ResidentialBusiness

A jury on Monday quickly and completely rejected a man’s claim that Disney’s Moana was stolen from his story of a young surfer in Hawaii. The Los Angeles federal jury deliberated for only about 2 ½ hours before deciding that the creators of Moana never had access to writer and animator Buck Woodall’s outlines and script for Bucky the Surfer Boy. With that question settled, the jury of six women and two men didn’t even have to consider the similarities between Bucky and Disney’s 2016 hit animated film about a questing Polynesian princess. Woodall had shared his work with a distant relative, who worked for a different company on the Disney lot, but the woman testified during the two-week trial that she never showed it to anyone at Disney. “Obviously we’re disappointed,” Woodall’s attorney Gustavo Lage said outside court. “We’re going to review our options and think about the best path forward.” In closing arguments earlier Monday, Woodall’s attorney said that a long chain of circumstantial evidence showed the two works were inseparable. “There was no Moana without Bucky,” Lage said. Defense lawyer Moez Kaba said that the evidence showed overwhelmingly that Moana was clearly the creation and “crowning achievement” of the 40-year career of John Musker and Ron Clements, the writers and directors behind 1989’s The Little Mermaid, 1992’s Aladdin, 1997’s Hercules, and 2009’s The Princess and the Frog. “They had no idea about Bucky,” Kaba said in his closing. “They had never seen it, never heard of it.” Moana earned nearly $700 million at the global box office. A judge previously ruled that Woodall’s 2020 lawsuit came too late for him to claim a piece of those receipts, and that a lawsuit he filed earlier this year over Moana 2—which earned more than $1 billion—must be decided separately. That suit remains active, though the jury’s decision does not bode well for it. Judge Consuelo B. Marshall, who is also overseeing the sequel lawsuit, said after the verdict that she agreed with the jurors’ decision about access. “We are incredibly proud of the collective work that went into the making of Moana and are pleased that the jury found it had nothing to do with Plaintiff’s works,” Disney said in a statement. Musker and Disney’s attorneys declined to comment outside the courtroom. The relatively young jury of six women and two men watched Moana in its entirety in the courtroom. They considered a story outline that Woodall created for Bucky in 2003, along with a 2008 update and a 2011 script. In the latter versions of the story, the title character, vacationing in Hawaii with his parents, befriends a group of Native Hawaiian youth and goes on a quest that includes time travel to the ancient islands and interactions with demigods to save a sacred site from a developer. Around 2004, Woodall gave the Bucky outline to the stepsister of his brother’s wife. That woman, Jenny Marchick, worked for Mandeville Films, a company that had a contract with Disney and was located on the Disney lot. He sent her follow-up materials through the years. He testified that he was stunned when he saw Moana in 2016 and saw so many of his ideas. Along with her testimony saying she didn’t show Bucky to anyone, messages shared by the defense showed she eventually ignored Woodall’s queries to her and had told him there was nothing she could do for him. Disney attorney Kaba argued there was no evidence Marchick ever worked on Moana or received any credit or compensation for it. Kaba pointed out that Marchick, now head of features development at DreamWorks Animation, worked for key Disney competitors Sony and Fox during much of the time she was allegedly making use of Woodall’s work for Disney. Woodall also submitted the script directly to Disney and had a meeting with an assistant at the Disney Channel, which Marchick arranged for him, to talk about working as an animator. But jurors agreed that this didn’t give them reason to believe that “Bucky” made its way to Musker, Clements or their collaborators. Lage, Woodall’s attorney, outlined some of the similarities of the two works in his closing. Both include teens on oceanic quests. Both have Polynesian demigods as central figures and shape-shifting characters who turn into, among other things, insects and sharks. In both, the main characters interact with animals who act as spirit helpers. Kaba said many of these elements, including Polynesian lore and basic “staples of literature,” are not copyrightable. Shape-shifting among supernatural characters, he said, appears throughout films including “The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin,” and Hercules, which made Musker and Clements essential to the Disney renaissance of the 1990s and made Disney a global powerhouse. Animal guides go back to movies as early as 1940’s “Pinocchio” and appear in all of Musker and Clements’ previous films, he said. Kaba said Musker and Clements developed “Moana” the same way they did the other films, through their own inspiration, research, travel and creativity. The lawyer said thousands of pages of development documents showed every step of Musker and Clements’ creation, whose spark came from the paintings of Paul Gaugin and the writings of Herman Melville “You can see every single fingerprint,” Kaba said. “You can see the entire genetic makeup of ‘Moana.'” —Andrew Dalton, AP Entertainment Writer View the full article

Every once in a while, you come across a beautiful app that makes you smile whenever you use it. Tinker is one of those apps for me. It allows you to create beautiful analog clock widgets for your iPhone, and its attention to detail is remarkable. It has a few curated designs to get you started, but you can also bring in your own clock faces and customize every aspect of the widget. The best part—it works with StandBy mode. In addition to your calendar, the iPhone's StandBy mode lets you view photos, live activities, or a clock when the iPhone is charging in landscape mode, essentially turning it into a convincing substitute for a real alarm clock. Tinker adds far more options for the analog clock widget, and for me, the result is a lot nicer than the clock widgets Apple supplies. I quite like the design language of Tinker, too, which reminds me of the skeuomorphic designs that iOS had embraced until 2014, when iOS 7 moved in a different direction. Tinker's app icons mimic the gears in a watch, and the buttons have a neat brushed metal look. All of this will appeal to the kind of person who enjoys analog watches in this digital age. Once you start creating your own watch face in the app, you'll be able to customize four aspects of it—the background, the hour hand, the minute hand, and the center piece. While you're doing that, you'll notice another neat detail—the watch face accurately shows you the current time even while you're customizing the widget. Credit: Pranay Parab There are a few templates available to get you started, and the app directs you to a Discord server if you want even more assets. You're also free to download assets from the internet and add them on your own. This gives you a lot of customizability. Once you've found or created a watch face, you can easily add it as a widget on your iPhone's home screen. Press and hold an empty part of the home screen and tap the Edit button in the top-left corner. Select Add Widget and search for Tinker. You'll be able to select any of your saved watch faces and add it to the home screen. Similarly, once you're in StandBy mode, you can tap and hold the clock widget and replace it with one of Tinker's watch faces instead. The app is free for up to two watch faces, and has a one-time $4 unlock to remove that limit. I really don't know why Apple still stubbornly refuses to let you use your own watch faces on the Apple Watch, but if it ever decides to change its mind, Tinker is exactly the kind of app that I'd use to customize mine. I don't care too much about adding complications to my watch face, but I do care a lot about how the watch face looks. With Tinker, I've already found a few designs that I'd like to use on the Apple Watch over the included options. Here's hoping Apple caves and lets you use your own watch faces with Tinker some day. View the full article

US president says extra levies in response to Ontario’s decision to increase cost of power exports to USView the full article

