On the Rise of the Rest tour we’ll be hosting events in every city, including a startup pitch competition which I’ll be hosting. There will also be a fireside chat in every city. Each evening will conclude with a happy hour to connect further with the community. In Raleigh, I’ll be interviewing Steve Case in a fireside chat. I got a chance to talk with Steve Case at South by Southwest where he shared his thoughts on the third wave of the Internet and share some details on this upcoming bus tour....

Phase 1 – Early, prohibitively expensive models The pioneers of consumer technology are always prohibitively expensive. They serve to showcase the technology and tantalize the public, but they are rarely affordable, and the technology involved is rarely fully baked. In the case of HDTVs, the first generation televisions ran several thousand dollars for even moderately priced sets. In the case of smartphones and tablets, resistive touchscreen technology, black-and-white screens, and unsuccessful operating systems prevented these devices from being universally useful....

1: Influencer Marketing I’ve said it before: With the success of ad-blockers, influencer marketing will only become more and more popular. People already like listening to the recommendation of someone they trust, and once banner ads are weeded out once and for all, marketers will open up their influencer budgets even more. Here’s MarketingDive on the world of influencer marketing in 2017: 2: Retention Strategies Here’s Ellen Valentine, Marketing Evangelist at IBM, on the shifting marketing trends of customer acquisition:...

Getting startup funding as a tiny or even barely existent business is a massive chore, but in the tech community of 2016, it can be broken down into just four different methods. And the one that everyone thinks of first — knocking on the door of your friendly neighborhood venture capitalist — is actually the last option you should try. Here’s the list: 1: Bootstrapping Pros: You retain maximum ownership....

Whilst password managers can be used to create passwords long enough to withstand brute-forcing attacks, MFA-busting techniques are starting to become increasingly common. The threat actor, in this case, is still on the loose and creating malicious domains at a “relentless” pace. Phishing for a Catch Researchers from security firm Zscaler noticed a sharp uptick in the number of phishing attempts taking place across specific industries. All the phishing attacks, according to the security team, began with an email sent to the victim....

The Little Prince – Bubble Pop Journey I’m sure you all heard about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s iconic masterpiece, The Little Prince. To add more value, the developers at Genera Games made this iconic figure the lead in their bubble shooter game. You will play with the Little Prince and help him succeed! Besides reading quotes from the books, you’ll also meet all the favorite characters from the book. Download The Little Prince – Bubble Pop Journey for free from the App Store or Google Play....

Frundraise enables athletes to support a charity and raise money for it as part of their training for an event. Athletes start their fundraiser with a monetary goal on the website and invite family and friends to support them. Then they put up all their workout details so their supporters will know how hard they are training to raise money for the charity and (hopefully) become to donate even more....

Unfortunately, as time went on, Twitter became victim to the internet’s seedy under belly as trolls flooded the platform with everything from racist rants to sexist slander. Fortunately, ten years after the problem arose, they’re finally doing something about it. How to Mute a Troll That’s right, Twitter will finally be safe thanks to a wide range of changes made to the platform. In addition to several updates, the social media platform will be adding a muting feature that will help users control what they want to see....

MoPub lets mobile application publishers manage and optimize multiple sources of advertising like direct ads, house ads, ad networks, and real-time bidding. Thus, Twitter plans to use their technology to bolster their advertising options to help reach an overall goal of $1 billion in revenue by 2014. In addition to reaching their $1 billion goal, Twitter is looking to utilize MoPub’s advertising technology to build real-time bidding into the Twitter ads platform....

We might wager that part of what makes collaboration so important to entrepreneurs is that it has a measurable effect and impact on not just their own ideas, but also on the communities they support. Recently Switch SUPERNAP, a Las Vegas based colocation data center, announced that they would be embarking on a collaboration effort with Intel and the University of Las Vegas (UNLV). Together, these three institutions will be bringing one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers to Las Vegas....

