A day after showing his techno savvy with an appearance in a Google+ hangout, President Obama is calling on Congress to pass new legislation that would aid startups, and put them at the center of an agenda, “Startup America”, focused on creating new jobs.

“The president has made small businesses and particularly start-ups a key aspect of his economic growth agenda because he understands how much the newest and fastest-growing small businesses drive job growth in our economy,”  Gene Sperling, director of the White House National Economic Council, told the AP.

Talk is cheap, so let’s get down to the brass tacks. The new bill would help stimulate the startup economy by cutting tax rates on capital gains for investments in small businesses. Ok, so that means more venture capital, but what about the basics of running a business. The new law would also extend for a year the ability of all businesses to immediately deduct all of the costs of equipment and software purchases. Microsoft Office for everyone!

Read the rest of this article at VentureBeat

(Photo Credit: AP)

Minority led tech company located in the San Francisco Bay Area, Hustle and Code spent the past year focusing on the development of a social promotions platform that offers social marketing through sweepstakes, contests and polls called Contest.is.

This marketing platform offers bloggers, companies, and brand marketers an avenue of integrating social media campaigns on Facebook as well as the ability to embed the campaign on the company’s website. The viral power of the platform extends brand awareness on Facebook and Twitter, i.e., through the automated posting of badges, hashtags and links with the casting of each vote.

Black Celebrity Giving solicited the Contest.is platform for its online BCG Inaugural Awards — an online awards event honoring not only celebrities such as Holly Robinson Peete, Chris Paul, Alicia Keys, and Steve Harvey but also everyday people, doing extraordinary things around the world.

Contest.is online automated voting platform has created a “#BCG Awards” synergy on Facebook and Twitter. With each badge, hashtag, and link published, Black Celebrity Giving’s brand awareness is being extended and enhanced. There has been a direct correlation between the company’s increased fan and follower base on Twitter and Facebook and the use of Contest.is during the voting period.

After spending many years developing social media applications, Sir Drafton, founder and CTO, of HustleAndCode, shares his excitement in “bringing an innovative and competitive product to the market space.” Drafton is most honored that Black Celebrity Giving selected Contest.is to host BCG’s Inaugural Awards. Voting continues until Jan. 16, 2012.

HustleAndCode is excited about developing strategic partnerships in the very near future.

Contest.is is A Social Promotion Platform designed to help, bloggers, companies, and brand marketers of all sizes and budgets to create engaging rich-media contest, polls, and sweepstakes (Youtube videos and photos) that not only enhance and extend brand awareness on Facebook and Twitter, but is embeddable (like Youtube embed) on the company’s website.

-Esther Charlene

 Co-founder and CEO, HustleAndCode, Attorney, Social Media Consultant , @esthercharlene on Twitter

If you’re a couple looking for something to do or somewhere to go or something to eat then BeCouply has you covered and then some. BeCouply the startup that helps couples have epic social lives today announced a new premium monthly service called BeCouply Dates. With BeCouply Dates every date includes an awesome activity/event, a fabulous meal with drinks, and round-trip black car service.

Co-founded by real-life couple Becky Cruze and Pius Uzamere, BeCouply helps couples have epic social lives. BeCouply Dates will further this mission through its premium date packages, where each month couples will enjoy an epic night out including an awesome activity or event, fine dining and drinks, and door-to-door black car service.

“BeCouply Dates represent the most elite experiences the city has to offer – from after-hours art gallery tours to spa services and helicopter rides,” said Uzamere. “Plus, we provide round-trip black car transportation, so you never have to worry about asking for directions, finding parking, or having a designated driver.”

“We treat every couple like a Power Couple,” added Cruze. “So you and your significant other can just relax and enjoy your night out!”

BeCouply Dates is currently available in San Francisco, CA with plans to expand across the country soon. Subscriptions for the monthly service start at $149/month per couple and include all activity fees, food, drinks, transportation, taxes and gratuity.

For more about Becouply dates vist http://becouplydates.com and to learn more about Becouply see http://becouply.com

Disclaimer: BeCouply , was one of the startups that participated in the NewME Accelerator. BlackWeb 2.0 and NewME Accelerator are owned and operated by Black Web Media.

Believe it or not, online dating is a male dominated industry. But that didn’t stop LaVonya Reeves from creating her own. She is the founder and CEO of online dating site Reboundlovers.com.

Reboundlovers launched in 2010 and is now a global dating site that offers a  place for singles looking to re-enter into the dating scene, whether they’re newly divorced, separated, ended a relationship or just looking to meet new people and have fun.

