Mompreneur jumps into the ‘Shark Tank’

It all started with a 4 a.m. email nearly a year ago: “Do you think a baby bib could change the world? I do...”

Then Susie Taylor included a link to her website, bibbitec.com, and off it went to Shark Tank, the popular ABC television show where entrepreneurs pitch their companies to investors on the show — and by extension, 7 million viewers.

Four months later, as the “mompreneur” was leaving her Biscayne Park home to pick up her kids from school, she got a call from the show asking her to pitch on the spot. Driving with her phone on her shoulder, she told the Bibbitec story.

Shark Tank bit. After a few more back and forths, her segment was filmed last summer.

Friday night, Taylor is scheduled to be on the show pitching Bibbitec’s main product, “The Ultimate Bib,” a patented generously sized, stain-resistant and fast-drying child’s bib made in the USA — Hialeah, to be exact. Bibbitec’s $30 bib can be a burp cloth, changing pad, breast feeding shield, full body bib, place mat, art smock and more, Taylor says.

We won’t be getting any details on what happens Friday night when she and her husband, Stephen Taylor, get into the tank with Daymond John, Mark Cuban and the other celebrity sharks; Taylor has been contractually sworn to secrecy. But whatever the outcome, she believes it will be worth it for the marketing pop.

Taylor was inspired to create her bib after a long and very messy plane ride with her two young sons and started Bibbitec in 2008. She and her team — her husband is CFO, her sister, Heather McCabe, handles sales and marketing, her uncle, Richard Page, is in charge of production, and her aunt, Marcia Kreitman, advises on design — have expanded the line to include The Ultimate Smock for older children and the Ultimate Mini for babies. Coming soon: a smock for adults.

Taylor already got a taste of what a national TV show appearance can do for sales. In September, Bibbitec’s sales jumped 40 percent after she was on an ABC World News "Made in America" segment. “Within 30 seconds, we started getting sales from all over the country and they didn’t even mention our name on the air,” Taylor says. She said that confirmed her belief that a Shark Tank appearance would be worth it.

Plus, Taylor has been hooked on Shark Tank since the first time she watched it in 2008 as she was developing her product. Trained in theater, she admits she didn’t know much about business and learned from the show. She would practice how she would answer the questions.

“I’m all about empowering women who are sitting on the couch watching, because that’s what I was four years ago,” says Taylor. “All I wanted to do was to be on Shark Tank because I believed if I got on Shark Tank the world will see what I am trying to do and that’s all I need. I know it’s a great product.”

Will that theater training come in handy Friday night? Stay tuned. Shark Tank airs at 9 p.m. on ABC and Taylor hopes viewers will join in on Twitter using the hashtag #sharkbib.

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DA shot and killed outside courthouse in Texas

KAUFMAN, Texas — An assistant district attorney was shot and killed Thursday morning near the North Texas county courthouse where he worked, and authorities said they were searching for two suspects.

The shooting occurred just before 9 a.m. outside the Kaufman County Courthouse annex, which is across the street from the main county courthouse about 33 miles southeast of Dallas. Officials didn't immediately indicate any motive for the shooting.

Kaufman Independent School District Superintendent Todd Williams said all schools in the district were placed in lockdown as authorities searched for the suspects, and officials eventually decided to close the buildings for the day.

AP

Law enforcement officers investigate the scene of a shooting in downtown Kaufman, Texas where a prosecutor was shot and killed.

The name of the prosecutor was not immediately announced, pending notification of family.

Local law enforcement officials decried the shooting as an attack on the criminal justice system.

"We understand that we may come into contact with violent people but this is the next level," Kaufman County Sheriff David Byrnes said Thursday at a news conference.

Kaufman Police Chief Chris Aulbaugh said the shooting would have a major impact on the town and the county.

"Any loss of life, especially someone out there protecting the community, would have that effect," he said.

Calls to the district attorney's office Thursday were not immediately returned.

