Category: News

On Feb 21st, during the wee hours, a high school was robbed. The thieves made off with goods valuing around $80,000: 58 laptops, 2 desktops, and one LED projector. The two 17-year old students who executed the theft have since been caught, but only half of the laptops and the projector have been recovered.

Will Smith, born and raised in Philly, has decided to step in to give back to his community. In cooperation with the Charlie Mack Cares organization, the Will and Jada Smith Family Foundation will donate 29 Apple laptops and one desktop to the West Philadelphia High School.

This break-in was the second at West Philly High this year and is the latest in a string of robberies from Philadelphia public schools. In total, 350 computers have been stolen, valued at half a million dollars. We can only hope that some security measure have been taken to protect this generous donation.

via BV Black Spin

News broke this weekend about a potential merger between T-Mobile and AT&T, who would acquire the company from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion in cash and stock. This is just the first step in a process that may take as long as a year pending regulatory approval. As Sprint puts it, if the deal goes through, the market will be “dramatically altered.”

Obviously, this is a definite win for AT&T. Acquiring T-Mobile will add density to their existing network and possibly change the perception that they are unreliable. T-Mobile has been one of the most vocal companies speaking out against AT&T’s network with their latest ad campaign, depicting AT&T as an aging and out of shape business riding on the back of the iPhone. AT&T would also jump so far ahead of Sprint, the third largest carrier in the US, that Sprint would probably never catch up.

And what of T-Mobile? While they have never had the largest network, they have remained a force of change in the market. They’ve experimented with new technologies and handsets while helping keep prices in check by offering cheap plans. All that goes out the window once AT&T consumes them. There aren’t even plans for a T-Mobile iPhone.

While AT&T is attempting to spin this as a win for the consumer, we lose for many of the same reasons T-Mobile does. In fact, you can also through in the handset makers and wireless equipment companies. We will all be forced to deal with one entity. This means that handset makers and wireless equipment companies have lost a customer and AT&T will leverage this for their own benefit. Less competition is almost never good.

One of the more interesting angles on this story is what will happen to Google’s Android. While many are saying it could go either way, I think it will most likely go south. Verizon has already launched their own Android App store and AT&T will most likely do the same. With less competition, it will be easier for them to shove whatever they like down the consumer’s throats.

When it comes down to it, there is one way I think T-Mobile can come out of this a winner. If the deal is not approved or doesn’t go through for any reason, AT&T will still have to pay a “breakup fee.” This is similar to the early termination fee for breaking your wireless agreement. T-Mobile will get $3 billion, access to some of AT&T’s AWS spectrum, and a roaming agreement.

via GigaOm, Business Insider, Engadget

Android Loads Web Pages 52% Faster Than Android…Kinda

Bing Bashed for Quake Tweet

“We apologize the tweet was negatively perceived. Intent was to provide an easy way for people to help Japan. We have donated $100K.”

“How you can #SupportJapan – http://binged.it/fEh7iT. For every retweet, @bing will give $1 to Japan quake victims, up to $100K.”

Twitter Turns on Developers

Google Circles Not Announced at SXSW

The web was on fire with rumors that Google would be launching a social networking platform called Circles at SXSW. They came mostly from a post by ReadWriteWeb, which talked about the launch and some of the features to expect. Of course, no such announcement happened. According to TechCrunch, social is just too big a factor for Google to announce via a splashy press event. While Google Circles may be a reality, we probably won’t see a big announcement for it. Google will work in the background to add features to their existing properties which will serve to tie everything together.

Make Twitter More Secure with HTTPS

Twitter has added a new feature that will make your experience slightly more secure. You’ve been able to use Twitter over a secure connection for some time now by simply going to https://twitter.com instead of just using “http.” Now, Twitter has added an “Always Use HTTPS” option so that you no longer have to think about it. This is especially important when using an unsecured WiFi connection. HTTPS will now automatically be used, regardless of your settings, when you’re logging into Twitter and when using the iPad and iPhone mobile apps. You can find the new feature in your settings.

via Twitter

IE9 Does 2.3 Million Downloads in First 24 hrs

The Windows Team blog reports that IE 9 was downloaded 2.35 million times in the first 24 hrs. Released on Monday night, the Microsoft browser was doing 27 downloads every second, or over 240 downloads every 9 seconds. Pretty big numbers for Microsoft, especially when compared with the 1 million downloads of IE9 Beta.

