Tag: small business news

This science-backed athletic wear can help you sit up straight

Posted onAuthoradmin

Working hunched over a desk or a kitchen table or reclined on a couch is probably ruining your posture. So is staring at your phone for prolonged periods of time or walking with your head down. But what if you could wear something that made you sit just a little taller during the day? A company called Formewear (previously called IFGfit Labs) has created shirts, leggings, and sports bras that physically help people shift their shoulders backward and better align their spines. The clothing not only helps relieve back problems—it also improves a person’s ability to breathe. “If you wear [the clothes for] one to two hours a day in various activities for several weeks, you will start to see a noticeable change,” says Seiji Liu, cofounder and chief operating officer of Formewear. “Over several weeks people will be able to stand taller.” The Formewear signature men’s shirt has tension bands on the inside that pull shoulders back and down, so they sit where they’re supposed to. The sports bra physically pushes shoulders back so they form a straight line, perpendicular to the spine. The goal of this clothing is to assist people in having better posture as well as train them through muscle memory to maintain that posture. The leggings, both for men and women, are designed to encourage good form during cardio workouts. Perhaps the greatest technological innovation in these clothes is good tailoring based on complicated biomechanics Read More …

Writers who crave independence should skip Substack—and do this instead

Posted onAuthoradmin

Let me start by saying that I appreciate what Substack is trying to do for journalism. The promise of the hosted publishing platform is that anyone can start a subscription-based publication—primarily as a newsletter—without having to worry about building a website, setting up a membership system, and fussing with design. Just put good words in, and if your audience is devoted enough, money will come out. For a growing number of writers, it’s a welcome reprieve from feeding the algorithms of Google, Facebook, and Twitter—and a chance to make some decent money along the way. But one thing I’ve realized in nearly five years of publishing my own independent newsletters is that doing things the hard way has its own rewards, from keeping more of the money to maintaining a stronger sense of independence. As more writers start building up their own newsletter businesses, I suspect a lot of them will discover this for themselves. Starting from scratch If we’re being honest, I probably would have jumped on board with Substack myself if it had been available when I started writing a newsletter about cord-cutting in 2016. Nearly every newsletter service back then was focused on email marketing instead of editorial writing, and they all charged high prices if your mailing list grew too large. As I started to outgrow Mailchimp’s 2,000-subscriber limit for free users, self-hosting seemed like the only option that didn’t cost upward of $30 per month. (Mailchimp did have its own writer-friendly service called Tinyletter , but it, too, had a 5,000-subscriber limit Read More …

How internet pioneer Radia Perlman overcame bias to invent an core component of the web

Posted onAuthoradmin

By Cyril Bouquet, Jean-Louis Barsoux, and Michael Wade Computer scientist Radia Perlman is often referred to as the “Mother of the Internet”—a title she shuns, but which has stuck due to her accomplishments and contributions to the creation of the web. Perlman is rightly considered an internet pioneer, but she also encountered barriers because of her gender. Read More …

Inside the new playbook for creating a kids’ TV hit in the streaming age

Posted onAuthoradmin

When we think about the must-see TV that draws us to sign up for streaming platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, and Apple TV Plus, the list is endless. The Crown , The Handmaid’s Tale , Bridgerton , Ted Lasso . But what about kids’ shows? Sure, there are old episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Pokémon , but there’s a gaping dearth of new, buzzy series with any real lasting power. (Does Netflix’s Miraculous: Tales of Lady Bug & Cat Noir really have a significant following?) Kids tune in to a new Netflix show here and there, but for the most part the platform’s real appeal for children is its sprawling, buffet atmosphere—and all those reruns. ( The Mandalorian over on Disney Plus is an exception, though that show skews heavily toward teens and adults too.) Cyma Zarghami , a veteran of children’s TV who spent 33 years at Nickelodeon, most recently as its president, sees this as white space in the industry, one that she is eager to fill. Last year Zarghami started MiMo Studios , a kids’ production company that aims to create the kind of franchises that have been lacking in the kids’ TV space in recent years in both the linear and digital worlds. “ SpongeBob [ SquarePants ], Peppa Pig , PJ Masks , those are all at least seven to eight years old,” Zarghami says, ticking off some of Nickelodeon’s biggest hits. “Nothing has emerged off the old platform or the new that’s really resonated with audiences.” Cyma Zarghami [Photo: MiMo Studios] As for why that is, Zarghami says, “There are too many choices, there’s not enough marketing, everything is a little derivative, and quantity, not quality, is the mandate”—especially in streaming. “So nothing has really floated to the top.” She also says that streaming companies’ priority is to grow subscribers and minimize churn, as opposed to “building the next Game of Thrones for kids.” At MiMo—which stands for “mini movie”—Zarghami hopes to do exactly that by investing in properties built on great, preexisting stories and characters that have the maximum potential to become a franchise. But the Hollywood formula ends there. Read More …

Supercharge Gmail with these 5 simple but useful extensions

Posted onAuthoradmin

Gmail has been part of our lives for what seems like forever, and while it works well enough on its own, there are plenty of ways to make it more useful. These five extensions require very little setup or tweaking, most are free, and all of them do a great job of helping you wring every little bit of utility out of your email sessions. Add notes to messages and threads For those times you need a little more context than a giant email thread can give you, there’s the free Simple Gmail Notes extension. Available for Chrome , Firefox , Edge , and Safari , this handy little tool lets you leave yourself little sticky notes inside individual messages and threads. Notes are stored in your Google Drive, can be color-coded, and will show up next to their respective subject lines in your inbox as well. Declutter and beautify If Gmail feels a bit busy to you, do yourself a favor and check out Simplify Gmail . Built to make Gmail more visually appealing, easier to use, and less distracting, this $2-per-month Chrome extension offers up an almost Zen-like experience as you hack and slash your way through mountains of messages every day. The guy behind it, Michael Leggett, knows his stuff, too: He’s the former design lead behind Gmail and Google Inbox. If anyone’s got the chops to gussy up the world’s most popular webmail service, it’s him. Turn labels and searches into tabs Don’t let hunting for a specific Gmail label slow you down. Add the label as a quick-access tab above your inbox instead with the free Gmail Tabs extension for Chrome. With the extension installed, you simply click the little three-dot menu button next to an oft-used label and select “Add to tabs” to give it a more permanent home. You can do the same for searches, too, making it easier to quickly drill into messages from specific senders, messages with attachments, or anything else you’d otherwise normally have to search for manually. Quickly share links The handy, free Send from Gmail has been built by Google itself to solve a couple of challenges. The extension pulls double duty by setting Gmail as your default email app when you click on an email address, and lets you share interesting web pages via Gmail with a single click. While the extension hasn’t been updated since 2013, neither feature is really rocket science. You won’t give the Gmail-as-default feature too much thought, it just works. And the send-a-link feature is refreshingly simple; find a cool webpage, click the extension icon, and a message composition box pops up with the page’s title as the subject and the URL as the first part of the message itself. One cool little extra: If you highlight some text on the page first, that text will get copied into the message above the URL. See who’s sending you email We’re visual creatures. Read More …