You probably have seen the television show Shark Tank and heard of the site Kickstarter, places you can get your product and startup funded. The crowdfunding industry has taken off in the US with entrepreneurs getting tens of thousands of dollars in funding to millions of dollars. There are hundreds of crowdfunding sites online to get your startup funding, but only a few have a track record of success and the community to fund your product or project. If you money is stopping you from starting your company, look to these startup funding sources.

The collaborative economy has been made possible by the Internet and has boomed in recent years. In 2012 the industry funded $2.7 billion in projects and $5.1 billion in 2013. The Jobs Act of 2012 kicked off the industry so growth has continued every year since for the young market. As an investor in a crowdfunded startup you get either a share of ownership in the company, rewards, products, or perks. Businesses and individuals get to step all the overhead involved in bank financing or Venture Capital.

Sites to Choose From:

Kickstarter

Kickstarter allows for donation based funding on creative projects. This site is not for charities or businesses, its for creative projects like art, films, designs or a music album. The site has helped get 143,000 projects off the ground. You have to pay a fee to Kickstarter if you get funded in addition to a processing fee. And you only have a certain period of time to get your funded. Make sure your submission is good as not all projects make it past the approval process.

Bird Scooter Columbus Ohio

You have probably seen the scooters spread across your downtown if you live in a major metropolitan city. Our city of Columbus Ohio recently had the scooters added to our streets in addition to the Ohio State University. They look like fun and they seem inexpensive, but with charging and tracking, and breaking there’s no way they can last. So how do these scooter companies like Bird and Lime make money?

Lime offers bikes too so you have that option. They bicycles seem less popular, more expensive to rent and not as much of a burden to maintain than an electric scooter. And the bikes aren’t all over the sidewalks making it difficult for some to get past.

With the any new technology there might be money backing it, but there isn’t always profit being made.

According to some sources, there are 5 different companies offering scooters. The bikes are $1 per half hour. The Lime and Bird scooters are $1.00 to start and 15 cents a minute to ride. These prices look great for consumers but how can a company survive with these low rental fees?

How the Transaction Happens

Users start a rental by downloading an app onto their phones and entering a credit card prior to scanning the QR code on the vehicle. When they have completed their ride, they click on a button on their phone telling the company you are done, then the bike or scooter locks up until the next rider comes along. There is no need to dock, just leave it where you completed your ride.

Scale

The companies purchase their bikes and scooters in scale and therefore are able to obtain low purchase prices. Bikes that dock can cost up to $5,000, not a cheap price. Dock-less bikes are less. And the new dock-less model also saves the company from having to install and maintain the docks. But the scooters cost only a couple of hundred dollars and can get 20 rides a day in a busy city. They can pay for themselves in a week if the demand is there.

The HTC blockchain phone is a work in progress.

Several weeks before its' upcoming flagship statement, HTC recently disclosed another item of hardware. Although the Taiwanese firm has consolidated most of its' mobile products, it said at the 2018 New York Consensus Blockchain event that its' Exodus handset will embrace everyone's favorite technology buzzword.

What is a blockchain phone then? Primarily, these phones are characterized by cryptocurrency support and security. The landing page for HTC Exodus says: "Our aim is to grow the blockchain network by producing the first ever phone centered on security and decentralized applications. Once the HTC Exodus is released, this ambition will be realized".

The Millennium Falcon Flight Simulator From Disney Requires Eight GPUs to Operate

A high resolution, real time flight simulator is being built by Disney, based on the Millennium Falcon. This will be powered using eight high end, daisy chained GPUs.

The simulator should be installed at Walt Disney World locations and Disneyland in 2019. It was made as a joint venture with Epic Games, ILMxLAB and Nvidia. Once it is complete, Disney resort guests can step into the Millennium Falcon's cockpit, activate the vessel's blasters and prepare the ship to go warp speed.

The firm spoke about their project, which is still going on, at the Nvidia GTC event. They explained how they have had to make full use of cutting edge gaming technology, to produce the immersive, real time sci fi experience.

All implementations of the simulator will be powered with Boxx workstations, operating eight P6000 Nvidia Quadro GPUs linked through Quadro SLI. This certainly will not be available to customers. Disney needed to construct multiple GPU workflows. Then, they assisted Epic Games with the integration of these into the firm's Unreal Engine. This code will carry on being used in future.

The above screenshot is a preview of how the simulator will appear.

It is important to understand a few things about Google Clips though this Google Clips review. One thing you should understand is to not use the clip on the back. Even though it is called Google Clips and has a clip on back does not mean it is a good idea to clip it.

The next thing to understand, this is not meant to use and an action camera. If you are looking for an action camera refer to the numerous brands that make them. It is also lacking as a security camera.

What Google Clips is is a smart camera, as per Google themselves. It combines ML and AI to capture little clips in your life that it believes are relevant and might otherwise be difficult to capture with a camera or smartphone. The clips stay on the device until you decide to import them to another device.

When Nintendo Switch came onto the market few imagined that it would become the fastest selling gaming console in the United States. Nintendo sold so many units so quickly that it has surmounted the record set by the previous gaming console. The Nintendo Switch sold more than 4.8 million consoles before the end of the first year. This record beats the sales record, previously held by Wii, by nearly one million units.

Switch enthusiasts are not shocked by the performance record of the console. Games like Breath of the Wild ,The Legend of Zelda have helped rocket the performance of an already popular console. Over half of all Switch owners have purchased the title, exclusive to the Switch console. Other exclusive games that have help bolster sales include "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe" and Mario Odyssey. All the titles are owned by 50 percent or more of all Switch owners. This further supports the feeling that these exclusive games have done a lot to drive the popularity and sales of the device.

A new Nintendo Switch dock accessory from independent hardware developer YesOJO gives the mobile gaming console the ability to project a screen as large as 150 in. on any flat surface. It's been hard to get a genuine big-screen console feel from the Switch so far, so this represents a major step forward for the platform.

The so-called OJO Nintendo Switch dock add-on comes with an onboard micro-projector as well as a battery that provides around four hours of screen time. The width of the projection differs depending on the focal distance of the projector from the surface, but it always shines at a fairly bright 200 lumens no matter how far you are away from it.

You can also sue the OJO as an additional battery even if you're not using the projector module at all times. It can charge any USB device, including Android phones and tablets.

If Android phones need anything, it's a bit more space; and SanDisk's 400GB microSD card delivers just that.

The new 400GB card, a staggering 144GB bigger than the largest currently on the market, may be the biggest that many people ever need.

The large size makes it perfect for Android smartphones that support the microSDXC standard. Using SanDisk's UHS-I technology, it's also fast enough to deliver video on the go, opening up a world of opportunities.

Where it really comes into its own, however, is when it's used as internal storage. This is a feature of modern Android devices that treats the external SD card as its own memory - for apps, photos and anything else you might like to put on it.

Alphabet announced the release of Android Oreo and with it a laundry list of new features that the operating system brings to the table. Most of these features involve the kernel or memory management functions. While end users might not notice them, it should make Android devices run more smoothly without eating into their battery life.

A lot like IOS

Apple's engineers are often accused of copying Android developers, but Android Oreo is also implementing many design changes that make the operating system interface more like that used by iPhone and iPad owners. For instance, Google's programmers based Oreo's notification scheme on the one used in iOS.

World-famous entrepreneur Elon Musk has created a new company called Neuralink which will focus on developing the human brain through the power of technological augmentation. At last years' Code Conference Musk spoke about the idea of using surgical connections to the brain to allow an individual to interact with computers (including the mouse and keyboard) without having to use bandwidth. Since then, he has revealed on Twitter that progress has been made on this exploratory technology.