#techtomorrowland

Owning property can be stressful, especially when you have several different pieces to maintain. Instead of having to worry about the various parts of real estate management in multiple places, Ender provides a centralized location for all of someone's management needs.

The site really caters itself to property managers. Ender claims that they are "building the operating system of real estate." The system features integrated accounting that caters to property owners, renters, and vendors. All parties can pay and be paid through the convenience of Ender. It also has task managing capabilities, such as putting in maintenance requests, responding to tenants, and hiring and scheduling vendors.

Farming and agriculture are at the center of humanity. Without farms, there would be no production of food, and society would cease to exist. Like it or not, food production is one of the most necessary factors of life.

The farming industry needs support in a variety of ways, and Gramophone is using technology to assist farmers in India. Gramophone is an app, with access to resources and community in one platform. Users can order seed, fertilizers, crop tools, and other needs directly from the app. They can also sell, or buy, crops anywhere in India through the marketplace feature. Additionally, Gramophone has a social network for farmers and agriculture experts to connect and discuss. There are also features to help farmers with testing their soil nutrition, as well as monitor for the growth and health of someone's crops.

We live in a digital world. This entire blog would cease to exist if we didn't. So much of my education has relied on technology and the internet, and that became the case for most of the world once the pandemic began. I felt a bit ahead of the curve when everyone shifted. My high school was a STEM and 1-to-1 technology school. Everyone had iPads that were regularly used in the classroom and at home. In college, one of my journalism professors formerly worked at Bloomberg and knew all about Zoom. She regularly had us meet virtually, rather than cancelling class for last minute happenings. It was fun and exciting to do something else, then it became the norm worldwide in the blink of an eye.

This may be off topic, but it's what I think about when I consider how education has become more and more digital over the years. Clever is right on par with that transformation.

Born out of frustration of having to use multiple softwares and tools for digital education, Clever has sought out to be a service that has everything needed for learning in one place. With this learning management system (LMS), students are able to access lessons, teachers are able to create lessons and assignments, and parents are able to track their child's progress and communicate with teachers. It's a win-win-win.

Most recently, Clever was acquired by Kahoot!, a longtime favorite in the classroom. Seriously, nothing is more fun than walking into class and your professor has Kahoot up and running. I think it'll be interesting to see what kind of integrations come out of this acquisition.

Smell is a powerful sense, and one that I think is often underrated. Everyone hypes up sight and sound, but what about the ability to smell? It feels like it is sometimes treated as an afterthought. But not with recent technologies.

Dogs are often trained and used to detect certain smells, such as marijuana or bomb materials. We see them in airports around TSA, sometimes they visit schools to do drug checks, these trained dogs are often kept on military bases. What if a trained dog could be replaced by a cyborg that's capable of detecting smells? It would reduce the amount of time and money spent on training dogs, as well as provide those dogs with more opportunities to not be working.

Koniku has thought about this. Extensively. They have developed a technology that can detect smells. The device is a small, silicon semi-circle, and as the company describes, "cyborg." The company has done thorough research and has found a way to combine biology and computers to detect smells.

It has several applications, some more obvious than others. Of course, the technology can be used to replace trained dogs in airports or schools. It's also used in a military application, and there is current development to place the device in drones in order to detect certain bombs in an area, without putting soldiers at risk. Koniku is also able to be used in the agriculture industry. Since it is able to detect smell and has taste receptors, the technology can check for the quality of food before it ever leaves the farm. And finally, what I think it coolest, is this technology's ability to detect viruses, such as COVID-19.

When the pandemic started, a lot of life shifted. Work seems to be something that was most impacted, as almost everyone has to have some sort of job. Many jobs transferred to an online or remote format, increasing the number of people working from home, and drastically changing what a work environment and culture looks like sans office.

One thing that comes from being in-person that is a little challenging to achieve remotely is realtime feedback, praise, and engagement throughout a company. Karma is a startup that is working to change that.

Karma Bot is an add-on for team messaging platforms like Slack, Teams, and Telegram. It's basically a rewards program. Team members can earn and distribute "Karma Points" to each other based on good work, nice comments, or other positive interactions. Once people have accrued enough Karma Points, they can trade them in for prizes like gift cards, food, books, or days off.

This seems like a really nice incentive and way to get a remote team to interact with each other more. I could see how this could get a little competitive, because there are leaderboards within an organization using the service, but overall it seems like a positive add-on.

We only have one planet, so we must use our resources wisely.

Vertus is a climate tech startup that is finding new ways to create green fuel from waste . They currently have two technologies they are using to accomplish this-- Brio and Boda.

Brio is a small unit that lives inside of anaerobic digestion lifeforms. It helps increase the amount of waste these organisms can digest, while also increasing the amount of energy they produce. Brio increases the waste and energy productions by about three times the normal rate.

Boda is a technology that eats CO2 and H2 to produce renewable natural gas. The technology works to convert gas from anaerobic digestion into bio-methane.

Both of these technologies are great for the environment and necessary as we continue to find solutions for climate change.

When you first meet someone new, you only have a few seconds before they start to form opinions on you. This also applies to the endeavors you explore on the web.

There are many people who are in the video industry or want to be, and YouTube is a popular outlet for this medium. Intro Maker helps people create custom intro and outro clips for their YouTube videos. It's not limited to YouTube-- the intros you make on Intro Maker can be used on video and any platform available that hosts videos.

Users can select a template from the dozens that are available. From there, they can customize the template to match the needs of their video or channel/page.

Like 55 Knots, Intro Maker is using a subscription model for their business. I've noticed that this model is really popular for creative companies and is pretty well-received by younger generations. Intro Maker originally operated on a price-per-video style, but are hoping to find more financial success in the subscription model.

In 2020, Intro Maker created over 750,000 videos (that's a lot). I'm sure that they've seen similar success in 2021, and are hoping to start showing profitable ads on shorter videos.

Let's be real, not everyone can be a creative. That's why we turn to the people who are when something artsy is needed.

55 Knots is a graphic design startup that has been taking off. Based in Australia, 55 Knots is a company that provides graphic design projects for companies, and offers various levels of pricing and assistance based on what the customer needs.

The agency has a subscription model, which was adapted as a way to keep small businesses as customers and not have to rely on big businesses coming for one project at a time. This route seems to have been successful, and the agency had 200 subscribers at the start of 2021.

The interface of their website is well-laid out. Visitors can pretty easily find the information that they need. My one qualm is that I do not like the color scheme they've decided to use. The contrast between black and neon pink and neon green screens early 2005 blacklight emo. It also hurts my eyes. That's not very important, but it is something that has stood out to me.