The Travelmate connects to your smartphone to follow you wherever you travel. It's an essential item to have while running through the airport.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com 

Retirees have many good reasons to change where they live: climate, health care facilities, hobbies, crime rate, proximity to family. Cost of living is another big consideration—and on that front, state and local taxes may be a big component. [Bankrate.com recently offered up its overall ranking of the best and worst states for retirees.]

The graveyard of technology is riddled with failed products: remember the Apple Newton? Or Microsoft's Zune? How about Amazon's Fire Phone?

And yet in Silicon Valley "failing fast" is heralded as a virtue and, sometimes, even failing slowly can have unforeseeable benefits. Cutting-edge products may die an embarrassing death, but they often also lay the groundwork for better, more well-timed ideas that flourish later on. This is a list of failures, yes, but failures that led to success or may yet still lead to something world-changing. That's why we've called these technology's most successful failed products. Like an experiment gone awry, they can still teach us something about technology and how people want to use it.

Image: http://time.com 

Much has been written about the role of the creative economy as a key indicator of economic health. The “rise of the creative class” and “creative clusters” are concepts that inform the larger conversation on cities as the economic drivers of regions. As a result, everyone from academics to governments are increasingly looking for ways to measure the scope and size of the creative economy.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the creative economy accounts for 4.2% of the GDP and is valued at $704 billion. It’s also a segment of the economy that’s still growing. For example, art director and graphic design jobs are growing across the country at rates of 9% and 13%, respectively.

Image: http://www.visualcapitalist.com 

Unicorns pranced all over Twitter Sunday as users celebrated an imaginary holiday for an imaginary creature. But some Twitter folk weren't in the mood for make-believe. 

After all, who needs unicorns when majestic, spear-headed animals actually exist?

Case in point: the narwhal. The Arctic whale's spiral tusk can grow to more than nine feet long. It's also extremely sensitive, with up to 10 million nerve endings inside.

Image: KRISTIN LAIDRE/NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION 

In what proponents are calling a historic move, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and state legislative leaders announced a deal Saturday that will make tuition free at the City University of New York and State University of New York Systems -- for both community colleges and four-year colleges and universities -- for families with annual incomes up to $125,000. The plan will be phased in over three years, starting this fall with new enrollees from families with incomes up to $100,000.

The 30 regional finalists of the Chivas Venture social entrepreneurship competition are preparing for the global finale in LA this summer. Here are ten of those businesses – each with the potential to change the world.

Sea Harmony (Bulgaria) Mussel farms in the shape of vertical reefs help restore marine ecosystems in coastal areas affected by pollution and irresponsible fishing. Mussels enhance water quality for other species to grow, and are also a sustainable source of protein for human consumption.

ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND, April 11, 2017 – Five companies have been selected to present in front of a panel of judges consisting of industry leaders during the 2017 BioHealth Capital Region Forum, April 19-20 at the MedImmune campus in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Founded by BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) and MedImmune in 2016, the Crab Trap Competition focuses on companies in therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, healthcare services, e-health, mobile health, electronic medical records, health informatics, and biohealth cyber security. The grand prize this year is $10,000, incubation space in either Prince William County, VA or Montgomery Country, MD, and business mentoring. The 2nd Annual Crab Trap Competition is sponsored by Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Last year’s winner of the Crab Trap Competition was Sonavex, Inc., a Johns Hopkins University spin-off simplifying point-of-care ultrasound imaging to increase its utility.

In 1850, there were 150 glaciers in Glacier National Park. Now there are 25. Within 15 years, scientists project, all the glaciers may have melted away.

Similar melting is happening around the rest of the world (though other glaciers may survive a bit longer). A set of before-and-after photos published in the Geological Society of America’s GSA Today journal documents some of the changes. In Alaska, the melting Mendenhall Glacier shrank nearly 1,800 feet between 2007 and 2015. In Switzerland, the Trint Glacier retreated twice as much over roughly the same period. In Peru, the Qori Kalis Glacier shrank more than 3,700 feet between 1978 and 2016.

Image: The Trift Glacier, in Switzerland, retreated about 1.17 kliometers from 2006 to 2015. - Photo: James Balog/GSA Today/Geological Society of America 

There are dozens upon dozens of different styles of beer out there, from pale ales to stouts to bocks — and those are just a few.

Being that there are so many styles, and so many exceptions to the rules, it's incredibly difficult (not to mention time-consuming) to get to know them all, but knowing your favorites will make drinking them a lot more enjoyable.

We've created a taxonomy of most major beer styles to help you put your favorite cold ones into context.