Investigators gathered in a parking lot adjacent to the annex where the prosecutor was shot. Yellow tape and law enforcement vehicles blocked the area from spectators.

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Miami police officer fired for shooting of unarmed man in Little Haiti

In an unusual move, Miami police on Wednesday announced it has fired an officer for the shooting death of an unarmed motorist two years ago.

In a brief statement, the department said Officer Reynaldo Goyos,who has been on the force for seven-years, “has been terminated because his discharge of firearm on February 10, 2011 was found to be unjustified by the Department. “

Killed in the police shooting was Travis McNeil, 28, who was in a car and was unarmed.

The firing is a surprise because in June, the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office cleared Goyos of any criminal act in the fatal shooting of McNeil. They said the shooting was legally justified because McNeil, reached down into his car during the traffic stop at 11 p.m. and Goyos believed he was reaching for a weapon.

In the press release, the department said: “This termination is based strictly upon a violation of Miami police’s “Deadly Force Policy,”

McNeil and his 30-year-old cousin Kareem Williams, who was also shot, had been pulled over by an unmarked police unit after they left the “Take One Lounge.” According to family, McNeill died of a gunshot wound to the head.

Kareem was wounded by the officer in the arm, back and abdomen.

But no weapon was found in McNeil’s car, only the cell phone that had fallen from his lap, the state attorney’s office said in its report.

Prosecutors found that a manslaughter prosecution wasn’t likely to succeed because the state couldn’t disprove that Goyos wasn’t in fear for his life at the time of the shooting.

The shooting angered many activists and was the last of seven deadly police shootings of black men in Miami’s inner city in just seven months.

All of the shootings happened under the watch of former police chief Miguel Exposito and all but two of the men were armed, according to the Herald.

The department said the case is now closed.

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The Z10 is a good first step, but BlackBerry still has to fix its app problem

BlackBerry, a.k.a., the Company Formerly Known as RIM, made good with its first two BlackBerry 10 smartphones on Wednesday. While the new devices are far from perfect, they will at the very least make long-suffering BlackBerry fans very happy and should provide a needed boost to a company in desperate need of growth. That said, BlackBerry still has a major problem that it will have to fix if it ever hopes to lure Android and iOS users away from their devices — it needs to improve the quality of apps that are available on its platform.

[More from BGR: BlackBerry Z10 review]

BlackBerry has done its best to spin its app situation as a positive, touting the roughly 70,000 apps that will be available for BlackBerry 10 at its launch. This number sounds impressive until you realize that the vast majority of these apps are ported from Android or from the BlackBerry Playbook. Even worse for the company, earlier reviews have indicated that many of these apps don’t at all function well, especially since a good portion of them were ported over from Android 2.3 Gingerbread or earlier.

[More from BGR: BlackBerry Q10 preview]

This is obviously not a sustainable situation for BlackBerry in the long term, and to the company’s credit it did announce some very important apps that are being developed directly for the BlackBerry 10 platform, including Skype, WhatsApp and the Angry Birds franchise. But there is a glaring absence that should give pause to anyone feeling optimistic about the platform’s ability to attract top developers in the future: Instagram.

Yes, Instagram is just one app, but it’s also one of the most popular in the world and it’s owned by Facebook (FB), the social networking giant that BlackBerry supposedly has a close partnership with. If BlackBerry can’t convince one of its close partners to develop an app that’s ready in time for its big platform launch, then it really calls into question how much clout the company will have with smaller developers that may not have the resources to build for more than two platforms.

And BlackBerry’s ability to attract the smaller developers is crucial to its future success because we’ve all seen mobile apps that come out of nowhere on iOS and Android and suddenly take the world by storm. If BlackBerry is constantly rushing around trying to get upstart app developers to make native BlackBerry 10 apps months after those developers have hit it big on other platforms, it will put the company at a perpetual disadvantage. This is a problem that BlackBerry desperately needs to fix by the time its next smartphones roll out.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Rachael vs. Guy Celebrity Cook Off Exclusive Clip

The competition on Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off is heating up, and in this exclusive clip from the hit Food Network show, Sister Act star Kathy Najimy is definitely feeling the pressure -- and possibly succumbs to it.