Old 401(k)s are a little like the old clothes in the back of your closet. You know you should do something about them, but there they sit, mostly out of sight and mind. And so it is with your old 401(k). If deciding what to do with an old (k) plan has been on your to-do list for a while, here are the key steps you should take to get it done. Step 1: Check your account value. If your balance in your former employer’s 401(k) plan is over $7,000, you can leave the money behind in the old plan or roll the assets into an IRA or your new employer’s 401(k). But if your balance falls below that $7,000 threshold, some of the decision-making may be out of your hands. Step 2: Determine whether to stay within the 401(k) confines. Assuming your balance is over $7,000, your next task is to decide whether to roll the money into an IRA or keep it inside a 401(k). I often recommend rolling over the assets from a former 401(k) into a no-fee IRA with a top-notch mutual fund company or discount broker. But some people value the extra creditor protections that can accompany 401(k) assets versus IRA assets, while others may prize 401(k)-specific investment options. Step 3: Assess the quality of your 401(k) options. If you think you will be better off leaving your money inside a 401(k) rather than rolling it over to an IRA, the next job is to conduct some research on your own 401(k) options. Even if you do decide to stay with a 401(k), you may need to decide whether you’re better off staying put in your former employer’s plan or that of your new employer. Step 4: Find the right IRA provider. If a rollover to an IRA is the way to go, the next step is to identify the right brokerage firm or mutual fund company. Look for a firm that offers a breadth of high-quality investment options with no additional layers of fees for IRA investors. Target-date funds are an elegant, low-maintenance, and underutilized option. Step 5: Decide whether to convert your traditional 401(k) assets to Roth. If you decide to roll Roth 401(k) contributions to an IRA or your current employer’s 401(k), your new account will be Roth, too, meaning that you won’t owe tax on qualified withdrawals. If you have traditional 401(k) assets, a rollover is also a good time to consider whether to convert those assets to a Roth account at the same time. Step 6: Execute. If you’ve decided to roll over your assets to an IRA, fill out the paperwork or online form to open the IRA. You’ll then request a direct rollover from your 401(k) plan to the new IRA provider. The process may be a bit more cumbersome if you’re rolling over to your current employer’s 401(k). In both cases, make sure your 401(k) provider makes the check payable to the provider and sends it directly to them, rather than to you. If the check is made out to you, 20% of the balance will be withheld for income tax. You’ll then have 60 days to get that money deposited into an IRA or another 401(k); if that deadline comes and goes, the distribution will count as a withdrawal and you’ll owe ordinary income tax and a 10% early withdrawal penalty if you’re not 55 or older. Step 7: Determine what to invest in. If you’ve decided to roll over your assets from an old 401(k) to another 401(k) or IRA, you’ll also have to determine how you’ll allocate those assets. If all of your retirement assets were in your old 401(k), a sturdy target-date fund is a one-stop, low-maintenance choice that you can hold into retirement. If your old 401(k) is just one of several accounts geared toward retirement, a rollover can be an ideal time to check up on how all the pieces fit together—and where you have holes. This article was provided to The Associated Press by Morningstar. For more personal finance content, go to https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance Christine Benz of Morningstar View the full article

When it comes to your important data, you should always have a backup. And then a backup of that backup. Cloud storage services shouldn't be your whole strategy here, but they can help with that. Sometimes, you just don't have enough physical space to store all the photos you've taken over your life, or all your ebooks and work documents. Plus, there is the convenience factor of syncing your files between all the devices that you use, so that a document you drafted up on your iPad can instantly show up on your Mac or your Windows PC. That said, picking a cloud storage service isn't as easy as it used to be. Now that so much of our cloud usage is tied to platforms and ecosystems, your cloud service will really depend on the devices you use. Google OneIf you're all in on the Android or Google ecosystem, Google One would be the best plan for you. With every Google account, you get 15GB storage for free that's distributed between services like Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos. But you can add more storage at just $.99 a month for 100GB and $2.99 for 200GB. With Google One, your Photos are backed up to Google automatically, you're able to upload and share large files on Google Drive, and you won't have to worry about running out of storage in Gmail. Google Drive's web app is solid, and there are desktop app options too. Plus, the per TB rates are quite competitive, and even cheaper than Microsoft's. The 2 TB Premium plan might be best for most users. It's $10 per month, or $100 per year, and supports family sharing (as do the cheaper plans). Plus, you get 10% back on purchases from the Google Store and Google Workspace Premium. If 2TB isn't enough, you can add additional storage all the way up to 30TB, though at a cost of up to $150/year. Microsoft 365Microsoft’s policy of stuffing every possible value-added service into a single plan is still going strong. This is why Microsoft 365 is so popular with businesses. A single plan provides you with access to the entire Office suite and Microsoft Teams for Enterprise, shared with multiple users. Every user gets 5GB OneDrive storage for free, and a Microsoft 365 subscription boosts that up to 1TB. Sadly, unlike with Google One, there are no plans in between these options. While 365's enterprise offerings are popular, the Microsoft 365 Family plan offers a similar package for individuals. This plan supports all the paid Office apps, Copilot AI, and 6TB of storage space, split across 6 accounts, making it a great deal for family users, or for splitting with your friends. It costs $12.99 per month, or $129.99 per year. If you don't want to use multiple accounts, the per TB value for a single account at $9.99/month doesn't make the most sense. In that case, it's better to look at alternatives. iDriveiDrive is a popular choice when it comes to data backups, or storing copies of whole drives on the cloud. But while it's not a pure storage solution, its file sharing and collaboration features make it competitive with the other choices on this list. The service provides a generous 10GB plan for free. A downside is there's no productivity suite built-in here, since individual files aren't really the focus with this service, but a benefit to the backup mindset is that iDrive does provide end-to-end encryption, although it needs to be enabled by the user. And if you forget your encryption key, you’ll lose access to all your files. Still, you can use iDrive to upload data from your computer, and you can share it with others. The 5TB plan will cost you $69.96 for the first year. There’s also a 10TB plan for $105 for the first year. Proton UnlimitedIf what you're looking for is security, and you don't need a lot of features, Proton might be for you. The Proton Unlimited plan gives you access to Proton Mail, Proton VPN, Proton Docs, and gives you 500GB of storage space for either $12.99 per month or $120 per year. The 1TB Proton Duo plan will cost you $15 per month instead. When it comes to free storage, Proton only offers 1GB space for free users. That's more expensive than established cloud syncing services, but what Proton offers you is extra peace of mind. You get encrypted storage, and no one, including Proton, has access to your files. Plus, the company is based in Switzerland, so strict Swiss privacy rules and laws apply here. SyncSync offers a dependable cloud storage alternative to the big companies. It keeps things extremely simple. It's just about storing and syncing files between devices and between different platforms. There are on add-ons, no mail accounts, no document apps, nothing. Like the good-old days of Dropbox. The free plan gives you 5GB space, and you get 2TB storage for $96/year, which is around the same price as iCloud+ or Google Drive. Here, you get client-side encryption, so Sync can't access your data. Sync offers simple and lightweight apps for Mac and Windows and there are mobile clients, too. Anything you transfer to the Sync folder on your device will show up in your Sync account instantly. There are no file limits here, too. Now that Dropbox has become so bloated (more on that later), Sync offers a simpler alternative that is easy to use. pCloudpCloud is another secure cloud backup provider that has two things going for it. The first is that it offers 10GB of storage space for free—this is way more than most of its competitors. Second is that it offers lifetime cloud storage for a one-time fee. This is a good choice for users who don’t like paying a monthly fee. At time of writing, you can get 500GB space for $199 and 2TB storage space for $399. pCloud also has annual plans, but at $99 per year for 2TB storage space, it’s not something I would recommend (you can get a Google One or iCloud+ plans for the same rate). iCloud+iCloud+ is designed for users in the Apple ecosystem, which is where it makes the most sense. iCloud+ is useful not just as a storage service, but it's where users' settings and device data are backed up, too. If you're all-in on the Apple ecosystem, it might make sense to use iCloud+ as your default cloud storage provider, as it makes it easy to sync photos, videos, and documents from your Mac. iCloud+ is another service that focuses highly on privacy, offering end-to-end encryption. A free iCloud account gets you 5GB storage, and Cloud+ offers flexible plans, too, starting at $0.99 for 50GB storage. The 2TB plan for $9.99 per month or $99 per year might be the sweet spot for most users, as it comes with family sharing (the 200GB plan can be shared with family as well). Though, I wouldn't recommend iCloud+ if you're even slightly cross-platform, or you want to frequently access files from the web browser, as the Windows app and the iCloud+ website are not great, especially when compared to the rivals on this list. Why I don't recommend DropboxOne name that's missing from this list is Dropbox. In the previous decade, Dropbox became the go-to option for simple, cross-platform storage that didn't cost a king's ransom, or even anything at all. Now, a free Dropbox account can only run on three devices, is limited to 2GB data, and has lower transfer speeds compared to their paid plans. The app has also pivoted to being more business focused, with lots of support for third-party integration. Its storage plans are no longer the cheapest or the most varied. The 2TB plan costs $11.99/month while both iCloud and Google One are cheaper. The simple-to-use aspect is gone as well. The Mac app, for example, has faced so many issues with reliability that we recommend you use a third-party app instead. Combine all these issues, and it no longer makes sense to use Dropbox in a personal capacity. View the full article

