Month: April 2011

Google and Microsoft are in a battle for talent for a diverse set of roles. There are set to fill more than 1600 and 4600 positions in coming months.

Google’s uplift was in line with expectations to recruit 6200 globally this year when it was expected to hire more people than in any year in its history as revealed in a January blog post; last year Google hired 4500, second to 2007 when it hired 6000.

Google is mostly seeking business, advertising, sales, communications, government and engineering skills from Silicon Valley to New York, Zurich and London. Microsoft is looking for mobile, cloud, and video gurus to support Windows Phone 7 and Azure cloud services across the globe.

Both companies are looking for passionate and intelligent individuals from varying backgrounds for various salaries. Visit Google’s Jobs site or keep an eye on @googlejobs for more info. For Microsoft, you can check out their Careers site.

This hiring spree goes along with one of the points Obama made at his live Facebook town hall yesterday. He believes we should have a bigger focus on STEM fundamentals in education and is impressed by the many smart people in places like Silicon Valley.

“I always hear stories about how we can’t find engineers, and that’s why we’re emphasizing Math and Science … We want to start making Science cool. I want people to feel about the next big energy breakthrough and the next big Internet breakthrough the same way they felt about the moonwalk.”

He said we need to step our game up when it comes to science, math, and technology and this is “hopefully the greatest legacy I can have as President of the United States.” We’ve touched the state of blacks in tech before and this only highlights the possibilities that open up in STEM-related fields.

via CRN Australia, TechCrunch

Today, President Barack Obama will be at Facebook HQ to hold another live streamed Town Hall meeting via Facebook Live. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will moderate the event as Obama answers questions previously submitted via the web.

“The president is looking forward to visiting Facebook and speaking directly to the American people about his plan for responsibly bringing down the deficit and continuing on the path to economic recovery,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement. “This is a part of our effort to hear from the American people.”

In January of this year, Obama held a YouTube interview where he fielded questions via YouTube Worldview. Earlier this month, Obama launched his re-election bid via a video on his Facebook page. This live Town Hall was announced just a day after. From WhiteHouse.gov/facebooktownhall:

President Obama invites you to participate in his “Shared Responsibility and Shared Prosperity” Facebook town hall event on Wednesday, April 20th at 1:45 pm PT / 4:45 pm ET live online from Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, California. The event will be live streamed on Facebook at facebook.com/WhiteHouse or WhiteHouse.gov/live.

This goes down in less than an hour, so hit one of the sites above now to catch the action.


via CNN

According to a report by Wireless Intelligence, African mobile connections reached about 547.5 million during the last three months of 2010 compared to about 523.6 million connections in Western Europe. Mobile price wars have also drastically increased on the continent, started primarily by Kenya mobile operator Airtel. In August of 2010, they slashed prices by 50%. Safaricom soon cut SMS rates and similar rate cuts have happened in countries like Tanzania and Egypt.

While these price cuts are great for customers, they are bad for business and industry margins have suffered. Despite this, mobile continues to provide significant opportunities for revenue expansion for African mobile operators. This is especially true when it comes to Internet access.

With a very limited Internet infrastructure, mobile has increasingly become the primary gateway to high-speed data. Opera, the most popular on the continent, accounts for more than half of Africa’s mobile Internet market according to their State of the Mobile Web report. Opera also reported that page views increased by 365%, unique users increased by 176% and data transferred increased by 331%.

Apps have also come to the forefront given the infrastructure challenges in Africa, a subject we’ve touched on before. In areas like healthcare, agriculture and banking, apps can become potential solution providers. Apps like iCow, a voice-based app which helps farmers effectively manage the breeding of cows and won the Apps 4 Africa contest, are now seen as sources of economic development innovation.

According to the app’s Founder, Kahumbu Stephanou, “Mobile phones are literally going to be the bridge between the digital world and developing countries. It’s not going to be laptops. It’s not going to be computers,” she said. “The space is…wide open for the tools to be used for teaching, or really, for educating people.”