"I'm feeling very nervous about the Béchamel Sauce because I've never done it for 100 people before," Najimy says, while quickly whipping up the famous white sauce. "The scary ingredient for me in the sauce is the flour."

Video: Guy Fieri's Hometown Tour

And clearly, something goes awry when the sauce starts to take on a doughy consistency.

"How am I going to explain to Rachael [Ray] that I made a muffin?," she worries.

Video: ET Goes Backstage wtih Nancy O'Dellon the 'The Rachael Ray Show'

Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off, in which the last celeb standing (who's mentored either by Rachael Ray or Guy Fieri) wins a cash donation towards the charity of his or her choice, airs Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Food Network.

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WATCH: Dramatic NYPD helicopter rescue of ship captain who suffered heart attack

The NYPD saved the life of an Egyptian captain who had a heart attack on a ship yesterday, police said.

Captain Aly Akl, 60, went into cardiac arrest shortly before 9:45 p.m. on a commercial cargo ship called the Grey Shark, which was anchored in New York Harbor between the Verrazano Bridge and the Staten Island ferry terminal.

Detective Robert Brager, an ESU tactical medic, rushed with NYPD Harbor to the boat.

He worked to stabilize Akl while waiting for NYPD Aviation to airlift him.

Police lowered a rescue basket from a helicopter onto the deck, and secured the captain inside.

They then used a hook to pull the detective up as well.

They rushed Akl to Staten Island University North Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition.

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TotalBank on Wednesday reported $43 million in fourth quarter earnings, which included a one-time tax benefit of $41million. The results compared to a loss of $358,000 in the fourth quarter of 2011.

For the full year, the bank earned $52.5 million, an increase of $48.3 million from 2011.

Miami-based TotalBank has $2.3 billion in assets and 19 branches in Miami-Dade County. In 2012 the bank said it opened two branches in Pinecrest and West Miami, and it plans to build two additional locations in Doral.

INA PAIVA CORDLE

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Study: Medicaid expansion may save state money

Florida would save money over the next decade — not lose billions as Gov. Rick Scott has argued — by accepting Medicaid expansion under federal healthcare reforms, according to a detailed economic study.

Miami-Dade legislators and healthcare industry leaders, getting together on Monday, heard about the report by Georgetown University — the most positive yet on a highly debated provision of what is often called Obamacare.

Jack Hoadley, a senior researcher with the Georgetown Health Policy Institute, said the study was the first to calculate spin-off savings in other state programs if Florida accepted the expansion, which over the next 10 years could bring $26 billion in federal funds to provide insurance to an estimated 815,000 to 1.3 million Florida residents who are now uninsured.

In Miami-Dade, expansion would cover an additional 150,000 to 225,000, according to the Georgetown projections. That reduction in the uninsured would bring huge relief to the county’s hospitals, which by federal law must treat anyone who comes to the emergency room, regardless of ability to pay.

The top-level meeting, at the United Way of Miami-Dade headquarters, was convened by United Way, Health Council of South Florida and Health Foundation of South Florida.

At the very least, the Georgetown findings and other recent analyses have some critics reconsidering opposition to the 2010 Affordable Health Care Act.

State Sen. Rene Garcia, R-Hialeah, who previously was an “absolute no” vote against Medicaid expansion, said after the meeting that he was now “open to the thought” that expansion makes sense.

State Rep. Eddy Gonzalez, R-Hialeah, said he was still concerned about the debt-ridden feds’ ability to fund Medicaid over the long term, but “we are looking at all the options.”

Estimates about the real costs of expansion have varied wildly based on the law, which requires the federal government to pay all costs of the expansion for the first three years. Starting in 2017, the state will start paying a small share, which will reach 10 percent of the expansion costs for 2020 and beyond.