Back in January, State Farm announced that it was canceling its plans to run a Super Bowl commercial due to the impact of the devastating Los Angeles wildfires. “Our focus is firmly on providing support to the people of Los Angeles,” the company said in a statement at the time. But now the company is taking its Super Bowl work and bringing it to another pillar of its advertising calendar, March Madness. The spot stars Jason Bateman as . . . Bateman, a less-than-adequate substitute for Batman. Created by agency HighDive, the spot also has Grammy-winning artist SZA, popular streamer Kai Cenat, and content creator Jordan Howlett (aka Jordan the Stallion). Last week, Cenat made an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to tease the spot. State Farm CMO Kristyn Cook says March Madness is a huge part of the culture, and a perfect time to use humor to get an important point across. “I think today, more than ever, it may seem like insurance companies are all the same, but when it comes to coverage, having insurance is not the same as having State Farm,” says Cook. Over the past few years, State Farm has dominated headlines for dropping insurance policies in the areas hit hardest by the fires, due to the risk of extreme weather. It wasn’t the only insurance company to do so, but State Farm was hit hardest by the backlash. Now, the brand is putting on a full-court press as a strong sports marketer to counter the criticism. “Our consistent investment in sports is all about aligning [with] our business strategy, and that’s about how we reach large, engaged audiences,” says Cook. “We want to create that emotional connection with fans. And so you see us doing that, whether it’s in our sponsorships or the creative that we deliver.” Cook says that it’s important for the brand to ask people to really compare its record and services to other options. “Our category is very competitive,” says Cook. “It’s important for us to highlight the difference, and the timing couldn’t be better from a business standpoint. If it feels bold, it was meant to be. Because we feel it was important for people to understand the core message of the campaign.” View the full article

Google has made it much easier to find the answers we seek without navigating to various websites, but that has made it much harder to do business for media companies and other creators. And this new era of artificial intelligence-powered search will reshape the future of the internet, according to Matthew Prince, cofounder and CEO of Cloudflare. Cloudflare has a unique vantage point because it counts content creators and artificial intelligence companies among the more than 20% of the internet that sits behind its network. Driven by a mission to build a better internet, the San Francisco-based company is invested in finding a solution that works for all players involved. “The search-driven business model of the internet isn’t going to be the business model of the internet going forward,” Prince said Sunday during a discussion at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW. “And to the extent that we can help figure that business model out, I think it is existential for us as a business, but it’s actually existential for the internet itself to figure out a new business model.” After ChatGPT was released to the public in late 2022, Prince recalled how publishers and content creators began to increasingly identify AI companies as their biggest villain. And because the current dynamic of AI systems crawling these websites for information doesn’t provide any incentive for original content creators to churn out new content, that’s a problem for everyone—including Cloudflare. “If people aren’t creating original content, that’s the gasoline that fuels these engines, so you need to have that original content,” Prince said. Prince proposed a three-step possible solution. First, it’s important to create scarcity so creators don’t give away content for free; then if creators have the tools to identify when AI systems are crawling their websites, they’ll have control over which of those systems can access this information; and finally, the process should be monetized with a rate card in which content creators dictate how much it costs to crawl their pages. Evolution of a ‘better internet’ That Cloudflare is now thinking about the information ecosystem online is indicative of how much the internet has evolved since the company’s founding in 2009. Even the name was a nod to the major internet issues of that time: creating a firewall in the cloud. Whereas an encrypted internet was once the table stakes, Prince said, the standard has now become post-quantum resistant encryption. And looking ahead, Cloudflare’s mission to help build a better internet could mean protecting customers against Chinese hackers or making sure they’re fairly compensated for the content they create, he added. And he has an even more ambitious goal to make sure that information online continues to be available to all who need it. “My utopian vision of the future is that we get to a place where humans get content for free and bots have to pay a lot for it,” Prince said. “I can afford to sign up for a bunch of paywalls, but I really do worry about the kid in Rwanda who’s brilliant, but today has much less access even though there’s just as much information out there.” View the full article

Treasuries surged and investors boosted their bets on Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts Monday as fear of a economic slowdown took hold across US markets. View the full article