This doesn’t seem far off the mark from what we experience in the US when it comes to the black community. We are extremely active in the mobile space and outpace other groups in mobile phone and app usage. We talk and text the most. We are more likely to have an Internet-connected mobile device than an actual computer. For those thinking about the digital divide or organizations looking to touch the black community, mobile should be a primary focus.

via TNW Africa

The Startup America Partnership saw some tech heavy hitters investing in the initiative when it was unveiled back in January. Now, 15 companies are going in again, providing over $400 million in value on top of the original commitment from companies like IBM, Intel, and HP. Companies will be able to apply for these resources based on which stage they’re in (idea, startup, rampup, speedup) via Startup America’s new membership program.

Startup America is “a movement by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs – launched January 31, 2011, at the White House to help inspire and celebrate entrepreneurs, their firms and the people that join them.” Their focus is “on bringing the private sector together to maximize the success of America’s entrepreneurs – and maximize America’s competitiveness in an increasingly global world.” Startup America’s principal focus is on what they call “speedups.” These are firms with high-growth potential.

Startup America plans to support these entrepreneurs by “assembling commitments from a wide range of companies and organizations” and they have done just that. Here are some of the companies now stepping up to the plate:

• Google is donating over $100 million worth of Google Ads.
• HP is offering an estimated $100 million in discounts on printers and other products.
• American Express has devoted over $125 million in value to member companies by giving preferred pricing to Startup America startups.
• Cisco has committed to provide training to about 6,000 entrepreneurs in 50 cities by January 2014 ($3 million value).
• Ernst and Young has pledged more than $7.5 million worth of its finance services for SA companies.
• Intuit will be investing $37 million in services and products including QuickBooks and Intuit Payroll services.

Startup America will be discussing these new partnerships live on Facebook at 7:30 EDT / 4:30 PDT, shortly after President Obama’s Shared Responsibility and Shared Prosperity town hall, which takes place at 4:45 EDT / 1:45 PDT. There have also been changes to the Startup America website to focus more on the entrepreneurs and they will be rolling out a new free membership program to allow companies at any level to apply for access to “resources to help them grow.”

source Startup America via TechCrunch

Nominations for the 2011 Black Weblog Awards are now open. Visit the site and hit Nominate to nominate your favorite blogs and suggest new categories for consideration. Nominations are starting early this year, and for good reason. This will be the first time in their 7-year history that the winners of the Black Weblog Awards will be announced in a LIVE ceremony on July 9, 2011 in Los Angeles, CA.

The event is a collaboration with the Blogging While Brown conference to create a black social media weekend.This event will mark the largest gathering of Black social media influentials in the country. Nominations close May 7 with voting running from May 16th to June 17th, so hit the site and get yours in before it’s too late.

To attend the event, get your tickets here. If you already plan to attend the Blogging While Brown Conference, there will be general admission seating available for the awards. There are also a small number of VIP seats available if you want to attend the awards separately.

Will you be there? Who will you nominate?

via The Black Weblog Awards

Recently, UberMedia and G-Unit Records have announced the availability of Uber50, a custom theme for UberSocial for BlackBerry created by 50 Cent himself. There is a free version including special background art and a deluxe version available for $1.99 which includes additional, exclusive art as well as sounds triggered by actions like sending a Tweet or direct message, all recorded or selected by 50 Cent.

“Twitter has become an important way for me to communicate with my fans and for my fans to communicate with each other,” said 50 Cent, who himself has more than 4.4 million followers. “We’re all big users of UberSocial on the BlackBerry and already use many of their current themes to customize the look of the app, so it was natural for me to work with UberMedia to develop a special theme. I think my fans are going to love sending and reading their Tweets with my new theme.”

Features of the free version of the Uber50 theme include:

• Custom icon and logo
• Quick access to G-Unit Twitter list
• Exclusive artwork as background within UberSocial

In addition, a deluxe G’d Up edition will be available soon for $1.99 and includes:

• Welcome to the Gritty Darkside special theme
• Special sound effects created by 50 Cent
• Exclusive wallpaper for your BlackBerry home screen

UberMedia is the largest independent provider of applications for reading and posting to Twitter and other social media platforms. There has been rumor that they might launch a Twitter competitor, but partnerships like this could make such a move irrelevant. Why start from scratch when you can stand on the shoulders of giants?