Reeves got the idea for Reboundlovers after a  bad divorce.

“Although there are divorced dating sites, I thought about a dating site not just for the divorced but also for the jilted and broken hearted,” says Reeves. “Everyone has been on the rebound at some point in their life.”

What makes Reboundlovers.com different from other dating sites is the size. Reeves says it could take a member six months to a year to find a match on a larger site, but with Reboundlovers it would take half that time. Also one of the major difference is the cost. Reboundlovers currently is completely free without subscription fees that almost all major dating sites require.

“We actually care about our member’s success; they’re not just a dollar amount to us,” says Reeves.

Reboundlover’s mission is to help singles find the kind of relationship they’re looking for. The site caters to everyone, from Christians to Gay and Lesbians offering an array of niches within one site.

Reboundlovers currently has 5,000 members from the US, Canada, UK and several other countries.

With 2011 coming to an end and the tech community expanding at astounding rates, it seems as if 2012 will present some interesting new startups and awesome improved technology. As information is quickly becoming easier to access, even for people with very little income and race barriers within the world of business are beginning to crumble.

There was a time not too long ago when if you weren’t a particular demographic you could not even attempt certain things in this country. But with free information widely available and easily accessible to anyone, people’s voices can be heard now more than ever. So why hasn’t the majority of minorities taken advantage of these amazing opportunities? The answers can be pretty complicated.

What I’m really trying to say is simple; the “fear to try” that once gripped society by the neck is becoming less and less powerful at fast speeds. Within the past few months, companies like CodeAcademy have seen amazing startup success within the tech industry. CodeAcademy is a website where people interested in learning JavaScript can come and take in depth and engaging lessons for free. Online sources like these make it even more possible for aspiring entrepreneurs to teach themselves all of the necessary skills they need to maintain a successful business with less outside assistance. It’s becoming evident that with a great idea, a good team, and a strong faith in your mission- just about anybody can have a shot at being self-made.

Another great example of how technology is making knowledge much more available is MIT’s latest classroom program “MITx”. This system allows students to learn at their own pace and connect to potential study partners and get easy lab assistance. It is a program that is expected to be utilized by millions of people across the world as it continues to become more ordered and user friendly.

This, of course, does not mean that it is easy to start your own business or gain a large following for your artistic expression; it means that the world just got a whole lot more accepting of differences. As fear of others’ differences continues to fade away, productivity within the tech industry will do nothing but skyrocket, sustain and re-grow many suffering markets in a world-wide damaged economy.

2012 is sure to be an amazing year for the tech industry. The internet is connecting the world and sustaining growing populations in ways that will revolutionize the methods in which we all effectively communicate.

Author: Jackson White

Vice President of Go Parti. Web Director and Business Writer at XL Urban Media. JavaScript programmer with strong web development, management and consulting skills. Communications and marketing strategist.

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NoBadGift.com is a Baltimore-based start-up founded by Morgan State University alumni, Mckeever E. Conwell II, Sam Henry, and Michael Washington. Their goal: to make gift giving easier and more affordable. Their solution could not have come at a better time for many Americans who will soon face spending an average of $764 on Christmas gifts (Source: Gallup Poll) for those on their holiday checklist. To reduce this financial burden, the NoBadGift team has created a group gifting website that gives people a place to create wish lists of items that they want. Users simply share their wish lists with friends, family, or anyone in their social networks who can then make contributions of any amount toward the items on the list. “It’s a win-win situation”, says co-founder, Michael Washington, “gift givers can control their spending and the gift recipient gets exactly what they want”.

The guys behind NoBadGift have also begun to make waves for their passionate criticism of gift cards. As co-founder, Mckeever Conwell, puts it, “Gift cards suck. They charge all sorts of hidden fees, they limit you to a specific store or brand, some expire if they aren’t used within a certain period of time, and at the end of the day you have no idea what the recipient used your money for if they used it at all.” According to a recent article by Retailing Today, gift card spending will reach $278 billion during this holiday season. Furthermore, more people are expected to purchase gift cards this year than in 2010 and gift givers will spend more on each card that they buy. Gift cards continue to play a substantial role in holiday gift giving despite the fact that $2.5 billion in gift card funds are never used. (Source: Tower Group) The NoBadGift team has a long road ahead of them if they plan to changing holiday spending habits but this is one bunch that has no problem overcoming the odds.

Check out the video that gives a full explanation of NoBadGift.com describing how it works and why it’s better than gift cards, cash cards, and giving bad gifts.