Organizations talk about wanting innovation, but most aren’t willing to create the right conditions for it. We celebrate disruptors, bold thinkers, and game-changing ideas—but the way most organizations actually run makes creativity nearly impossible. Leaders ask, “How do we encourage creativity?” But the real question is: “How do we keep it alive in a world that values efficiency over exploration?” Efficiency kills creativity, but not how you think Most discussions around creativity killers focus on rigid hierarchies, tight deadlines, and risk-averse cultures. While these are barriers, the deeper, more insidious problem is the cult of efficiency. Organizations optimize for productivity, predictability, and speed—often at the expense of curiosity and imagination. Creativity, by its very nature, is inefficient. It requires space for ambiguity, exploration, and even failure. Yet, in many workplaces, the pressure to deliver immediate results leaves no room for the wandering that leads to breakthrough ideas. I have seen this firsthand in my work as a leadership advisor. In my early career in finance and strategy, I was conditioned to optimize every process for efficiency. However, I also saw that some of the most groundbreaking solutions came not from speed but from leaders and teams who embraced deep exploration. When I transitioned to coaching executives, I noticed a pattern: Those who created intentional space for creative thinking—whether through unstructured brainstorming, cross-disciplinary conversations, or reflection—were the ones who consistently led innovation. Yet, too often, creativity was treated as an afterthought, which happened only in scheduled “innovation sessions” rather than an ongoing practice. Toyota revolutionized manufacturing with Lean principles, but their greatest innovation—the hybrid car—wasn’t the result of efficiency. It was born from experimentation and long-term thinking. Similarly, Steve Jobs’s most groundbreaking ideas didn’t emerge from staring at spreadsheets but from deep, unstructured contemplation—something many leaders today would dismiss as unproductive. The paradox is clear: efficiency is necessary for execution, but it is the enemy of exploration. When efficiency becomes the dominant priority, creativity suffocates. Creativity thrives under purposeful inefficiency To sustain creativity, leaders must resist the impulse to manage it like a process and instead design for it like an ecosystem. Creativity flourishes in environments where friction exists—not in the form of bureaucratic red tape but in the form of intellectual collisions, differing perspectives, and permission to explore the unknown. This is what I call deliberate inefficiency—an approach where slowing down actually accelerates long-term innovation. Organizations that optimize solely for speed often end up producing predictable, incremental solutions rather than true breakthroughs. Throughout my career, I have worked with executives who struggled to break out of the cycle of busyness. One executive I coached, a brilliant strategist at a global biotech company, was feeling stagnant. His days were packed with back-to-back meetings, leaving no time for the deep thinking required for innovation. We worked together to redesign his schedule, blocking time for curiosity-driven exploration and structured white space for creative thinking. Within months, his team started generating novel ideas that reshaped their approach to R&D. What changed wasn’t their ability to be creative—it was their permission to be creative. The leaders who truly champion creativity do not see themselves as managers of ideas but as orchestrators of creative conditions. They assume three essential roles: the Curator, the Gardener, and the Alchemist. The Curator gathers diverse perspectives and fosters creative collisions, much like Pixar’s Braintrust, where raw, unpolished ideas are challenged in an environment of candid yet constructive feedback. The Gardener protects ideas when they are still fragile, allowing them to take root before they are subjected to scrutiny. Great ideas are often killed too early simply because they don’t look fully formed. The Alchemist combines seemingly unrelated elements to create unexpected breakthroughs—think of how Apple blended technology and design to reinvent entire industries. When leaders embrace these roles, they shift from controlling output to facilitating creative breakthroughs. How to design for creativity Creativity can’t be sustained through one-off initiatives like brainstorming sessions or innovation sprints. The most creative organizations embed creativity into their structural DNA. They don’t wait for inspiration to strike; they engineer the conditions where it can thrive consistently. I have helped organizations shift from ad-hoc creative efforts to more structured creativity ecosystems. One company I worked with struggled with stagnation because they relied too much on periodic brainstorming sessions. We introduced mechanisms that embedded creativity into their daily workflows—things like interdisciplinary collaboration spaces, regular storytelling forums where employees could share unconventional ideas, and scheduled “curiosity breaks” where teams could step away from execution to reflect and explore. The impact was profound: teams started developing ideas that had been dormant for years, and the organization saw a measurable increase in both engagement and breakthrough thinking. The best creative cultures recognize that innovation isn’t about having more ideas; it’s about creating the right conditions for meaningful ideas to emerge. This requires shifting from a culture of efficiency-driven execution to one that prioritizes exploration. It means rewarding curiosity, not just execution—encouraging questions, not just answers. It means fostering a culture where failure is viewed as a necessary part of the learning process, not a career-ending mistake. And it requires carving out white space for deep work and reflection, because creativity does not happen in relentless busyness—it happens in the pauses between intense periods of focus. The leaders who will thrive in the future won’t just be efficiency experts—they’ll be the ones who know how to protect and nurture creativity. They will recognize that innovation isn’t about simply having more ideas but about fostering the right conditions for meaningful ideas to emerge. This means prioritizing exploration as much as execution, rewarding curiosity as much as results, and carving out space for deep thinking amid the daily grind. The most innovative organizations won’t wait for creativity to strike; they’ll build the ecosystems that allow it to flourish. View the full article

Saving your passwords in your browser—like Chrome or Firefox—provides an easy way to access logins when you need them on websites, and having a safe place to keep strong, unique passwords is better than, well, not. However, browser password managers aren't necessarily the most secure nor the most convenient for filling password or payment fields in apps, nor do they come with features included with third-party password management tools, like encrypted storage or dark web monitoring. If you're transitioning away from your browser's password manager or simply want to remove credentials you no longer use, here's how to delete saved passwords in the most popular browsers. How to delete saved passwords from ChromeChrome allows you to remove saved passwords one by one or mass delete all data stored in Google Password Manager. To delete individual logins, open your settings via the three vertical dots in the upper right corner of the browser window. Select Passwords and Autofill > Google Password Manager. (You can also go through Chrome > Settings > Autofill and passwords > Google Password Manager.) Click the arrow on the credential you want to remove to open the record and select the Delete button. To delete everything at once, select Settings from the Google Password Manager left-hand menu and hit the Delete data button next to Delete all Google Password Manager data followed by Delete on the pop-up message to confirm. (This feature was recently identified by Android Authority as coming soon but seemed to be available already at the time of writing.) Chrome on mobile doesn't have a mass delete button yet, but you can remove individual passwords or select multiple passwords at once. In the Chrome app, hit the three horizontal dots in the bottom nav bar and open Password Manager. Click Edit to select the passwords you want to remove, and click Delete. To turn off password saving, toggle off Offer to save passwords and passkeys in your Google Password Manager settings. How to delete saved passwords from FirefoxTo manage and delete saved passwords on Firefox, tap the three vertical lines to open the menu panel and click Passwords. Select an entry and click Remove to delete it, or click the three horizontal lines in the upper right corner and click Remove All Passwords. On mobile, you can individually delete within the login record or select multiple credentials to delete at once by tapping Edit on the main password list. To disable password saving and management in Firefox, go to Firefox > Preferences/Settings > Privacy & Security and go to the Passwords section. Uncheck Ask to save passwords (or Save Passwords toggle on mobile). How to delete saved passwords from SafariThe process for removing saved passwords from Safari will depend on whether you have macOS Sequoia with the new Apple Passwords app. If you do, passwords can be deleted in the app by selecting the login and going to Edit > Delete either in the record or from the main menu bar. Or select all using Command + click and drag and drop to the Deleted folder. You can view deleted items for 30 days before they are permanently removed. In the mobile app, you can select one or more passwords and hit Delete. Note that Passwords now functions more like a third-party password manager than other browsers. Otherwise, for macOS Sonoma and earlier, go to Safari > Settings > Passwords, sign in with your password or Touch ID, select the website you want to delete the password for, and click Delete Password or Delete Passkey. You can also turn off password saving in the Passwords app under Passwords > Settings > Save passwords. Select Do Not Ask When Signing In from the drop-down menu. How to delete saved passwords from EdgeTo delete saved passwords in Microsoft Edge, go to Settings and more > Settings > Privacy, search, and services. Under Clear browsing data, tap Choose what to clear > Passwords > Clear now. If you want to turn password saving off, instead of selecting Privacy, search, and services, go to Profiles > Passwords > Settings and toggle off Offer to save passwords. How to delete saved passwords from OperaOpera allows you to delete saved passwords individually or in bulk. Open Settings, tap Advanced in the left navigation bar, and click Privacy & Security. To remove all passwords, click Clear browsing data > Advanced, select the Passwords and other sign-in data box, and click Clear data. To delete passwords one by one instead, go to Autofill > Passwords, click the three-dot menu, and hit Remove. To turn off password saving, toggle Offer to save passwords off at the top of this same screen. View the full article

