Tag: small business for sale

This millennial women’s health brand is expanding with a controversial partner

Posted onAuthoradmin

Carolyn Witte says she’s building the future of women’s healthcare. Her company, called Tia, is a beefed up primary care clinic with gynecological services and mental healthcare that’s been called a “ gynecologist for the self-care generation. ” Now, it’s partnering with Catholic healthcare system CommonSpirit in order to go national. Tia doesn’t currently perform elective abortion or in vitro fertilization, two services the relationship would bar. But the partnership begs the question: Can Tia be the future of women’s healthcare if it partners with entities that actively limit women’s health choices? Carolyn Witte [Photo: courtesy of Tia] Tia, which Witte cofounded in 2017 with Felicity Yost, offers a blend of primary care, gynecological care, nutrition, acupuncture, and mental health services. It charges an annual fee of $150 in addition to the cost of services, the latter of which is largely covered by insurance. Its services include IUD insertion and removal, colposcopies for abnormal pap smears, myomectomies, and biopsies Read More …

How remote work helped us move past old-school ‘professionalism’

Posted onAuthoradmin

Over the past year, much has been made of where, when, and how we work. But the sweeping shift to working remotely has raised a deeper question that we’re still not sure how to answer: Who are we at work?   The pandemic has scrambled so much of the “normal” professional experience—commutes, workspaces, business hours, childcare, business travel—that it’s also rewiring our concept of professionalism itself.   For me, “professionalism” began 18 years ago when I started as an intern at Microsoft. Today, I lead a team of more than 500 designers and researchers creating the next generation of communication and creation experiences for Microsoft 365, across both work and life. As you can imagine, design at Microsoft has changed dramatically over the years, and that includes how people collaborate.   When it comes to traditional modes of expression, both Microsofties and our customers typically drew a clear line between work style and personal style. Take emoji or reactions as an example. I use them freely in texts or on social media, but on a productivity platform like Microsoft Teams? As much heart as I put into my work, I never thought I’d “heart” things there. I do that at home, where my guard is down. But now that the office is my home, there are hearts all over the place. I heart everything (unless I’m giving it a thumbs down). Read More …

This iPhone app lets anybody mint an NFT for anything—for free

Posted onAuthoradmin

Musicians and visual artists have long registered their work with the U.S. Copyright Office to prove it’s theirs. But doing so is really little more than a person in a government office “witnessing” that a creation is associated with a person’s name on a certain date. And the process takes weeks or months to complete. In the 21st century, creation happens on digital platforms. It happens far faster than ever before, and in many ways. Inspiration for a vocal line or a beat can happen spontaneously during a TikTok duet, for example. A GIF can be created on a phone and uploaded to social networks. It’s a good thing, then, that the blockchain can also “witness” the creation—and the creator—of a digital thing, and record it for perpetuity. A new, free app called S!ng lets pretty much anybody do this in a few seconds by minting an NFT ( nonfungible token ) of a work on the Ethereum blockchain. An NFT is a type of cryptographic token that signifies true ownership of a digital asset, such as a piece of digital artwork. Creators can upload images (JPEG, BMP, or TIFF files) or audio (WAV, MP3, MIDI, PTX, PTF, or M4A) to the S!ng app, or record audio directly via the phone’s microphone. Once creators have minted an NFT for their work, it can be sold or licensed to others online if there’s a market for it. Read More …

This clever app turns your spreadsheets into slick interactive web tools

Posted onAuthoradmin

A hot trend in tech these days is coming up with the next great “spreadsheet killer”—the dazzling app that’ll make us all abandon Excel and Google Sheets in favor of some newer, sleeker, and more versatile alternative. From Notion and Coda to Airtable and its rivals , there’s no shortage of alluring services trying to remake the tired old spreadsheet and trade it in for something more modern. Grid is not one of those services. Yes, it’s Yet Another New Spreadsheet App—but unlike most such creations, its aim isn’t to replace your tried-and-true spreadsheet setup. Instead, it wants to work alongside that environment and add an extra layer on top of it to make it even more empowering. “We are very much building for someone that is already a spreadsheet user, has already built spreadsheets, and wants to do something more with them,” says Hjalmar Gislason, the founder and CEO of the Reykjavik, Iceland-based startup. The service—which launched last week—lets you inject a dash of web-based interactivity and a pinch of presentation polish into your existing spreadsheets. And instead of requiring you to import your data and then work within an entirely new structure, Grid syncs with your Excel or Google Sheets setup,  allowing you to keep working within the app you already know while simultaneously getting a whole new set of tools to complement it. For anyone who’s ever shared a spreadsheet or used one as part of a presentation, it might be just the finishing touch that’s long been missing. Evolution, not substitution Before we dive deeper into Grid’s philosophy, let’s address the basics: Anyone can use the full set of Grid spreadsheet-enhancing tools for free. The service is open and available right now, and it takes all of two seconds to sign up . The only real catch is that if you stick with Grid’s default, free plan, you’ll end up with a small watermark at the bottom of any presentations you embed within another website. A $348-per-year (or $35-a-month) Professional plan eliminates that watermark and adds custom branding options along with advanced statistics into the equation. As for the driving philosophy behind Grid, it’s really quite simple: Practically everyone uses spreadsheets. And practically everyone’s invested a lot of time and energy in learning how to make the most of them. We are meeting people where they’re already comfortable.” Hjalmar Gislason, CEO, Grid But capable as they may be, spreadsheets are woefully lacking in one increasingly important area: the ways in which they can be shared and presented. And that’s where Gislason sees an opportunity to do something special—and something that doesn’t force everyone to start over entirely. Read More …

The Google Nest Hub offers the perfect sleep tracker for lazy people

Posted onAuthoradmin

Google’s newest Nest Hub is the tech giant’s best attempt yet to be all things to all people. The device so far has made a name for itself as a modern picture frame , the perfect kitchen assistant, and even a cool tool for makeup tutorials . Now, the Nest Hub can function as a sleep tracker, providing a better reason for you to let Google into your bedroom. Nest Hub’s sleep tracking is built for anyone who is on the fence about using technology to assess how well they’re sleeping. It’s a very stripped-down experience compared with popular sleep trackers like Oura Ring or even the Apple Watch, but it won’t make you feel judged for your bad habits. And, if you do feel ashamed of your sleep statistics, you can easily delete them at any time in the Google Fit app (oddly, you can only delete your data on the Nest Hub itself within two hours after you wake up). That makes the Nest Hub a great addition to the roster of available sleep trackers. In the week I spent trying it out, I found the Nest Hub to be extremely low maintenance. You don’t need to wear it, you don’t need to check it every day, and you don’t need to remember to charge it—it’s always plugged in. The tracker works in the background on its own. The sleep tracking is enabled by Google’s motion-sensing Soli technology, which also powers the device’s new gesture-control feature, a user favorite that was previously available only with the Nest Hub Max . With gesture control, users can pause music simply by air-high-fiving the screen or move to the next step in a recipe with a wave. (Soli, which uses radar to detect motion , first launched in the Pixel 4 smartphone.) [Photo: courtesy of Google] In order for the sleep-tracking feature to work, the Nest Hub has to sit on a night table that is the same height as the top of your mattress (my side table is a few inches higher, though I don’t think it affected my results). Read More …