For comparison, that number is 18 times larger than it was in 2017 — a massive increase, and around one fourth of all reported fraud losses in the year. The sudden rise of successful online fraud has plenty of causes, from new trends like cryptocurrency to the pandemic, which has packed more people into online spaces than ever. The FTC’s Findings It’s not just the dollar amount that’s up. In 2021, the number of people who reported money lost to fraud was north of 95,000, more than double the year prior....

For a while, I thought that only pertained to a small segment of people, but when I got involved with the tech startup community, I realized how far off that assumption was. Tech entrepreneurs are the perfect embodiment of his advice as they work every day to stretch their creative minds. When Prometheus Trotsky, classically trained oil painter and sculptor, founded Octa in 2010 at the International CES, normality was never on the agenda, and he had a problem to solve....

In the fall of 2015, The Happiness Research Institute published a study called The Facebook Experiment. The experiment involved 1,095 Danish citizens; half of them were asked to refrain from Facebook for a week, while the other half were not. Here are some stats of the participants’ daily Facebook usage before the experiment: 94 percent of participants used Facebook daily;78 percent used Facebook 30 minutes or more daily;69 percent prefer to post pictures of the great things they experience; and61 percent prefer to post their good sides on Facebook....

This Google Photos scam email has it all – false pretences, a fake giveaway of an item worth thousands, and playing on real fears about how your personal media could be used by a tech giant. It only takes a momentary lapse in judgement to fall for a phishing email scam. We explain what to watch out for with this one, plus how to stay ahead of scammers and phishing threats....

Throughout 2017 and beyond, WeWork plans to host events around the world in hopes recognizing and rewarding people who are thinking differently. By showcasing creators that are using fresh new projects to achieve real change, WeWork hopes they can truly support innovative ideas from aspiring entrepreneurs, inside and outside of their network. The Creator Awards will be taking place in a wide range of cities across the world, including Washington DC, Detroit, Austin, London, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Mexico City, and New York....

The Hugo Awards, first established in 1954 and announced during an annual ceremony at the World Science Fiction Convention (that’s WorldCon to you), are kind of like the Oscars for science fiction and fantasy literature. Awards range from the best short story and best novella to the best semi-pro magazine or the best fan artist. So how did an awards platform — particularly one with a long-time core membership of white baby boomers — get diversity recognition so right?...

One of the biggest challenges in the edtech space is finding alignment between what teachers need and what innovators are creating. This hurdle presents itself in every sector, and entrepreneurs must ask an essential question: am I putting my user’s deepest needs at the core of my product? As an edtech entrepreneur and cofounder of ThinkCERCA, an online literacy program that helps students develop critical reading and writing skills, I’ve learned that the best way to bridge the gap between educators and edtech developers is to collaborate....

I needed to find a new barber. Unlike the last time five years prior, I remembered noticing barbers posting their finished product haircuts on local geotargeted hashtags that I would peruse from time to time. I wanted to see the barbers or hair stylists work before actually booking with a new barber or hair salon. So I opened up Instagram and checked out the hashtag #Scottsdale where I live and work and started scrolling through pictures looking for some of the work of local barbers in my area....

Contactless, EMV or Both? Customers have noted their struggle to figure out what to adopt as some of their patrons prefer the contactless method, using digital wallet tools to complete sales without having to pull out a physical credit or debit card, while others like to use physical cards and are looking for the security that EMV chip readers provide them. Some digital wallets are now starting to support online payments as well, making it more of a struggle to select one over the other in terms of payment acceptance equipment....

< REGISTER FOR THE EVENT HERE > We’ll have a handful of Vegas startups on hand showcasing their goods, but before the event kicks off, we want to know what you think – who is Tech Cocktail Week’s Hottest Showcasing Startup? Let us know your thoughts by answering the poll at the end of this post (ends at 6:00pm local time on the day of the event). The winner will be announced live at the event and will receive a couple of minutes on stage to pitch their startup in front of all attendees....