The Wall Street Journal thinks that tech will change your life. Perhaps it will even rock your 2015. Rocking their 2015 is just the kind of experience that WSJ readers -- average age of 57 -- really want. But the Journal, ever hopeful for pushing down the subscriber age into the ad world's desirable 20’s and 30’s, hopes that the readers will be as excited as their current breathless tech columnists Fowler and Stern. So they want its boomer audience to grasp How to Get Ready. But of course! Starting with Windows 10 – which will have a resurrected Start menu and yes, it will improve multi-tasking – by the fall of 2015. Now aren't you excited?
AARP will unleash 50 tech-savvy seniors on the 2015 CES Show to test drive the technology and see if it meets the wants and needs of 50+ consumers. Wearing #DisruptAging shirts, 50 volunteers will explore the Lifelong Tech Pavilion at the Sands Expo on Tuesday, January 6 starting at 10:30 a.m., with a consumer eye toward whether investors and inventors hit the mark on cutting-edge products that people 50+ are waiting for. Several of the members will also participate in a panel from 12–12:30 p.m.
The report will encourage both established firms as well as new entrants/smaller firms to gauge the pulse of the market, which in turn would help firms to garner greater market shares. Firms purchasing this report could use any one or a combination of the below mentioned five strategies (market penetration, product development/innovation, market development, market diversification, and competitive assessment) for reaping a greater market share.
PERS devices and wearables – what will bring them together?Now that the Washington Post has declared that Apple and Google will solve our health problems, aren’t you relieved? Oh, you’re a bit concerned about your privacy, the fact that all of your outside-of-Facebook web searches are by default accessible to Facebook – that you have to opt out on a completely separate website in order to terminate tracking of this activity? As you wander around Google, Yahoo or through iTunes, your searches about health topics, those are all now relevant for advertisers as provided by Facebook! And extra-special, what do you think about the fact that Apple lobbied away any need for FDA approval for anything health-related? Feeling safely healthy now?
Did you know that nearly 40% of seniors report having a disability? In the category of number obsession, this new snapshot of a government report caught my eye and should catch yours – it is referencing 16 million people. The report notes six types of disability reported in census data: hearing, sight, thinking and memory, walking, self-care and independent living. From the MedlinePlus release: "People older than 85 accounted for more than 25 percent of all disabilities among seniors, although they represented only 14 percent of the overall senior population."
Effective January 2015, AgeTech West, a West Coast network of aging service providers and technology companies, will integrate into Aging2.0, the global innovation network and startup accelerator. The integration will create the ‘Aging2.0 Alliance‘ – a new program for innovative providers and technology companies. The announcement was made today at the 2014 AgeTech West conference: Sync in Seattle: Transforming the Aging Services Experience.
Start with the premise -- Silicon Valley VC firms matter for entrepreneur success. Is this true? And especially, is it true for early stage companies, with founders that are known to VCs; or do angel investors or startup money from friends and family matter more? Instead of speculating, consider the leading Silicon Valley VC firms -- and examine their online featured list of investments. Note mention in this article that the venture 'industry has gone back to its IT- and IT-enabled services roots.' So let's take a look at their historical successes. Sequoia Capital -- health-related investments are disease oriented, big hits include LinkedIn, PayPal, Instagram, Kayak, and eHarmony. For sure, the full list contains many useful tools for people of all ages, but unless we're talking diabetes and glucometers, nothing much that is age-related for seniors.