Whatsupedia is a new service that helps you find and share interesting links based on your specific interests. The site also allows you to comment on and discuss those links. The site works in two different ways:

• For content discovery, you can drill down into the links based on specific communities or categories. Currently, there are five: Profession, Interest, City, Culture, and Orientation. You can choose any combination of these communities to find exactly what you want. For example, something like LGBTQ+Hackers+Ruby on Rails+New York, you would only see links and discussions for LGBTQ folks in New York who like Hacking Ruby on Rails. Once you find a community you like, you simply Favorite it for later.
• For sharing content, you would choose your community and submit links you think others in the community will like. This helps you gain influence within that community as users vote on your links.

Whatsupedia is basically a Hacker News for people who may not necessarily be hackers. Its wider focus should make it of interest to a larger user base. The layout may seem familiar to Hacker News fans. It’s simple and clean with a focus on the actual content of the site. As you navigate the site, labels give you direction on what to do.

The idea for the site came about as the Founder, Jamil Abreu, was planning a conference in 2007 for Dominican college students. As Jamil puts it, “Facebook connects you to your social network, but what about the people interested the things you share that ARENT on your friends list?” A sentiment that many of us have thought at one time or another.

The site just launched, so go check it out and share some links. Tell us what you think here or speak with the founder via live chat on the site.

Early this year, Firefox 4 Beta 9 was released with a projected Final release for February. It wasn’t until March 9th that we saw a Firefox 4 Release Candidate. Now, AfterDawn reports that the Firefox 4 Final release will be available March 22nd. The new version of the popular browser includes enhanced performance and stability, increased HTML5 support (including Google’s WebM video format), and a revamped plug-in architecture called JetPack.

More than 70 percent of Firefox Add-ons are now compatible with Firefox 4, which should make upgrading much easier for users. You can also synchronize your Firefox history, bookmarks, open tabs, passwords and form data across multiple computers and mobile devices.

There are also a few extra goodies like Panorama, which allows you to drag and drop tabs into manageable groups to organize, name and arrange them in a visual way. Chrome was the first browser to allow you to turn web pages into apps and Firefox can now do the same. App Tabs are pinned tabs that can notify you of updates (ie. new emails, tweets, etc.).

Following the trend of browsers like IE9 and Chrome, Firefox 4 features a minimalistic and clean interface. While it mostly seems to be falling in line with its competition, the addition of hardware-acceleration may give it an edge as both Chrome and IE 9 only feature partial acceleration.

via AfterDawn, Mozilla

It’s March Madness and sports fans everywhere are buzzing about the NCAA Tournament. With just about everyone carrying around a smartphone these days, you’ll want to know how to use it to keep track of your favorites. There apps for tracking news, scores, creating pools, and even talking junk. Here are a few you can download for Android.

CBS Sports Mobile

The CBS Sports Mobile app gives you scores, news, and complete control of CBSSports.com fantasy teams from the palm of your hand. The app has only recently been updated for March Madness, so you can catch the latest scores and stats for the NCAA Tournament. If you tried it recently and didn’t see the NCAA features, you might want to give this app another look.

Bracket Tracker

College Basketball Scoreboard

This app brings also brings college basketball scores, schedules and news stories to your mobile. It covers just about any conference and tournament you can think of. Everything is organized by conference so you can keep track of your favorite teams and their rivals at a glance. For those who like to talk trash, College Basketball Scoreboard makes it easy to share your scores to Facebook, Twitter, and Email from within the app.

NCAA March Madness Fan Zone

The NCAA March Madness Fan Zone app integrates your conversations with real-time NCAA basketball scores, news and rankings through the regular season and NCAA Final Four Tournament. Not only does this app integrate with Facebook, Twitter, and SMS, but it also has group chat features and lets you easily connect with Fans of all Division I teams. There is also the option to upload photos in your posts.

VCU Daily and VCU Mobile

VCU is the hot topic for March Madness and you can keep track of them a few different ways. In addition to the apps above, there is VCU Mobile. This app lets you find out all about Virginia Commonwealth University and includes a section for Athletics where you can see the latest scores and upcoming schedule. There is also VCU Daily, which one commenter says is “A must for a VCU fan!” The app keeps it simple, bringing you all you need to know about VCU basketball in a simple interface.

Three startup veterans, Geoff Ralston, Tim Brady, and Alan Louie are the brains (or wallets) behind Imagine K12. This new startup is modeled closely after Y Combinator, except that they will focus on education. Their prime directive is “to effect positive change in the K-12 education space.”