With views of current finances among the poorest Americans already near the lowest in 14 years, tariffs are set to add more pressure by making many everyday items even pricier. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. At $144.95, down from a steep $349.99, the Sony SRS-XG300 is at its lowest price ever, according to price-trackers. That’s a massive drop for a speaker that bagged PCMag’s Best Speaker of the Year 2022 and its Editor’s Choice award. Plus, free shipping is included for everyone, and if you're a Prime member, it’ll be at your doorstep in a day. Sony packed this one with plenty of features, starting with its IP67 rating, which makes it fully waterproof and dust-proof. Poolside splashes, a bit of dust at the beach, or just a rowdy party setup—this outdoor speaker is equipped to handle it all. It also has a built-in USB-A port that lets you charge your phone in a pinch and an aux input (so you're not stuck with just Bluetooth). It's claimed to have 25 hours of battery life, but like all speakers, that depends on how loud you go. Sony SRS-XG300 $144.95 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $349.99 Save $205.04 Get Deal Get Deal $144.95 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $349.99 Save $205.04 When it comes to sound, you get two front-facing woofers and tweeters that push out a frequency range of 20Hz to 20KHz, with passive radiators (with LEDs around them for a little extra flair), adding a deep low end. If you want to dial up the thump even more, a Mega Bass button lets you do just that without distorting, even at higher volumes. However, while the highs stay crisp, the mids reportedly take a bit of a backseat (something to consider if you’re into detailed vocal clarity). Its Bluetooth 5.2 support keeps the connection stable, and with support for AAC, LDAC, and SBC codecs, streaming quality is solid. Android users also get Google Fast Pair for quick setup, but there’s no AptX support, which might be a letdown for those looking for top-tier wireless audio. On the plus side, if you have other Sony speakers, you can sync them for a multi-speaker setup via the app. Speaking of apps, the SRS-XG300's companion app gives you a bit of EQ control, though it’s pretty basic, and you can't save custom presets (but at least it remembers your settings), notes this PCMag review. If you're considering alternatives, you might want to check out the JBL Charge 5 ($119.95, down from $179.95). View the full article

Trend driven by rents rising faster than house prices as landlords leave the marketView the full article

Japanese automaker Nissan’s chief executive, Makoto Uchida, is stepping down after the company reported dismal financial results. Nissan Motor Corp. said in a statement Tuesday that Ivan Espinosa, who is now the company’s chief planning officer, will take Uchida’s place, effective April 1. Espinosa, who joined Nissan in 2003, has spent much of his Nissan career in Mexico and Southeast Asia, overseeing product planning including the drive toward electric vehicles. “I sincerely believe that Nissan has so much more potential than what we’re seeing today,” Espinosa told reporters, while stressing that he needs time to come up with details for a turnaround. He stressed his love for Nissan, noting he has developed a deep understanding of what makes the company unique and valuable. Nissan said the company leadership needed to be “renewed” to achieve long-term growth. Uchida, who remains as a director, expressed confidence in Espinosa as “a real car guy,” and stressed he was handing over the baton of leadership to better unify company ranks. “I am confident that Nissan will definitely make a comeback,” he said, appearing at the hastily called news conference with Espinosa. Speculation about Uchida’s future was rife after he called off talks last month with Japanese rival Honda Motor Co., announced late last year, to set up a joint holding company to integrate its businesses. At the time, he told reporters the focus of the talks had changed to making Nissan into a Honda subsidiary, which he denounced as unacceptable. He also said their strategic partnership to realize synergies on specific projects like electric vehicles and other research will continue. Nissan is projecting a loss of 80 billion yen ($540 million) for the full fiscal year through the end of this month. When asked about talks with Honda and other possible partnerships, Espinosa declined comment, saying he needed more time. During Uchida’s more than five years at Nissan’s helm, sales faltered, including in key markets like the U.S. and China. Uchida also earlier announced the company was slashing 9,000 jobs. It’s a sad turn for the maker of the Z sportscar, loved by auto buffs around the world, and the Leaf electric car, a pioneer in that sector that launched in 2010. Uchida joined Nissan in 2003, job-hopping from major Japanese trading company Nissho Iwai, and worked with Nissan’s alliance partner Renault SA of France before overseeing Nissan’s China operations. Nissan was rescued from near bankruptcy by Renault in 1999. In 2018, Carlos Ghosn, the former superstar executive sent in by Renault, was arrested by Japanese authorities on various financial misconduct charges, including under-reporting his compensation. He later fled Japan for Lebanon. Nissan’s tarnished corporate image after the Ghosn fiasco was a major challenge, Nishida said. So were the COVID-19 pandemic and broader shifts in the auto industry. Apart from Uchida’s departure as chief executive, Nissan announced other sweeping managerial changes, including giving an expanded role to Guillaume Cartier, its chief performance officer, in global marketing and customer experience. Eiichi Akashi, corporate vice president of the Vehicle Planning and Vehicle Component Engineering Division, was named chief technology officer, succeeding Kunio Nakaguro. Teiji Hirata, a corporate vice president, will become chief “monozukuri” officer and executive officer, responsible for manufacturing and supply chain management, replacing Hideyuki Sakamoto. Jeremy Papin, the chief financial officer, was also appointed to be an executive officer. There was no change for Stephen Ma, who serves as chairperson of Nissan’s management committee in China. Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@yurikageyama —Yuri Kageyama, AP Business Writer View the full article

Arena is expected to cost at least £2bn and be the ‘centrepiece’ of a major regeneration projectView the full article

Installing a bunch of applications at once on Windows can be annoying. You need to find the installer packages, download them, then run them all, one after another. It requires spending a bunch of time clicking though menus and checking boxes. But you don't have to live this way. Linux users have long used package managers to accomplish this with far greater ease—as have some Mac users. Using a package manager, you can type a single command to install as many different applications as you want. And, it turns out, Windows comes with a package manager. It's called Winget. You can try it right now—just open PowerShell, which you can find in the start menu or by right-clicking the Windows logo and clicking "Terminal." Type winget search followed by the application you want to install. In most cases, you should be delivered a list of options. Credit: Justin Pot In the above example I wanted to install Steam, so I ran the command winget search steam. I got a long list of results, mostly because there are a bunch of applications that include the word "steam." The second column, labeled ID, tells me the exact name I need in order to install the package in question. After finding the application I want, I can install it with a command. In this case, I type winget install Valve.Steam and hit enter, and Winget will take it from there. Credit: Justin Pot After I type that command, Winget downloads Steam and automatically runs the installer for me. Note that if you're not using an administrator PowerShell, you will be prompted by to give installation permissions. You can launch PowerShell as an administrator by right-clicking the Windows logo on the taskbar and clicking "Terminal (Admin)". Alternatively, you can use sudo for Windows. That caveat aside, you can use these commands to install any of almost 8,000 applications. And it gets even better, because you're not limited to installing one application at a time—your command can include as many apps as you want, and winget will install them all. Credit: Justin Pot Bulk install a bunch of programs with hep from winstall.appYou could look up the ID name for every application you want to install as described above, but there's a website that makes the process a lot easier for you—winstall.app. It's basically a directory for Winget that allows you to select as many applications as you want and copy a single command you can use to install them all in one go. Credit: Justin Pot Winget can also run updates, delete programs, and moreWinget can do more than just install applications. You can also use it to update all of the software you've installed using it. First, type winget update to see a list of all the applications that need updates. Next, type winget update --all to install all the listed updates. You can also remove applications using Winget too: type winget remove followed by the package name of the application you want to remove—for example, winget remove Valve.Steam. There's a bit more Winget can do, including downloading installers without running them (winget download) and exporting your current list of packages so you can reuse it on another devices (winget export). Learn more by checking out the official Winget documentation from Microsoft. View the full article

The Coalition for Financial Ecosystem Standards, a fintech group co-founded by Sima Gandhi, is publishing guidelines for how banks and others can assess them. View the full article

