Hyper-Gate is a Brooklyn-based IT Services, Software Development, and Social Media Management company composed primarily of Latino and African-American shareholders. Their business is geared towards African-American and Latino brands.

Hyper-Gate does what they call an Optimized Business Branding process, registering businesses in 300+ Social Networks, 300+Business Listings, and search engines. Once the basics are done, Hyper-Gate maintains, manages, develops and distributes content for your brand on a daily basis. This allows small businesses to focus on their core products and services while Hyper-Gate keeps their brand competitive on the social media side.

Social media has transformed the way we do business today. The prizes have been huge for those businesses that have harnessed the power of social media. Successfully managing your social media presence can be very time-consuming and quite often requires the use of full-time staff, who in our experience are quite often not the most ‘trained’ Social Media Managers.

Hyper-Gate is the technical arm of Nuyorican Media Corp., combining Education, IT and Business Consultants to customize services for businesses. Founder of Nuyorican Media Corp. Miguel Algarin is known for his work as the Founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which has long stood as “a beacon for emerging poets, hip hop mavens, musicians, visual adventurists, and sonic/visual artists of virtually every other stripe.” Algarin is also the subject of the The Miguel Algarin Story. Executive Producer and Director Will Roberson, also President of Diggin 4 Brown Films says:

“The golden years of Algarin’s life are no Shakespearian sonnet. A better comparison would be a full-on slam (body, not poetry), as Algarin labors to get on the same page again with the landmark club he founded, keep his home, and manage his HIV+ status. The result is a documentary in progress that’s also a race against time.” — SonicScoop

Umar Bin Hassan of the Last Poets introduced the production team from Diggin4Brown to produce “The Miguel Algarin Story”. Hyper-Gate CTO Anton Prakash is a six sigma blackbelt and former General Electric IT manager. Robin Benton is the Hyper-Gate designer and Miguel’s business partner along with Mirta Serrano, Roy Skodnick, and John Howard Algarin Esq.

Designed to lend Social Media and IT support for Latino and African-American business (B2B), Hyper-Gate will work closely with business owners as Ambassadors for their Brand. Check out the video below for more info on Hyper-Tech. You can also connect with Hyper-Gate on Facebook.

In a digitized world, Sekai Farai has emerged as a high-tech fairy godmother. She spots would-be beneficiaries on the streets of New York City – a teen in a Best Buy electronics store, for instance – and asks them a simple question: Are you ready to become a producer of technology, not just a consumer?

Those who answer yes are offered a golden ticket of sorts, invited under Farai’s wing for a pro bono curriculum of high-tech training designed to lift urban minorities out of poverty one homegrown innovation at a time. Farai operates Hack/Change, a nonprofit that offers free training in designing, programming and marketing new technology. In exchange, students pledge to use their newfound knowledge to create tech startups and products that can improve their communities.

Read the full story at Noire Digerati.

Oprah may have dropped the ball on this one. Mukami Kinoti-Kimotho is an “on-air personality, journalist, organizational ambassador and celebrity spokesperson” based in Washington, DC. Last year, she had the opportunity to compete for a spot on Oprah’s OWN network. She didn’t win, but that hasn’t stopped her from seeking to become a media mogul.

Mukami’s own multimedia company, MaWazo Media, will launch their first season on May 12th at 4pm EST (that’s this Thursday). Mukami will tweet the event live from her account (@MukamiTV) using the hashtag #MukamiTV.

Why do you want to tune in? Not only is Mukami living the dream and taking advantage of the fact that the gatekeepers are gone, but there is a greater purpose in her hustle. Not just another pretty face, she tackles issue like “Global Diversity and Inclusion, Leadership Development, Gender Equity, Child Survival, Health, Education and Sustainability of the Arts.” One of the goals of the show is to “amplify the voices of individuals doing extraordinary things,” highlighting those her are “overcoming obstacles” and “working and succeeding at becoming their very best and fulfilling their ultimate purpose in life.”

Subscribe to the MukamiTV YouTube channel, mark your calendars, and be sure to check out the first episode of the season this Thursday.

via afrospear

Riding around in a tricked out school bus, the responsibly (yes, small ‘r’) team sat down with TechCrunch to talk about their gifting platform. CEO Antoine Grant points out early on that responsibly is different from other social good initiatives because it does away with the feeling of sacrifice. He says that they are unique because they are “pairing normal human behavior, gifting, with a meaningful contribution to education.”