In any case, Twitter should be watching their backs. UberMedia is making serious moves even after Twitter temporarily blocked their services for “TOS violations.” UberMedia controls a large percentage of Twitter users and there has been talk of a Tweetdeck acquisition, which would give UberMedia even more control. The game is all about eyeballs and UberMedia is in a position grab the lion’s share. Also, I hear those G-Unit guys don’t play.

Grab Uber50 and tell us what you think in the comments.

source Business Wire via TechCrunch

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. took the floor to speak on what he believes is one major cause of unemployment in America…the iPad.

“A few short weeks ago I came to the House floor after having purchased an iPad and said that I happened to believe, Mr. Speaker, that at some point in time this new device, which is now probably responsible for eliminating thousands of American jobs. Now Borders is closing stores because, why do you need to go to Borders anymore? Why do you need to go to Barnes & Noble? Buy an iPad and download your newspaper, download your book, download your magazine.”

Later in the speech, he talks about how Chicage State University is giving out iPads instead of textbooks. President Wayne Watson wants to go textbookless campus within 4 years. He goes on to talk about all the lost jobs related to the publishing industry.

There are a few reasons why this speech is odd, the first being that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. owns an iPad and was just seen on the House floor promoting it. What’s even more interesting is that he also touted the merits of Kindle, iPad, and other tablet devices in education.

“Let me be clear about a few things,” Jackson said, brandishing both an Apple iPad and an Amazon Kindle on the House floor. “These devices are revolutionizing our country — and they will fundamentally alter how we will educate our children.”

Jackson said he wants to amend the Constitution so that it guarantees every American the right to an equal education, which means an iPad, Kindle, or Nook for every schoolchild.

There is a valid point in that the iPad is made in China, so nobody in the US is making a wage for putting them together, but does that mean their bad? I’m pretty sure most technology is manufactured outside of the US.

Technology inevitably advances and jobs change. Even if we assume the iPad is directly responsible for lost jobs in America, do we make moves to try and stop technological advances? Doesn’t seem to make much sense. I have to agree with Wayne Sutton:

Also as the publishing industry has been under “attack” from the decline in newspaper sales and more, changes must happen for the industry to continue. It’s called innovation and adoption. It’s what the New York Times is doing with their apps and why we have new apps like the Daily. Also not to mention how much money Apple has allowed for developers to make. If I’m a publisher or write or in the publishing industry I would have been thinking about mobile like… 4 years ago.

What do you think? Is the iPad a job killer? What should we do about it? Watch the complete video at RealClearPolitics.

source RealClearPolitics, TheHill via SocialWayne

GameBuilder Studio is a cross-platform tool for creating games. Anyone from a professional game developer to a wannabe can bring their ideas to life using the GameBuilder visual editor. The focus is on building sophisticated casual games and the system allows you to deploy these games across multiple screens, including your mobile devices and the web and these games work with the best gaming processors. GameBuilder allows you to develop once and distribute everywhere, which decreases development costs while increasing your potential customer base. The intuitive and easy-to-use visual editor is extensible by purchasing pre-defined game plugins and assets from the GameBuilder marketplace.

GameBuilder Studio is the first and only “End-to-End”, flash based game editor for professional developers, game studios and educational institutions. It is equipped with the necessary tools for developers to build isometric flash games similar to Farmville & Social City or 3D games like Pokemon Go API and deploy them directly to iPhone, Android, and Facebook, without having to start from the ground up, increasing developer productivity, and cutting down on development time and cost. The simplicity of its user interface allows for in-experienced game developers to jump right in and start creating but provides more experienced game developers with the ability to add enhanced features as needed using the editors plugin API and sell those plugins on the open market place. Online casino company www.c9bets.com/ is the perfect example of a business that helps people find Android and iPhone games.

GameBuilder Studio was created by African-American entrepreneur Lavon Woods, who moved to the Bay Area about six months ago. His startup is one of six companies chosen at LaunchPad Ignition, a startup accelerator program through Launch Pad and in partnership with President Obama’s Startup America initiative. They received $25,000 in seed funding and will also receive seven weeks of intensive training and consulting in preparation for Launch Fest, which brings together investors, mentors, and speakers in New Orleans for a two-day conference on May 4 & 5.