As the economist Milton Friedman once said, “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change.” Humanity has of course been faced with countless crises, leading to profound and often unexpected change. These crises define and differentiate generations and leave lasting impacts for years to come. In 2020, a crisis that would change everything hit the world seemingly overnight. Everyone remembers where they were the day the world shut down. Offices stood empty. Cars, previously stuck in traffic on daily commutes, sat parked in driveways. Trains and buses ran empty, if at all. The bustle of Times Square turned silent and Broadway went dark. As smog cleared from cities like Los Angeles and Mumbai, people started to see views lost for decades. Billions of meetings switched to virtual platforms. For many people across the globe, work would never be the same again. Even before COVID-19, the rapid rate of transformation in the workplace was extraordinary. In the 1970s there were typewriters, landline phones, and filing cabinets. In the ’80s, the fax machine became an office staple. Before long, some lucky people got their hands on a mobile phone. Then, the “information superhighway” arrived, and with it, email, social media, cloud storage, and collaboration software became the new normal. Desktop technology gave way to mobile working. Digital natives were the majority; digital nomads were on the rise. There were apps for everything. Flexible working and work-life balance became hot topics. But, in many ways, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a devastating period for so many people across the globe, has been remarkable. It has compressed the impact equivalent to all the changes of the previous half a century into a few short years and it has been to the great benefit of both companies and their people. The office as a digital construct With rapid advancements in technology, where work is conducted is no longer confined to a singular place. The workplace is now a digital construct. The office is on the cloud, and people are increasingly linked by technology. All the information, resources, and connectivity that billions of us need to do our jobs are distilled into a single portable device and people can now use an app to find their workplace—for the hour, the day, or the week. This shift is radically transforming how and where people work, and a company’s head office no longer has the monopoly on where work can take place. As a result, hybrid and more flexible ways of working have become more common for a significant proportion of white-collar workers, with companies enabling their employees to work across multiple locations. Stanford University Professor Nicholas Bloom’s groundbreaking research has shown that hybrid working is very profitable for firms. His compelling findings have highlighted that hybrid working has no negative effect on productivity while significantly reducing costly employee turnover. This is why some 80% of Fortune 500 companies embrace hybrid working for managers and professionals. The office isn’t dead Over the past few months, there has been a lot of news about more rigid Return-to-Office (RTO) mandates and how they’ve been gaining significant momentum amongst companies of all sizes. The trend is unmistakably taking place with companies prioritizing time for their teams to collaborate in person on a regular basis. However, where and how people work is actually far more nuanced than a binary choice between working from a traditional city center office or from home. There’s a third option: working out of a local coworking space or office, near to home, with other like-minded people. In fact, most white-collar employees are working from a combination of all three of these locations and this is evident in our network at IWG, with our centers in the heart of the suburbs and local communities showing the strongest increase in demand from across the network, while cities also continue to thrive. Better for the bottom line and better for the planet A very clear advantage of today’s hybrid revolution is a reduction in costs, for businesses and employees alike. Independent research from Global Workplace Analytics reveals that reducing their traditional property footprint by adopting hybrid working enables companies to realize average annual savings per employee of $11,000. The financial implications of more localized work are also sizable for employees. Research conducted by IWG and Development Economics has shown that workers could save as much as $30,000 per year if they switch from commuting to a city center daily to working locally four days a week. This is particularly relevant for younger, lower-paid workers facing the challenging combination of student debt and the stubbornly high cost of living. Even these wins fade into insignificance when compared with the savings that reduced commuting will make to the environmental price our planet is paying for those who are able to reduce their commutes and work closer to home. Businesses can also cut energy usage by a fifth (19%) because of the more efficient use of office space or by providing teams access to flexible workspace. Furthermore, International Workplace Group research conducted with sustainable development consultancy Arup has shown that a hybrid working model that combines a local flex space and home produces fewer carbon emissions than any other permutation of working. The study found that, in cities in both the U.S. and the U.K., the reduction in emissions brought by this model could be as high as 90% in the U.S. (Atlanta) and 80% in the U.K. (Glasgow). The productivity gains of hybrid working and tackling proximity bias The recent shift to more flexible ways of working has resulted in some instances of what academics describe as “proximity bias”. This is when business leaders and senior managers treat workers who are physically closer to them more favorably, stemming in some instances from an outdated assumption that those who work remotely are less productive than those who work from a company’s headquarters. All business leaders should remember that what your people are doing and how you’re managing them are by far the most important factors in performance and productivity. If work isn’t being carried out effectively, it’s not the fault of the location. It’s generally the fault of management not making job expectations clear or setting good KPIs. Those problems will be the same whether your teams are sitting 10 feet away from you, or a local office or even 1,000 miles away. A number of convincing studies—including those conducted by Professor Bloomm—have shown productivity increases (3% to 4%) and reduced quit rates (35%) as a hallmark of hybrid working. International Workplace Group’s own research with business leaders backs up these findings. In a recent survey of more than 500 business leaders in the U.S. and the U.K., more than 6 in 10 cite improved productivity as one of the key business benefits, while 7 in 10 CEOs highlight that employee happiness has increased through the adoption of hybrid working. Looking to the future When nearly 20 years ago, I first made a comment about the rise of hybrid and more flexible ways of working, I could have never predicted the precise forces that would bring it about. In years to come the COVID-19 pandemic will rightfully be seen as having one of the most transformative impacts on the world of work as any other event in the past 100 years. It compressed the impact equivalent to all the changes of the previous half a century into a few short years. We are now seeing companies rapidly learn how to manage dispersed workforces using the latest technology and new management techniques while improving the happiness and the work-life balance of their teams. I can safely say that the office will always play a crucial role in corporate life. Headquarters have evolved to become hubs of creativity and connection, with intentional spaces and activities to maximize collaboration. At the same time, companies are increasingly empowering their teams to stay productive by working closer to home in workspaces near where people actually live. These permanent shifts are providing incredible momentum for the flexible workspace sector. We are seeing the most rapid growth we have experienced in our 35 years of operations. All of this confirms the reality. The office isn’t dead—and never will be—it’s just moved to a much more convenient place. View the full article

The company is valued more as a moonshot rather than a carmakerView the full article