Responsibly CEO Antoine Grant and COO Stuart Felkner

responsibly works like your average daily deals site, except that 100% of the proceeds is donated to education. You choose which education project you want to donate to. 50% of the proceeds for the purchase go to the school with another 50% matched via corporate sponsorship from Donor’s Choose.

“The education system is in dire need of our help, and we want to start a movement that spreads awareness, brings people on board with our mission and gives them a really easy way to help directly and contribute to saving America’s  education,” said Grant on the motivation behind the startup’s for profit mission (they take a cut of sales).

The actual deals are sparse. Right now, you can only buy aromatic Stone Candles, but these offerings will be expanded during the beta period.

Their tour bus is a rolling home office, featuring solar panels and customized fold-out beds. They just came off a 15 city tour during the month of April, visiting schools and leaders from the KIPP, Greendot, and Teach for America programs across America. The goal here is to show they are committed to their cause and to get a better idea of the issues faced by US educators so that they can find the best ways to help.

“Our goal is to be more than a simple commerce platform – we want to connect consumers and companies with charitable giving in an easy and cost-effective way that benefits everyone,” said Felkner.

via TechCrunch

Clemson University professor, Dr. Juan E Gilbert, is the chair of the Human Centered Computing Division in the School of Computing. He was also named one of the 50 Most Important African Americans in Technology. Dr Gilbert’s work is an intersection of people, culture, policy and technology. Gilbert heads the Interaction and Information lab where he has several research projects including spoken language systems, advanced learning technologies, usability and accessibility, ethnocomputing (culturally relevant computing) and databases/data mining. He takes real world problems and uses tech to design and develop a solution that is evaluated “in the wild” or as people would use the technology out in the real world. A great example would be the development of tools that allows disabled people great accessibility.

In addition to his work at Clemson, Gilbert has written over 100 articles, delivered more than 150 speeches and presentations, one of the most recent took place at Morehouse College titled, “The African-American Distributed Multiple Learning Styles System: An Ethnocomputing Approach to Teach Algebra.” Gilbert has secured over $11 million for his work. He is also a national associate of the National Research Council of the National Academies, an ACM Distinguished Speaker and a senior member of the IEEE Computer Society.

But where did Gilbert get the inspiration to become involved in science and technology. To hear him tell it, the impetus came from a sci-fi movie. “There was always this guy in the movie who had a lab coat and he had all the answers and I thought that was really cool. I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to know as much as that person?”

The following is a video of Dr. Gilbert discussing some of his work at Clemson and how he got his start in science.

Someone I’ve known for quite a while now, our very own Amani Roberts, has been featured in this month’s 28 Days of Diversity series.

Amani is the Founder of Woodside Media Group, a Digital PR Firm specializing in Emerging Media and Technology. The company is most active in training people and Fortune 500 organizations on the numerous tools available on the web and within social media. Award winning authors, musicians, restaurants and hotels are a few of the clients that Woodside Media Group continues to support. Amani has also used his expertise to cover many social media topics for Black Web 2.0.

Check out the site for his take on closing the digital divide using technology. His answer might surprise you.

Even better is the donation of time and energy. Spending time with two main age groups – the youth (21 years old and younger) and the Baby Boomers are most important in my opinion.

via 28 Days of Diversity

For day 22 of the 28 Days of Diversity series, we have 13 year industry veteran Denise R. Jacobs. Her expertise includes everything from software localization project management and enterprise website implementation to web design/development and technical training. She authored The CSS Detective Guide and is a contributing author to Interact with Web Standards: A holistic approach to Web Design. Her passions include being an Author, Speaker & Educator, Web Designer, and Consultant.

Read more about Denise at SocialWayne.com, including her thoughts on using technology to close the digital divide.

“Many don’t even see the need, much less the value of bridging the digital divide, be it on a local scale or a global scale. Before we can think critically about how to use technology to close the digital divide, there needs to be a process of raising awareness about the importance of and issues around the digital divide…”