Woods is the real deal, previously working as a Senior Software Engineer at Shutterfly and serving as Founder, CEO, and Lead Architect for GameBuilder Studio. He is also Lead Flex / AS3 Architect & President at Hybrid Mindset, LLC, a company which develops Rich Internet Applications and focuses on bringing technological enhancements to small businesses to help them grow while reducing costs. Your best strategies for winning at slot machine spin games focus on helping you manage your time and money. Don’t fall for any gimmicks or sure fire ways to win. No one has a sure fire way to win.

Hit the site and check out the 60-second time-lapse demo of GameBuilder Studio in action.

Internet Week New York take place in the first week of June. It’s actually a festival which creates a “critical mass of web-focused events that raises the profile of NYC’s industry as a whole, as well as the partners who participate.” They are allowing panel submissions for the main AOL stage, which will be streamed live to an audience of 40,000+ (based on last years views).

Cavaughn Noel, Emerging Digital Media Consultant at Icy Visions, LLC, saw this as an opportunity for the black techies out there to “take over Internet Week (in a positive way).” To that end, he’s submitted for a Black Startups Demo event called “Untapped” to get Minority Tech brands represented at these large events.

Only 12 of the current 208+ submitted panels will make the cut, but we can make a difference by voting. Cavaughn says “this is the perfect opportunity for the Black Start-up voice to be heard in the tech community, so let’s make it happen” and I have to agree. It’s pretty standard practice for the black tech voices to be drowned out in general. We recently saw The Root’s list of 30 black bloggers “you should know” and didn’t list a single tech blog.

Visit VoteBlackStartups.com to cast your vote and use the Twitter Hashtag: #VoteBlackStartups to share the “campaign” with your friends.

Starting Thursday, the Oprah Winfrey Network and Oprah.com will claim an official “Oprah” section on Flipboard, the iPad app that turns your social stream into a magazine.

Based on her Twitter feed, the Oprah section will include content from print sources like O, The Oprah Magazine and OWN, in addition to videos counting down her farewell during this final season of The Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah’s content will be featured prominently on Flipboard’s front page, along with the reader’s recommended content from Facebook and Twitter.

It was just a few months ago that Oprah sat down with Hammer and Flipboard CEO Mike McCue to announce the premiere of Hammer’s latest song on Flipboard. While Flipboard is primarily visual, they did include audio for Hammer’s premier along with an exclusive slideshow. Apparently, Oprah was impressed.

Flipboard represenative Marci McCue says the company added Oprah’s content because “her audience is important for the iPad.” Flipboard has no immediate plans to feature any other brand in this way. McCue adds that Flipboard is planning an iPhone app for this summer. I wonder who Flipboard will join forces with next.

via Mashable

At the Mix 11 conference Tuesday, Microsoft surprised attendees by introducing the Internet Explorer 10 platform preview. This comes just weeks after the launch of Internet Explorer 9. Microsoft’s Dean Hachamovitch said during his keynote at Mix 11 that IE10 builds on the native HTML5 support in IE9, which will lead to long-term adoption of HTML5.

“We built IE9 from the ground up for HTML5 and for Windows to deliver the most native HTML5 experience and the best Web experience on Windows,” Hachamovitch, corporate vice president for IE, wrote in a blog post. “IE10 continues on IE9′s path, directly using what Windows provides and avoiding abstractions, layers, and libraries that slow down your site and your experience.”

“IE’s approach to emerging standards results in less churn and more progress for developers,” Hachamovitch continued. “IE10 builds on full hardware acceleration and continues our focus on site-ready Web-standards. This combination enables developers to deliver the best performance for their customers on Windows while using the same, Web-standard markup across browsers.”

via PC Magazine, MSDN

In a paper published by Christopher Soghoian, a doctoral candidate at the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, he warns that Police and other agencies have “enthusiastically embraced” requesting information from entities like Sprint, Facebook, and, AOL. While law enforcement makes “tens of thousands of requests” for your personal information, there are no U.S. federal laws that require reporting of those requests.

“Unfortunately, there are no reporting requirements for the modern surveillance methods that make up the majority of law enforcement requests to service providers and telephone companies,” Soghoian wrote. “As such, this surveillance largely occurs off the books, with no way for Congress or the general public to know the true scale of such activities.”