Rather than speculate, share opinions, or dump money into the school system, Imagine K12 will connect with early stage startups and give them some breathing room to grow. In addition to providing $15-$20,000 in funding, each startup will get valuable mentoring from startup experts.

Ralston sold his music startup LaLa to Apple in 2009, Tim Brady previously served as CEO of education startup QuestBridge, and Alan Louie helped create Google.org. In exchange for the cash and mentoring, each startup will give up around %6 of its equity. This model has worked very well for Y Combinator, who are “big supporters” of the project. In an email to TechCrunch, Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham said:

We’re big supporters of this project and have been talking to them about it since the beginning. We’ve told them everything about how YC works and brought them in to observe what we do. After they launch we’re going to publish a blog post encouraging startups working on software for schools to apply to them instead of us.

I’m pretty excited to be able to do anything to help schools, even indirectly. After I watched Waiting for Superman I felt a bit bummed that I was spending all my time working on startups instead of trying to help schools. So I was delighted when an opportunity to help schools by working on startups dropped into my lap.

Another benefit for education startups working with Imagine K12 will be their commitment to building close liaisons with charter schools, charter school organizations, and forwarding-thinking public schools. These relationships will provide an easy way for Imagine K12 startups to test their products, as well as help them avoid mistakes. If you have an education startup, you can apply at imaginek12.com.

via TechCrunch

A group of intelligent folks at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival were having a conversation over dinner. The discussion eventually moved to the fact that there isn’t really a customizable platform that an author, athlete, journalist/writer, publisher, PR firm or other brand could use to create an online identity kit. From this dinner conversation, gokit evolved to fill that niche.

“We realized that there is not an easy way for individuals to create a virtual ‘press kit’ about themselves,” said Hajj Flemings, founder and CEO of gokit. “Our site gokit helps people to tell their story and to share it easily.”

gokit allows users to pick from a set of custom themes. From there, they can integrate their talent, text, and images into a simple and friendly identity “kit” in just a few easy steps. The end result is a beautiful digital site that tells a story about the user.

As of this writing, gokit is still under heavy development and is in private beta. If you want early access, go to gokit.me to sign up and follow @gokitme on Twitter and the gokit blog for updates. To increase your chances of getting in on the ground floor, gokit gives you the option to invite 3 friends when you sign up.

Finally, a way to figure out who the black tech entrepreneurs are. Black Founders will provide a way to “connect black entrepreneurs and technology startup professionals in Silicon Valley and around the world.” The mission is simple: to empower entrepreneurs and provide founders with access to advice, mentorship, and funding. It is the brain child of Chris Bennett, Hadiyah Mujhid, Nnena Ukuku, and Monique Woodard.

While there has been discussion around women in tech, there has not been much focus on racial diversity in tech. There are various conferences and events focused on minorities, but no real rally point for black entrepreneurs. As of this writing, Black Founders is set to launch in 8 days, 17 hours, and 9 minutes.

Look no further for the latest GameStop promo codes, coupons, sale alerts, and free shipping offers. Shop for gaming systems, video games, virtual reality gear, novelty apparel, and more at GameStop!

Initially, there will be events in San Francisco, Oakland, and Palo Alto. From there, they hope to expand beyond “cocktail mixers” into things like Hackathons and Speaker Panels. The goal is to help turn ideas into reality and provide support for the entrepreneurial community. Long term, Black Founders aims to “change the idea of what a tech entrepreneur looks like” and help these startups connect with VC money.

While the current focus is on events, Black Founders plans to look to the community to figure out what is needed to succeed. There are currently no specific plans for an online community or social network and this is one of the areas where Black Founders will rely on feedback from the existing tech community. A strong online presence will be key in connecting with entrepreneurs outside of Silicon Valley.

Follow @BlackFounders on Twitter and follow the countdown at BlackFounders.com for updates. There is also a Meetup group.

According to “a person familiar with the decision,” Microsoft will no longer produce the Zune media player. The reasoning boils down to supply and demand. Not enough people demand to own the device.

The Zune was probably the one device that had a chance to challenge the iPod. Obviously, it still wasn’t enough. It’s not that it wasn’t a good device, but the iPod was too far ahead with no signs of slowing down. iPod led the market in media players last year while Zune wasn’t even in the top five. Microsoft neither confirmed nor denied the rumor, but offered the following statement.