ON A RECENT weekend several hundred academics and lawyers gathered in a hotel ballroom in Shenzhen for a discussion on “Innovation, inclusion and order”, an event jointly organised by the law schools at Peking, Oxford and Stanford universities. Legal conferences can be soporific, especially in China, and a scholar from Beijing duly set the tone by asserting that “order is important in the market.” But one of the local speakers livened things up by delivering a surprisingly stout defence of disruptive innovation. Xu Youjun, vice-chairman of the Shenzhen division of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a government advisory body, said Shenzhen owed its success not to the government or the Communist Party but to its policy of allowing people to go “beyond the planned economy”.

Image: http://www.economist.com 

Let’s face it—no one likes to be judged. But like it or not, that is exactly what a job interview is: a judgment zone. It’s also your chance to show that you’re the right person for the job, but if you’re not confident that you’ve got what it takes, the interviewer won’t be either.

If it’s any comfort, know that plenty of people are worried that their anxiety will sabotage their job interview performance. According to a 2013 study by Harris Interactive and Everest College, 92% of U.S. adults are anxious about job interviews, and 17% of people ranked fear of being nervous as their top concern.

For investors, investigating deals isn’t always an easy process.

From examining an industry’s opportunity to loads of legal analysis, the amount of work in the due diligence process is often enough to deter financiers from investing in a firm.

That’s why in a recent survey, a majority of regional investors said they’d love a better way to conduct due diligence. Conducted by KCSourceLink and the Alternative Investment Forum, the survey found that almost two-thirds of regional investors say it would be helpful to have a standardized due diligence process for venture offerings.

When we visit a friend or go to the beach, our brain stores a short-term memory of the experience in a part of the brain called the hippocampus. Those memories are later “consolidated” — that is, transferred to another part of the brain for longer-term storage.

A new MIT study of the neural circuits that underlie this process reveals, for the first time, that memories are actually formed simultaneously in the hippocampus and the long-term storage location in the brain’s cortex. However, the long-term memories remain “silent” for about two weeks before reaching a mature state.

Image: https://scienceblog.com 

We all sometimes hope that, if we're able to land just the right email or message to the right person, it just might land us the right job or opportunity. Billionaire investor and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban receives a steady flood of email messages every day. According to Cuban, he personally reads them all, but 99 percent get deleted before he finishes the first paragraph.

But an email message that arrived one day got Cuban's attention, and it changed the sender's life forever.

The average amount of venture capital flowing into Indiana companies per deal is the lowest in the Midwest and among the lowest in the country, a reality that has some tech leaders concerned that emerging high-growth companies might not be getting sufficient funding.

Hoosier companies drew in about $2.5 million per deal in 2016, according to the PwC/CB Insights MoneyTree report, which ranked the state 39th among 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The four states bordering Indiana—as well as Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri—all

Image: Indianapolis-based Lessonly, which develops team-learning software, completed a $5 million Series A financing round a year ago, thanks to Boston-based venture capital firm Open View Partners. (IBJ photo/Eric Learned) 

The US House of Representatives passed the Supporting America’s Innovators Act (HR 1219) today. The bill received solid backing with a vote of 417 for and 3 against. The bill now moves to the Senate for review.

Chief Deputy Whip Patrick McHenry, the Vice Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, commented on the bill;

Image: https://www.crowdfundinsider.com 

Entrepreneurs always work hard to create an innovative product or service, but often count on standard seller marketing for sales. But the reality is that sellers are no longer in charge of the customer buying process. Reports suggest that 90% of today’s shoppers skip marketing pitches, to research online before they buy, and over 50% check user reviews before making a decision.

The mantra is “never stop starting.” The constituency it applies to is entrepreneurs in Memphis and those who come here flush with ideas and creativity. And for Memphis’ startup community – from the sixth floor of Start Co.’s 88 Union Ave. hive of activity to the Memphis Bioworks Foundation and points in between – that exhortation to “never stop” is as much a rallying cry as it is a marker highlighting one of the more dynamic and fledgling sectors of the city’s economy.

Image: Start Co. is one of several Memphis organizations that offer startup accelerators. The programs give entrepreneurs access to mentorship, seed funding and resources to build their ideas into a business. (Memphis News/Andrew J. Breig) - https://www.memphisdailynews.com

One of the most important things I encourage entrepreneurs to do is to learn from their mistakes. After “doing” business incubation now for 7 years in 3 states and working with just over 600 startups… I’ve made a lot of mistakes. And I still make new mistakes every day.

In the process, I’ve been lucky to see incubation from different vantage points. I’ve served entrepreneurs in an accelerator program, a manufacturing incubator, a commercial kitchen, and an office-style incubator focused on technology and healthcare innovation. I’ve worked in incubators operating under the umbrellas of a university, a municipal government, a non-profit, and now a Chamber/EDC type organization. In all of these cases, I’ve enjoyed my share of successes. But I’ve also fallen flat on my face from time-to-time.