A Ferris Bueller App That Attends Zoom Meetings For You… And Other Small Business Tech News This Week

(This article originally appeared in Forbes)

Here are five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. Did you miss them?

1- AI zoom platform Beulr improves efficiency in students by transcribing meetings.

Beulr (get it?) is a subscription based productivity platform that attends meetings in place or in assistance of students to record and transcribe the meeting. This platform, created by a Tulane student, was designed to improve student’s learning capacity for non-participatory classes or meetings. Studies show that 65% of respondents indicated meetings prevented them from completing work and 71% said meetings are unproductive and inefficient. The platform is compatible with Zoom and expected to be compatible with other platforms soon. (Source: Yahoo Finance)

Why this is important for your business:

Kind of genius, right? You can attend meetings, without even being there. But this isn’t a joke — it’s the future of meetings. It’s sending avatars in your place so you can be in more than one place at a time. And in the not so distant future those same avatars can ask questions and participate as if you’re actually there.

2- Small Business accounting start up, Finally, raises $95 million.

Formerly known as BackOffice, the online accounting startup will use its infusion of cash to help expand the company’s workforce and implement a corporate charge card for medium and small businesses. With Finally tripling its growth in the last two years, they plan to make an excess of $1 billion in credit available to SMBs.(Source: PYMNTS)

Why this is important for your business:

According to the company, Finally was “created to make things easier. Powered by years of combined tech experience and first-hand bookkeeping knowledge, the team created an artificial intelligence accounting and finance suite for small to mid-sized businesses.” The company says its mission is to “help companies remove the stress by automating and making bookkeeping easier and more efficient.” There are plenty of players in the cloud accounting space for small business but there’s still plenty of room for more. Finally may be a good fit for your company if you like the look and feel, features and approach to its bookkeeping and financing. If you’re searching for an online accounting system, it’s worth a close look.

3- New ransomware triumphs double extortion by making devices useless.

The big scare of double extortion is no match for LokiLocker’s new way of ransomware. Instead of threatening to expose certain documents, these new hackers threaten to overwrite a user’s Windows Master Boot Record (MBR) and delete all the files making the device unusable, unless the user pays. The U.S. government fears Russia will use this method to combat U.S. and other western sanctions. It will attempt to destroy your system by changing the login and desktop to a timer that counts down until you pay at the message that is presented. If failed to pay, the message displays as “You did not pay us. So we deleted all of your files : ) Loki locker ransomware_”. Blackberry and Microsoft fear this will become the new trend of hackers. (Source: ZDNet)

Why this is important for your business:

Ransomware is getting even more aggressive. Before you were “asked” to pay a ransom to unlock your data. Now the new wave is basically saying pay up or we’re deleting your data. Get your people trained. Check your backups. Update everyone’s operating systems.

4- A new mortgage buying app receives $40 million at $640 million valuation

Former Zillow executives Greg Schwartz and Carey Armstrong, create Tomo a “Paypal for the mortgage industry.” Tomo covers a third of the U.S. market with the app raising $40 million in Series A round, doubling the company’s value. It uses software and data to speed up the approval and purchasing process for new homes, but it does not offer refinancing mortgages unlike some of its competitors. (Source: GeekWire)

Why this is important for your business:

An interesting tool that will compete with you if you’re in the mortgage business. So how do you compete against this? By embracing it. Recommending it. Even using it. Give your clients all the options and let them choose who and how they want to do business. I’m betting if your service and advice is good, you’ll be just fine.

5- An Agri-Tech robot coming in 2023 promises to help farmers prevent crop disease and monitoring.

At a recent World Agri-Tech event in San Francisco, Growmark and Solinftec announced their partnership on a new robot to bring to the Agri-Tech market. The robot is currently being field tested this year and is hoping to go on the market by 2023. (Source: TechCrunch)

Why this is important for your business:

The functions hope to solve large agricultural problems by scanning crop health and nutrition to help farmers. The intent is to help with efficiency in determining these problems as well as performing other necessary functions such as weeding and plowing. If you’re in this industry, keep an eye out.

Originally published at https://www.forbes.com.