“We have nothing to announce about another Zune device — but most recently have introduced Zune HD to Canada via the Zune Originals store and remain committed to supporting our devices in North America,” the company said in an e-mailed statement. “We are thrilled by the consumer excitement for Zune across many new platforms, including Windows Phone 7 and Xbox 360. Our long-term strategy focuses on the strength of the entire Zune ecosystem across Microsoft platforms.”

Instead of trying to compete with the iPod, Zune software will be incorporated into Windows Phone 7. The Zune software, which lets customers buy songs and movies and stream unlimited music for a monthly fee, should help them compete against Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone in the smartphone market. Microsoft and others have lost significant mobile market share to both competitors and, having teamed up with Nokia, are looking to make a comeback.

As the Zune goes the way of the Kin, IE 9 appears on the horizon, and Microsoft tries desperately to kill it’s own IE6, it will be interesting to see what other changes will come from Redmond.

via Bloomberg.

MyCulture.tv features high-quality and culturally diverse web content. The focus is on content for people of color and aims to bring the highest standards by judging each piece on subject matter and quality. They will serve as a hub to showcase the best videos across the web, as well as a home for original web series produced by the parent company Tyler New Media.

More than just a web destination, MyCulture.tv is an Internet Broadcast Network which will serve as a central distribution platform for MyCulture.tv. Through partnerships, they aim to “reach millions via multiple Web access portals, blogs and set-top Web TV devices.”

This is actually a hot market for people of color. According to a recent study by Horowitz Associates, Inc., black people are actually more likely to watch tv on alternate platforms. This includes stuff like Apple TV, Smartphones, Netflix, Hulu, Vudu Box, Xbox, Wii, and some Blu-Ray DVD players.

The site features a light-weight web design that loads quickly and doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles. The home page features a grid of videos from various categories and channels. You can dig into these channels using the main menu to find videos on Faith, Relationships, Music, and more. You can find everything from 4Evermore by Anthony David to the man himself, Lamar Tyler, in his “The Gatekeepers are Gone” series. The Featured Shows section gives you a detailed view of some of the available content, including full size images and longer descriptions.

There are a couple of small design glitches with the menus, but the site is still in Beta at this time. Definitely a site I’ll be keeping an eye on as it develops and it would be awesome to have access to MyCulture.tv from a set-top box or gaming console.

MyCulture.tv does consider submissions based on the needs of the network. If your video content and quality are on point and you want in, check the site for details. Categories include: Lifestyle, Sports, Film, Music, Faith, Business and Motivation.

via MyCulture.tv

Foursquare is definitely doing big things for SXSW this year. Their launch of Foursquare 3.0 is extremely important in the evolution of the service, bringing automated recommendations. This means that, instead of just letting you tell people where you are, Foursquare now tells you where to go. This is a pretty big deal and something both Google and Facebook are interested in getting into. RWW even calls this Foursquare’s Google moment.

Recommendations is big, but that’s not all Foursquare has added. They’ve integrated a new Specials management system that makes it easier for merchants to manage and monitor their Specials right from the mobile app. You can add multiple specials for all your venues and view analytics about the special using the new analytics dashboard. There is a whole new world of Specials out there, from swarms to mayorships, and they can now all be managed from the palm of your hand.

There is also a partnership with American Express which gives card holders an incentive to spend money with certain merchants:

The main idea, says Crowley, is to remove friction from redeeming merchant rewards. Foursquare users need only register their American Express cards and tap to unlock the special in the app. The “spend $5, save $5? credit is then automatically applied to the cardholder’s account when the credit card is swiped by the merchant. – via Mashable

Foursquare is also making 18 badges available for SXSW 11 this year, which mostly correspond to events going on durin the conference. Badges include everything from Karaoke RV to a SXSW Hangover. There is a Foursquare party on Saturday March 12th at the Cedar Street Courtyard and a concert featuring Big Boi on the 14th. If you follow Big Boi on Foursquare, you get a chance to get a Golden Ticket Badge, good for a free concert ticket.

via Foursquare

Results from Horowitz Associates, Inc.’s annual State of Cable and Digital Media – Multicultural Edition 2011 study have just been released and reveal some interesting facts about urban consumers. On a weekly basis, about a third (31%) of urban consumers watch TV content on a computer/laptop, a mobile device/tablet, or streamed directly from the Internet to the TV through devices like Apple TV, a Vudu Box, an Xbox, or a Blu-Ray DVD player.

Among those who consume media via alternative platforms, they spend 15% of their time on average watching TV on these alternative platforms. This is in addition to watching shows on demand or that have been recorded via DVR.

