Summary: In a week where technology news has been sparse, we will always find a way to talk tech!! This week on The Waves of Tech 217, we tackle the topics of Indiegogo funding, Disney’s latest acquisition, Microsoft’s goodbye to Office 2003, and taxes without CPAs. Enjoy the show and make sure to head over to iTunes and give NetCast Studio a rating and comment. And we hope you continue to ride…the waves of tech! Indiegogo is an amazing platform for fundraising, promoting campaigns, and connecting communities. I (Dave) have a friend and fellow roller derby player that suffered a spiral fracture in his leg and has caused him to spend the next 6 weeks in the UK, far from his home in LA. With the help of Indiegogo, the community has raised over $4800 and made the front page of the site! Disney, with the purchase of Maker Studios for upwards of $950 million, is slated to become one of the major online video distributors. Maker Studios boasts an audience of over 380 million subscribers, totaling an amazing 5.5 billions views across 55,000 channels every month. This is a huge move for a traditional media outlet, as Disney attempts to draw in the younger audience into the Disney culture. That is a small price to pay for that many eyes…an excellent opportunity to draw in new consumers. Good move? Bad move? With April 15th only a few weeks away, it’s time to wrap up those taxes everybody! Software and online sources have become so sophisticated and intuitive, it begs the question – Are CPAs really needed in a time of technology advancements in the taxation industry? Some enjoy the piece of mind of dropping their taxes off and allowing professionals to prepare their fate. Others, such as Steve, have found no true financial benefit to utilizing CPAs for his personal or professional tax preparation. Just a friendly reminder from our friends from Microsoft that Office 2003 support ends on April 8th. For those not familiar with this, that means Microsoft will not be providing security updates and patches to Office 2003 and Windows XP in a few weeks. Be sure to protect your family members and friends that may be using this legacy platform by upgrading their systems and security settings.