Gov. Scott, who has long been critical of Obamacare, contended in December that expansion would cost Florida taxpayers more than $26 billion over 10 years. Opponents and healthcare experts criticized that estimate as way too high, and earlier this month the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration gave a much lower estimate of $3 billion for the decade.

That was lower even than a report by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, a Washington research group, which in November estimated that expansion would cover an additional 1.2 million residents at a cost to the state of $5.4 billion over 10 years.

Georgetown’s Hoadley said Monday that the Kaiser study used only rough data for all 50 states, while the Georgetown study, funded by two Florida nonprofit foundations, looked in detail at how Medicaid expansion would save money in other areas. The Georgetown study found that the state would have to spend less for safety-net hospitals such as Jackson Health System, mental-health and substance-abuse programs and the medically needy program.

Hoadley said the savings calculations were “a very cautious estimate.”

The Georgetown report projected that the state would save $300 million in 2014, the first year of Medicaid expansion, and $100 million in 2020, when the state would be paying for 10 percent of the expansion costs.

The Georgetown study found that expansion was especially important in Florida, where almost one in three — 30 percent — of nonelderly adults are uninsured, compared to 18 percent nationwide.

In South Florida, the figures are even higher for uninsured non-elderly adults: 57 percent in Hialeah, 50 percent in the city of Miami, 48.5 percent in Deerfield Beach and 31.2 percent in Kendall.

Hospitals strongly support the expansion. On Monday, Phillis Oeters, an executive with Baptist Health South Florida, told legislators that hospitals have already seen their Medicare and Medicaid payments reduced greatly in other areas.

“Enough is enough,” she said. “Hospitals can’t take it anymore.”

A study done for the Florida Hospital Association estimated that the infusion of federal funds from Obamacare would add 56,000 jobs to the state.

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Apple announces iPad with double storage capacity

(Reuters) – Apple Inc said on Tuesday that it will sell a version of its iPad tablet computer with 128 gigabytes of storage, which is twice the capacity of its existing models.

Apple, which has sold more than 120 million iPads so far, said that the new iPad will go on sale February 5, in black or white, for a suggested retail price of $ 799 for the iPad with just Wi-Fi model, and $ 929 for the version that also has a cellular wireless connection.

(Reporting By Sinead Carew; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Mary J. Blige Talks Beyonce Super Bowl Performance

Mary J. Blige was one of the performers at Friday's Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival, where the topic quickly turned to Beyonce's highly anticipated Super Bowl performance this Sunday.

Mary, who herself performed at the Super Bowl in 2001 alongside 'N Sync, Britney Spears and Nelly for one of the most memorable halftime shows ever, has nothing but high hopes for Beyonce's big performance.

Pics: Inside Beyonce's Super Bowl Rehearsals!

"I don't need to give Beyonce any advice, she's going to do her thing," she tells The Trend on Zappos Couture. "Beyonce's amazing and she's gonna do what she does."

However, Mary does admit that there's nothing quite like performing at the Super Bowl.

"[It's different] because there's millions and millions of people watching you on television, and in the arena. I mean it's crazy. The energy's crazy," she remembers about the experience.

Video: Alicia Keys Dishes on Her Super Bowl Surprise

Beyonce was also on the mind of her fellow performer Michael Bolton, who defended her vigorously in light of the lip-sync controversy surrounding her inauguration performance.

"The Beyonce thing ... Nobody should judge this because you don't know any of the conditions that took place and what transpired leading up to it," he says. "And at these kinds of events, people don't know what hearing is on stage, let alone singing in front of tens of millions of people around the world. What I heard is, there was no time for rehearsal and I thought she was phenomenal. And I know that was her voice. And I couldn't tell you right now -- and I still couldn't tell you -- whether she was live or not. If that was lip-syncing, that would be the best lip-syncing I've ever seen."

Click the video to hear Mary's thoughts on Beyonce and the Super Bowl.

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