affordable, quality support services, such as transportation, caregiving, cleaning, and meal preparation....

Scammers love to take advantage of chaos. Whether it be the fear of the pandemic or the stress of the holiday season, scams always see a notable uptick during some of the most chaotic times of the year. Unfortunately, that means that tax season is ripe for the picking, and government agencies are doing their best to prepare everyday people for the onslaught of potential security threats. IRS Warns of Increased Threat During Tax Season In a post from the IRS last month, the government agency noted that tax season is a particularly fervent time for scammers looking to get a piece of your personal information....

While you may operate exclusively online, searches are becoming more personalized and more likely to be based on locality. You still have to take it into account. This article is going to show you how with the following marketing strategies. Make Your Business Local What can you do to make your business local? It has to go further than serving customers from the area. You need a physical presence in order to do this....

Target’s Feeling the Pressure Greg Ng, VP of digital engagement at PointSource, issued a statement on the acquisition, arguing that the investment in a faster shipping service points to Target’s renewed effort to improve the customer experience in general. The Future Is Frictionless Furthermore, Ng predicts this is just the start: Friction-reducing tactics will spread fast across the entire retail industry. Read more about online shopping on TechCo Image: Wikimedia