While real-time interception of items like your email must be reported and tracked, requests for your information after the fact are easier to manage and cheaper to obtain. Citing a New York Times story from 2006, Soghoian wrote that AOL was receiving 1,000 requests per month. In 2009, Facebook told Newsweek that it received 10 to 20 requests from police per day. Sprint received so many requests for mobile-phone location information that they set up a web interface to give law enforcement direct access. This site was used 8 million times in one year.

“The reason for this widespread secrecy appears to be a fear that such information may scare users and give them reason to fear that their private information is not safe, ” Soghoian wrote.

These numbers are really just the tip of the iceberg given that reporting these requests is not required. While the House of Representatives considered legislation to remedy the situation, the Department of Justice shot it down, saying the reporting requirements would be too time consuming.

Read Christopher Soghoian’s paper, The Law Enforcement Surveillance Reporting Gap, here.

via TechWorld

The folks at HopStop have been busy adding several new features and enhancements to make the navigational service better. HopStop offers free transit and walking directions for cities across the U.S. and Canada. Recent updates to the web interface include:

1. Faster Results – Due to several behind-the-scenes technical enhancements, we now present you with direction results faster than ever.
2. Regional Rail – Sometimes the subway or bus isn’t the only way to go, so we now present you with options to include and exclude regional rail.
3. Private Vehicles – If it’s applicable to your trip, we now allow you to include (or exclude) private busses, ferries and shuttles.

HopStop covers all the bases when it comes to mobile, offering the best apps for iphone as well as a mobile web interface and HopStop launcher for Blackberry. The apps and mobile web interface have also had significant updates:

Recent Android App Updates

• Search by taxi (get taxi cost and travel times)
• Save and view recent routes in MyTrips section
• Get destination addresses easily from your address book
• Send routes to yourself or to friends via email or text message
• Set default city for faster searches

Recent iPhone App Updates

• Updated map search functionality
• Easier to sort through (and search by) contacts
• Set default city for faster searches
• Improved app speed and load time!

Recent Mobile Web Updates

• Easier navigation with separate sections for U.S., Canada, Europe
• Bigger fonts for easier on-screen selections
• Ability to download our Android & iPhone apps via a new splash page.

Grab the Android app here, the iOS app here, or visit the enhanced mobile website at http://m.hopstop.com for download links to both (and the Blackberry launcher).

HopStop now provides directions in Buffalo, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, and Raleigh. In the next few months, look for transit directions in Austin, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and San Diego. If you’re heading north to Canada , HopStop can get you around in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.

HopStop definitely has their mobile game together, which seems to be a rare case these days. Check the full list of supported mobile interfaces at http://www.hopstop.com/mobile. Have you ever used HopStop? What do you think?

Adobe has announced a set of development tools today that will allow developers to code once and deploy everywhere. This new software will allow users to develop, test and deploy mobile applications on devices running Android, BlackBerry and Apple’s iOS.

Developers have been able to use Adobe products for more than seven years to build applications in desktop browsers and can soon use the new tools to apply their skills to various mobile platforms, Dave Gruber, group product marketing manager for Adobe, said in an interview.

“You’ll leverage Adobe Air again, except across iOS, Android and BlackBerry,” he said. “It’s one tool and one framework and one code base.”

The possibility to create common code that only varies in minor details across various mobile platforms is a very powerful ability for developers. They will no longer have to maintain completely separate code for apps on Android and iOS.

Adobe’s Flash runtime tool, called Air 2.6, will use the new Flash Builder 4.5 and Flex 4.5. Both will be available in May, which FlashBuilder Standard starting at $249 per seat and Flex 4.5 free and open-source. An update to Flex 4.5 to support the Blackberry Tablet OS, and iOS will be available in June.

Adobe expects 131 million smartphones to have the Flash player installed by the end of the year, including Android, WebOS, BlackBerry Tablet OS, future versions of Windows Phone, and more. While Apple has basically banned Flash in its plugin form, Gruber says the Air runtime software can be compiled into iOS applications to support animations and other design features.

via Computer World