Compared to our white counterparts, black urban consumers use alternative platforms for TV at a much higher rate. While 25% non-Hispanic White consumers use alternative platforms, 36% of black urban consumers do the same.

Smartphones and other mobile gadgetry has increase from 35% in 2010 to 46% in 2011. Throw in a bunch of apps for accessing video content on-the-go and the black communities high mobile phone usage and you find that mobile TV viewing is highest among Black and Hispanic urban consumers: 14%, report at least weekly viewing, compared to 7% among White and 5% among Asian urban consumers.

More details from this research will be revealed at next week’s Multicultural Media Forum on Wednesday March 16th at The Roosevelt Hotel in New York City from 8am-1pm. You can also visit the Horowitz Associates website for more information.

Twitter’s #DickBar Debacle

Earlier this week, Twitter released an update to their official iPhone application which brought along a “feature” not well received by users of the application. It added a bar which overlaid your tweet stream, displaying trending topics and often Promoted Trends. While Twitter feels these trends add value for users, most users just don’t care about Justin Beiber’s hair or how much Charlie Sheen is #winning.

Those against the changes started tweeting with the hashtag #dickbar, which is a jab at Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo (get your minds out the gutter). John Gruber was so disgusted with the updates that he restored his iPhone to a previous backup to get the old version of the Twitter app. That’s deep. Twitter has since updated the app to make the bar less annoying, but this doesn’t actually solve the problem for most users, who just want the bar gone entirely.

via NewsGrange

Facebook Starts Renting Movies

Well, they made one movie available. The Dark Knight, which is about three years old and everyone interested in watching it has probably done so on numerous occasions, is available for rent on Facebook for $3, or 30 Facebook Credits. Of course, any time online video purchases are mentioned, Netflix is also mentioned. While Facebook does have about 600 million users and could probably compete in any online business, providing one movie on a single fan page run by one movie studio is just not compelling enough to trump Netflix’s subscription model. This has only been a test, but it will be interesting to see if Facebook continues down this path.

via NYT, AllThingsD

Kinect Grabs Guinness Record for Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device

via DRS

I was surprised too. You’d think the title would be taken by some fancy mobile device or at least an entire gaming system, but the Kinect has taken the crown. The Kinect for XBox 360 sold an average of 133,333 units per day, for a total of 8 million units in its first 60 days on sale from 4 November 2010 to 3 January 2011. These numbers knock the iPhone and iPad completely out of the box.

“The sales figures here speak for themselves. We can confirm that no other consumer electronics device sold faster within a 60-day time span, an incredible achievement considering the strength of the sector.” — Gaz Deaves, Editor of Guinness World Records 2011

Not only does this illustrate the popularity of the Kinect, which lets you play games my moving your body instead of manipulating a controller, but it also shows how popular the XBox 360 itself is. Can’t Kinect without the gaming system behind it.

via Guinness World Records

Readability Goes HTML5 After Being Snubbed by Apple

Not long ago, Apple announced a new subscription layer for their Apps Store. It amounts to Apple getting a 30% cut of the action from users who use apps that require a subscription. One app, Readability, was booted from the App Store after they neglected to implement this new subscription layer. Understandably frustrated, the Readability folks posted an open letter on their blog.

About two weeks later, Readability was back in the ring with a shiny new mobile interface. While they’ve submitted their app to be reconsidered for the Apple App Store, they’ve launched a slick HTML5 version of Readability which should work on any mobile device with a browser. Kudos to the Readability team for putting in the hard work and getting the HTML5 version done so fast. Other developers should take note.

At a press event Thursday at their headquarters in Mountain View, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and SVP of Product Deep Nishar discussed the company’s product strategy. They covered a few previously released products, including LinkedIn InMaps and LinkedIn Signal. They also covered their new LinkedIn Today product.

LinkedIn Today leverages the vast amount of professional and social data stored in the service to bring each user a personalized news experience. Similar to paper.li, LinkedIn Today shows you the top stories in your network and industry. It also allows you to break down the stories by industry, location, company, and more.

The company’s iPhone app will also gain access to LinkedIn Today. Saving an article on the app will show them under Saved on the website and vice versa. Most powerful in this tool is the ability to see stories shared by those outside of your network. You could, for example, see all the top stories for marketing professionals.

LinkedIn Today and LinkedIn’s other products are all part of a simply strategy. Weiner explains they want to first become the professional profile of record. Next, they want to be the primary source for professional insights. Finally, LinkedIn wants to become ubiquitous in the workplace.

via TechCrunch, Mashable, LinkedIn