We’re only in the third month of the year and already there have been a number of bizarre food trends go viral on TikTok—from a $19 strawberry to feeding babies spoonfuls of butter. The latest is a yogurt, called Coconut Cult, that costs $39 for a 16 ounce jar. On many a for-you-page, you can find influencers incorporating a scoop of the super-live probiotic yogurt into their morning routine and instructing viewers how to properly eat it. “I’ve never looked hotter,” one user posted, adding her stomach “has never been flatter.” (Not everyone on the platform was impressed with the results, however, and some weren’t fans of the reportedly sour taste.) Available in three standard flavors (Original, Chocolate Mousse, and Harvest Strawberry) and limited, seasonal releases, Coconut Cult is not a regular yogurt you snack on. According to the California-based brand, it is meant to be consumed more like a daily probiotic supplement. The website claims that two tablespoons a day is enough to experience less bloating, more regularity, improved mood and mental health, better digestion and skin, and boosted immunity,. (The brand warns against double dipping into the same jar with a dirty spoon to avoid interfering with the live bacteria.) “This is the most probiotic-rich coconut yogurt you will find on the market in the grocery store,” one nutritionist weighed in on TikTok. The certified nutritionist, NTP, BFA, who goes by Claire The Nutritionist, did disclaim that people with certain conditions, such as small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, might be best avoiding the product as it can worsen the symptoms. For the everyday yogurt enthusiast, however, the difference between this yogurt and other options, according to founder Noah Simon-Waddell, is that many yogurts are pasteurized after fermentation to be shelf-stable, despite the fact this process can reduce or eliminate live cultures. (Some manufacturers may add them back in after the process as probiotics need to be alive and active in order to do their job in creating a healthy environment in the gut.) Packaged with roughly 50 billion colony-forming units (CFUs) per ounce (plain yogurt typically contains at least 1,000,000), Coconut Cult is certainly not lacking in that department. “Fifty billion CFU per ounce is extremely high for food-based probiotics,” health creator Brooke Harter, who is currently pursuing her Masters in nutrition, told Delish. While high doses may be beneficial for some, excessive amounts could lead to digestive distress like bloating, gas, and diarrhea.” She added that research also says a lower-dose of well researched and specific probiotics is better than a higher-dose of mixed dose of strains, like those found in Coconut Cult. However, thanks to the glowing endorsements, jars of the stuff are flying off the shelves at Whole Foods and the website is experiencing shipping delays up to three weeks due to demand. Coconut Cult is reportedly producing five times as many jars as they were in 2024 to keep up with demand. “I created this yogurt as part of my healing journey, as a way to heal myself and my gut, which was really sick,” founder Simon-Waddell posted on TikTok in 2022. “I didn’t create this yogurt as some kind of genius startup business plan to sell incredibly expensive yogurt.” And at approximately $10 per 8-ounce jar (the brand’s website, thecoconutcult.com, sells 16-ounce jars for $39 with a two-jar minimum purchase), it certainly costs more than your standard Chobani. View the full article

Zoho Corporation has launched Projects Plus, a new AI-powered project management platform designed to enhance efficiency and collaboration for mid-sized and enterprise organizations. The platform integrates four key Zoho applications—Projects, WorkDrive, Analytics, and Sprints—allowing businesses to leverage data-driven insights, streamline workflows, and facilitate collaboration in real-time. The introduction of Projects Plus follows a year of substantial growth for Zoho Projects, which saw a 20% year-over-year revenue increase in 2024. Additionally, the company reported a threefold rise in user migration from third-party project management tools, with 55% of new users transitioning from Microsoft Projects and JIRA. “Like many of our Enterprise solutions, Zoho Projects Plus was developed to deliver supreme value and meet the needs our customers had been demonstrating within our software suite, particularly between Zoho Projects and Zoho Analytics,” says Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist at Zoho. “Projects Plus synthesizes the latest AI-driven tools, data-first analytics, and privacy-focused protections into software that anticipates the evolving needs of international Enterprise organizations, expanding Zoho’s global reach.” Comprehensive AI and Data-Driven Management Zoho Projects Plus introduces a data-centric approach to project management by integrating AI-powered tools that enhance decision-making. The platform’s Predictive Analysis feature uses historical data to forecast risks, estimate timelines, and anticipate resource needs, allowing for proactive project planning. Other key capabilities include: Progress Tracking and Bottleneck Analysis – Real-time dashboards replace static tools like Gantt charts, providing up-to-date project status insights. Quality Control Analytics – Automated analytics ensure that deliverables meet predefined standards throughout the project lifecycle. Advanced AI Automation – Zoho’s AI assistant, Zia, enhances resource allocation, streamlines workflows, and enables smarter project forecasting. Industry Adoption and Business Impact Early adopters of Zoho Projects Plus have reported improved efficiency and visibility across teams. Steve Wooster, Vice President of Operations at Virtuoso, highlighted the platform’s impact on enterprise-wide project coordination. “Leveraging Zoho Projects for enterprise-wide projects has increased visibility, improved communication and coordination across divisions, and ultimately led to more successful project delivery,” Wooster says. “Now, with Projects Plus, that functionality has increased while offering ease of use. Having Projects Plus directly connect between Zoho Projects, Sprints, and Analytics reduces friction by ensuring teams maintain a full, transparent view of company priorities and the ability to customize data use by department.” Dave Smith, founder and principal analyst at InFlow Analysis, emphasizes the role of AI in redefining project management. “With Zoho Projects Plus, organizations can embrace a future where project management is not just about tracking deadlines but about leveraging AI, automation, and unified workspaces to predict, optimize, and transform outcomes,” Smith says. “By integrating hybrid project management, collaborative work management, and a powerful layer of data analytics with contextually embedded AI across all applications, Zoho is furthering its support for mid-market and Enterprise companies by redefining how teams execute seamlessly and intelligently.” Pricing and Availability Zoho Projects Plus is now available globally. In the U.S., the platform is priced at $16 per user per month, which is 27% lower than the combined cost of purchasing Projects, Sprints, WorkDrive, and Analytics separately. Regional pricing details can be found at Zoho’s official site. As Zoho continues to expand its enterprise offerings, Projects Plus marks a significant step in delivering scalable, AI-enhanced project management solutions for businesses across various industries. Images: Zoho This article, "Zoho Unveils Projects Plus, a Unified AI-Driven Project Management Platform" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Zoho Corporation has launched Projects Plus, a new AI-powered project management platform designed to enhance efficiency and collaboration for mid-sized and enterprise organizations. The platform integrates four key Zoho applications—Projects, WorkDrive, Analytics, and Sprints—allowing businesses to leverage data-driven insights, streamline workflows, and facilitate collaboration in real-time. The introduction of Projects Plus follows a year of substantial growth for Zoho Projects, which saw a 20% year-over-year revenue increase in 2024. Additionally, the company reported a threefold rise in user migration from third-party project management tools, with 55% of new users transitioning from Microsoft Projects and JIRA. “Like many of our Enterprise solutions, Zoho Projects Plus was developed to deliver supreme value and meet the needs our customers had been demonstrating within our software suite, particularly between Zoho Projects and Zoho Analytics,” says Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist at Zoho. “Projects Plus synthesizes the latest AI-driven tools, data-first analytics, and privacy-focused protections into software that anticipates the evolving needs of international Enterprise organizations, expanding Zoho’s global reach.” Comprehensive AI and Data-Driven Management Zoho Projects Plus introduces a data-centric approach to project management by integrating AI-powered tools that enhance decision-making. The platform’s Predictive Analysis feature uses historical data to forecast risks, estimate timelines, and anticipate resource needs, allowing for proactive project planning. Other key capabilities include: Progress Tracking and Bottleneck Analysis – Real-time dashboards replace static tools like Gantt charts, providing up-to-date project status insights. Quality Control Analytics – Automated analytics ensure that deliverables meet predefined standards throughout the project lifecycle. Advanced AI Automation – Zoho’s AI assistant, Zia, enhances resource allocation, streamlines workflows, and enables smarter project forecasting. Industry Adoption and Business Impact Early adopters of Zoho Projects Plus have reported improved efficiency and visibility across teams. Steve Wooster, Vice President of Operations at Virtuoso, highlighted the platform’s impact on enterprise-wide project coordination. “Leveraging Zoho Projects for enterprise-wide projects has increased visibility, improved communication and coordination across divisions, and ultimately led to more successful project delivery,” Wooster says. “Now, with Projects Plus, that functionality has increased while offering ease of use. Having Projects Plus directly connect between Zoho Projects, Sprints, and Analytics reduces friction by ensuring teams maintain a full, transparent view of company priorities and the ability to customize data use by department.” Dave Smith, founder and principal analyst at InFlow Analysis, emphasizes the role of AI in redefining project management. “With Zoho Projects Plus, organizations can embrace a future where project management is not just about tracking deadlines but about leveraging AI, automation, and unified workspaces to predict, optimize, and transform outcomes,” Smith says. “By integrating hybrid project management, collaborative work management, and a powerful layer of data analytics with contextually embedded AI across all applications, Zoho is furthering its support for mid-market and Enterprise companies by redefining how teams execute seamlessly and intelligently.” Pricing and Availability Zoho Projects Plus is now available globally. In the U.S., the platform is priced at $16 per user per month, which is 27% lower than the combined cost of purchasing Projects, Sprints, WorkDrive, and Analytics separately. Regional pricing details can be found at Zoho’s official site. As Zoho continues to expand its enterprise offerings, Projects Plus marks a significant step in delivering scalable, AI-enhanced project management solutions for businesses across various industries. Images: Zoho This article, "Zoho Unveils Projects Plus, a Unified AI-Driven Project Management Platform" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

