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Here are five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. Did you miss them?
1 - Apple introduces a cheap 9.7-inch iPad with Apple Pencil support.
Apple has announced it will sell - starting at just $329 - a new 9.7-inch iPad that works with the Apple Pencil. Previously, only the pricier iPad Pro models could take advantage of the Pencil. Along with the new Apple Pencil support, existing iPad users will also get new features: Pages, Numbers, and Keynote for iOS are all going to be updated to support the Apple Pencil. Also included: a Retina display, powerful chip, enhanced cameras and advanced sensors. (Source: Apple Newsroom)
Why this is important for your business:
Let’s all agree that the iPad is, and continues to be…awesome. It’s also a very versatile business tool that many small business owners and employees use for emails, communications, collaboration and design. But it’s always been a little too pricey. A lower cost with all of these features seems like an answer to this problem.
2 – Microsoft Excel is getting smarter.
Thanks to a fresh infusion of artificial intelligence, Microsoft Excel will now be smart enough to understand a user’s entries and then offer additional information. This week, Microsoft added stocks and geography data types to Excel, powered by Bing’s knowledge graph and new machine learning-powered features. This allows users to embed rich data into their spreadsheets. (Source: Tech Crunch)
Why this is important for your business:
Why is it that Microsoft keeps adding amazing features and we just continue to do simple math? When will we open up our wallets and invest in a little training to truly take advantage of the powerful functions that all of these office, collaboration and communication products provide? Soon, I hope.
3 - On-demand shipping startup Shyp is shutting down.
On-demand shipping startup Shyp announced this week that it will be shutting down immediately. The company is ending operations after, like many on-demand companies, it struggled to find a scalable model beyond where it launched in San Francisco. Shyp missed targets for expanding to cities beyond its core base and also pulled back from Miami. (Source: Tech Crunch)
Why this is important for your business:
This is disappointing news. Shyp had a great service and many small businesses took advantage of their advantageous shipping costs. Unfortunately, when smaller services like these go away it hurts competition and gives us all less options to reduce our costs.
4 - Facebook reveals new security settings amid privacy concerns.
In an effort to untangle itself from the recent user data scandal, Facebook announced this week that it’s redesigning its settings menu on mobile devices. It will consolidate privacy options in one place, rather than sending users to 20 different screens. The new Privacy Shortcuts menu will let users regulate the amount of personal information Facebook keeps on them, such as political preferences and interests, and delete things they’ve already shared. It will also let people manage the information the company uses to show ads. (Source: Bloomberg)
Why this is important for your business:
No need to re-hash all of Facebook’s problems this week. These issues are serious. But I think Facebook will be fine in the long run. They better be, because there’s too much at stake. More than 70 million businesses worldwide have pages on the social media platform and a billion people using it every day. We all have invested much in making Facebook a big part of our marketing and services to our customers.
5 – GoDaddy signs multiyear deal with Amazon Web Services for ‘vast majority’ of its computing infrastructure.
This week, Internet domain name registrar GoDaddy signed a multiyear deal with Amazon Web Services to migrate most of its computing infrastructure onto the servers of Amazon’s public cloud. GoDaddy considered offering its own cloud services in the past. But now it will rely on Amazon, with AWS planning to work with GoDaddy to offer domain-related services as part of the deal. (Source: Geek Wire)
Why this is important for your business:
As small business owners, we all need to accept that our cloud based applications are being hosted on public cloud platforms provided mostly by Amazon, Microsoft and Google. GoDaddy’s move to AWS is yet another example of a large company abandoning their own infrastructure and instead relying on larger, more experienced companies to host their customers. It makes sense.