Before coming together in late 2010 to begin building NoBadGift, all three founders excelled academically in fields where African-Americans are greatly underrepresented, Computer Science (Michael and Mckeever) and Engineering (Sam). All three have each worked independently in the past as self-employed web developers serving local small businesses. All three have also achieved success in Corporate America, working as either developers or consultants for prominent firms. As tech entrepreneurs, the odds are against them yet again. A 2010 study on the demographics of internet start-up companies published by research firm, CB Insights, reported that African Americans make up only 1% of internet company founders nationwide. A related article by tech blog, Black Web 2.0, highlights other statistics that further illustrate the underrepresentation of African Americans in technology. Co-founder, Sam Henry, dismisses the disparaging numbers. “Bringing about change is always a daunting task but that’s not our focus. We’re focused on providing a great service that improves the gift giving experience. If we can do that, change will follow”, he says.

Author Bio: Keep up with NoBadGift by following them at NoBadGift.com, on Twitter @NoBadGift, and on Facebook

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“Buying Christmas gifts for family doesn’t have to be a chore,” according to Teresa Savage, CEO and co-founder of Gift Caddie, a new and free online service that makes finding the perfect gift as easy as online banking.

Gift Caddie was born out of family issues, trying to figure out what people want and providing a platform to express gift preferences.

“For years I tried to play Santa, but never got it right. Gift-giving in my family had deteriorated to where I would give my daughter, Michelle, a receipt with each present because she was going to return it. As for my son, on one visit to his apartment I saw the previous Christmas gifts I’d given him neatly stored in a closet. Never used!”

Both events prompted a serious discussion between Teresa, an educator, and her daughter, a computer programmer, to see if they could develop a better way to give gifts. After doing due diligence they realized that finding gifts for friends and family was a universal problem never effectively solved.

The two women combined expertise and developed the website’s basic design, then brought in specialists to code and enhance their ideas.

“Gift Caddie is not merely a gift registry,” says Savage. “Gift Caddie is a revolutionary leap in how people give and receive gifts because it adds social networking and comparative shopping features to the wish list and gift registry concepts. You can request any gift– merchandise, cash or customize your gifts, such as an experience.”

When you register on Gift Caddie you’re asked to create a visual display of ten gifts you’d like. You send an invitation to friends and family to see this display. You can select gifts ideas from an internet catalog of millions of products; Gift Caddie’s hand-selected catalog of items; customize your gift; or request cash. The service uses drag and drop action and items get displayed automatically with photos, descriptions and where to buy at the best price.

About Author : Teresa Savage is Gift Caddie CEO and Co-founder. She was an associate dean at the University of Illinois, College of Media. She’s consulted for Walt Disney, developed CD-ROMs, and wrote “The Ready to Read, Ready to Count Handbook”.

Today startup incubator DreamIt Ventures, is graduating 14 new startups from its fifth graduating class in Philadelphia and five of them are from minority owned.

This year’s class features minority led startups through the Comcast Ventures collaboration and its Minority Entrepreneur Accelerator Program.

The five startups include:

 ElectNext : an online platform that allows voters to easily figure out which presidential candidate best represents their own ideology.

Kwelia : a service that allows property managers to optimize their pricing using local market data. , Kwelia uses its propriety data to build financial models to assist property managers in properly pricing their available units

metaLayer : a visual search company that turns the real world into sortable data

Qwite : A mobile app that makes it easy for companies to collect customer feedback.

ThaTrunk : a company that uses mobile commerce and geocast technology to help digital creators resonate with their fans and potential consumers.

The minority accelerator is the first initiative from the $20 million fund created by Comcast as a part of the acquisition of NBC Universal. The fund will also be used to invest in other minority-led startups and initiatives outside of DreamIt in the future.

The five companies in the Minority Entrepreneur Accelerator Program received funding from Comcast. The other remaining startups received their funding directly from DreamIt.

With Comcast’s participation, DreamIt’s budget for this group was increased by $350,000.

Black Founders is launching a study group and startup challenge for The Lean Launchpad participants in February.

The Lean Launchpad is a free online course hosted by Stanford University and taught by a serial entrepreneur and professor at Stanford University, Steve Blank.

Black Founders will host a weekly, one-hour, online study group focusing on the video lectures from Lean Launchpad. The study group creates opportunities to learn how to take an idea, execute, and build a successful company from the online lessons provided.

Lean Launchpad is taught to help entrepreneurs execute, therefore Black Founders, alongside the study group is creating a challenge for new startups. They are challenging all participants in the study group to commit to either taking their startup to the next level or create a startup using the foundations taught in Lean Launchpad.

There will be a worldwide demo day at the conclusion of the course.