For the first time in more than 40 years, a new hormone-free intrauterine device (IUD) is coming to market in the U.S.—and it’s designed with patients’ comfort in mind, both during the insertion process and once it’s in place. The new IUD, called Miudella, comes from the pharmaceutical company Sebela Women’s Health Inc. It was approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) in late February, and is the second hormone-free IUD to be approved since 1984, when the copper-based option Paragard first became available. With the addition of Miudella, there will now be six IUD options available in the U.S. Not only does this advancement provide patients seeking a hormone-free IUD with more than one option, it also marks a potentially major improvement in IUD design. By reducing insertion pain and post-insertion bleeding and cramping, Miudella is addressing two potential side effects of IUD placement that many women feel have long been overlooked. A new option in an ultra-limited market According to Kelly Culwell, a board-certified OB-GYN and head of research and development at Sebela Women’s Health, bringing an IUD to market, especially in the U.S., is “a very expensive and time consuming proposition.” Because of those barriers, she says, many pharma companies simply choose not to invest as much in studying women’s health. “There really isn’t a generic IUD, and the reason for that is it’s a very time-intensive and cost-prohibitive development process, especially for companies that aren’t really putting a lot of money or time or effort into women’s health development,” Culwell explains. “A lot of the bigger pharma companies are focusing on things that could bring in a lot more money; things like oncology or neurology—so there just hasn’t been a lot of innovation [in women’s health overall].” These factors have resulted in a limited selection of IUD options in the U.S. compared to places like Europe, Culwell says—despite the fact that IUDs are considered to be one of the most effective forms of birth control, preventing pregnancy 99% of the time or more. Currently, there are four hormonal IUDs on the market (three of which were made by the same company) and one hormone-free IUD. Hormonal IUDs work by releasing a progestin hormone into the body, which thickens the cervical mucus and prevents sperm from entering the uterus. For patients who are sensitive to hormones, though, this might not be the best option. These patients may want to opt for a hormone-free IUD, which uses copper to prevent pregnancy. The metal is toxic to sperm, killing them before they can make it through the uterus. The only currently available hormone-free IUD, Paragard, has a copper wire wound around the entire T-shaped structure of the device. But there’s a major drawback to that design: Copper can initiate an uncomfortable inflammatory response in the patient, resulting in side effects like cramping and heavy bleeding. Miudella, which has been in development for about 15 years, seeks to improve on both this existing hormone-free IUD model and the construction and delivery of IUDs more generally. [Image: Sebela Women’s Health Inc.] Designing a more flexible IUD To start, Miudella’s developers wanted to find a way to decrease the amount of copper on the device in an attempt to lessen the side effects caused by the metal. In the past, Culwell says, other companies have attempted a similar strategy, but found that lowering the dose of copper reduced the IUD’s effectiveness. After extensive trial and error, the Miudella team found that placing copper strategically on three key points of the device could maintain effective pregnancy prevention rates while lowering the copper dose to less than half that of Paragard. “The Miudella has copper placed right at the bottom of the IUD, which is at the internal part of the cervix, and then at the top of the arms, which is at each of the tubal openings,” Culwell says. “You don’t necessarily need copper throughout the entire uterine cavity, you just really need copper at the key places where the sperm will be going by, to basically prevent them from making their way to the egg.” Miudella also bucks the standard material construction of IUDs. Currently, all of the IUDs on the market in the U.S. use a rigid, plastic T-frame that holds one stiff position. To account for the varying anatomies of the uterus, Miudella has swapped that plastic frame for one made of nitinol, an ultra-flexible metal alloy commonly used for procedures like cardiac stents and orthopedic implants. “Nitinol is super elastic,” Culwell says. “It has shape memory properties, so it actually can conform nicely to varying sizes and shapes of uterus. A uterus can be narrow, it can be short, it can be wide, and so having something that’s not just a rigid T allows for some conformity there.” Aiming for a less painful insertion process The nitinol frame allowed Miudella’s developers to make some changes to the actual IUD insertion process, which can be painful for some women—so much so that, in 2022, TikTok saw an outpouring of stories from women who felt that their pain during the procedure had not been properly addressed. Just last August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued its first-ever recommendation that patients should actually be counseled on pain management before the procedure, as well as permitting the use of topical lidocaine during the process. To increase patient comfort, Miudella’s developers invented a new insertion tube designed for more gentle insertion. Because of nitinol’s compressive properties, the tube can be manufactured about a millimeter narrower than Paragard’s insertion tube. Additionally, while other IUD insertion tubes have a flat, blunt end, the Miudella tube comes with a tapered tip. [Photo: Sebela Women’s Health Inc.] “To have it more tapered so that it would be more comfortable for the insertion process is actually a challenge,” Culwell says. “It’s a bit difficult to create this tapered tip that you could reproduce consistently, because then you also have to be able to get the IUD out without much resistance and force. There was a lot of experimentation on getting the tip of the insertion tube to be able to be nice and tapered, but also to allow easy passage of the IUD. In fact, there’s a proprietary way that that tapered tube is designed: It has slits in the side that decrease friction during the deployment process.” Most other IUDs, due to the rigidity of their plastic frames, have to be loaded by the practitioner within five minutes of placement to hold their shape. In the case of Paragard, the device has to be manually loaded with the fingers by pushing the two arms of the IUD down into a tube—typically while the patient is actively waiting in the stirrups. The added benefit of Miudella’s unique tube and nitinol frame is that the device can be pre-loaded before it even arrives at the doctor’s office. Currently, Miudella has been approved for use up to three years, whereas Paragard is approved for up to 10. Culwell notes that the team at Sebela is in the process of studying Miudella’s effectiveness for up to eight years of use. In her own practice as an OB-GYN, Culwell says, she’s glad to see that the CDC has started to offer more guidance on pain management during IUD placement. Still, she believes that women have historically “not been listened to when it comes to pain in particular,” and that the pharma industry needs to invest more in innovating with patient comfort in mind. “We’re continuing, as a community, to do more and more research on pain management for IUD inserts,” Culwell says. “I think it lagged behind—for way too long, but there was no research done on IUD pain. So, I think continued innovation and then continued informed consent and making sure that we really offer patients pain management techniques are key, because IUDs are terrific methods for people who want them, but it can’t be torture to get them in. That shouldn’t be the trade-off.” View the full article

The builder's lending unit bought servicing and secondary market approvals that weren't part of Guild's previous acquisition of CCM's production and branding. View the full article

As the 30-year fixed-rate declined by almost 20 basis points, borrowers took advantage, boosting rate-and-term transaction volumes, Optimal Blue said. View the full article