The 2011 Blogging While Brown Conference and Black Weblog Awards took place this weekend. The conference consisted of panels, sessions and keynotes that provided technology and business education to an audience primarily comprised of  African American digital media content creators on Friday. The entire event concluded with the Black Weblog Awards hosted by actress Kim Coles and TV personality Rene Syler.

The 2011 Black Weblog winners include:

Best Blog Design: Single Black Male

Best Blog Post Series: Single Black Male

Best Business Blog: In Her Shoes

Best Culture Blog: From Ashy to Classy

Best Cooking or Food Blog: Black Girls Guide to Weight Loss

Best Faith Based Blog: DC District Diva

Best Fashion or Beauty Blog: Afrobella

Best Film Blog: The Black Box Office

Best Gaming or Comics Blog: Oh Hell Nawl Gamers

Best Gossip Blog: Necole Bitchie

Best Health or Wellness Blog: Black Girl’s Guide to Weightloss

Best Hip Hop Blog: The Hip Hop Democrat

Best Humor Blog: Very Smart Brothas

Best International Blog: I am the Nu Black

Best LGBT Blog: The Skorpion Show

Best Micro-Blog: Sister Toldjah

Best Music Blog: Soul Bounce

Best New Blog: Dirty Pretty Thangs

Best Parenting or Family Blog: Black and Married with Kids

Best Personal Blog: Skinny Black Girl

Best Photography Blog: Oh Hell Nawl

Best Podcast Series: Blacking it Up

Best Political or News Blog: The Black Snob

Best Science or Technology Blog: She Geeks

Best Sex or Relationship Blog: Very Smart Brothas

Best Sports Blog: Black Sports Online

Best Teen Blog: Reading in Color

Best Travel Blog: I’m Black and I Travel

Best Video Blog / Vlogger: The Skorpion Show

Best Writing in a Blog: Very Smart Brothas

Blog to Watch: the Skorpion Show

Beset Lifestyle Blog: A Diva State of Mind

Best Plus Size Fashion Blog: Young Fat and Fabulous

Best Automotive Blog: Be Prestigious

Best Green, Nature, Outdoor Blog: Outdoor Afro

Best Book, Author, Literature Blog: Reads for Pleasure

Best Blog Network: The Fresh Xpress

Blog of the Year: Very Smart Brothas

Best Group Blog: Very Smart Brothas

To see some of the action that took place at Blogging While Brown check out the highlights here:

As expected, the iCloud was unveiled today at WWDC 2011 in San Francisco, Cali. The iCloud stores your content in the cloud and then pushes it to all your apple devices automatically. iCloud uploads and stores your day to day content, such as purchased music, books, photos and videos, device settings, and app data. Documents in the Cloud will sync pages, contacts, and keynote data between all of your iOS devices. There will be no advertising, and calendar, mail, and contact sync is free for up to five gigs of mail.

Also in store is the new photostream cloud feature, which is a gallery of all photos that exists on all of your iOS devices, Apple TV, your OS X and even your Windows PCs, and syncs through the cloud.  iCloud will be released with iOS 5 this fall. In addition, Apple announced iTunes Match, a service that scans your iTunes library and populates your iTunes in the Cloud account with any of your previously bought and ripped music.

Although, iCloud was Apple’s major announcement they also announced iMessage; a service for iOS devices which allows all iOS 5 users to send videos, text, photos, group message and receipts across all iOS devices. iMessage is comparable to Blackberry’s BBM.

For more information on iCloud and other new products from Apple go to www.apple.com

In case you’re not in Atlanta for the BE Entrepreneurs conference, you can catch the Live stream on their site and follow along on Twitter following a couple of hastags.  I’ve see people use #ec2011 and #2011ec so be sure to track both.

http://www.blackenterprise.com/ec/live-stream

And we just found out Lamar Tyler will be getting some exclusive interviews for his recently launched MyCulture.tv

If you’re all about check-ins, location data, and/or GPS then Where 2.0 is where you needed to be. This year I was lucky to attend and it was actually my first time attending an O’Reilly conference. Needless to say I wasn’t sure what to expect outside of what I’ve read about their conferences.

By now you’ve probably read at least two of the huge stories that have emerged from Where 2.0 this year; Apple tracking locations on the iPhone and Foursquare’s focus on future check-ins. Aside from the buzz of those two stories Where 2.0 was jammed packed with the who’s who in the location space. If you are as excited about location and where it will go as I am then you missed a party.

Most of the sessions that I attended were super technical which was actually a nice change. Most conferences these days actually tend to slant more towards marketing speak and social media. While Where had its share of marketing panels, it was refreshing to have conversations with builders and people who really understand what you are saying. Not too different from many technical conferences except at Where it’s still pretty intimate.  People are approachable and you don’t have to clamor to talk to a speaker like at most conferences.

If you’re down that you weren’t able to attend here are some key things that I learned at this year’s Where 2.0:

1. Location will get smarter. Thinking back to all the sessions I attended, a reoccurring theme is that the novelty of location applications are starting to wear off. Apps and services for the consumer will get smarter and more useful in everyday life and badges, stamps, and the like will be a thing of the past.
2. Privacy. This is nothing new. Privacy has always been a concern since LB apps hit the market. The only difference now is in terms of product development. Designers and developers will now allow users to be more selective about what they share.
3. Automatic Check-ins. These days it seems like it’s asking too much to ask a user to check-in. The industry is taking note. Nearly every session I attended automatic check-ins were being discussed so I wouldn’t be surprised it you start to notice this in upcoming apps.
4. NFC. Near Field Communication basically utilizes a device’s sensors to determine if they are nearby. A user’s personal information can be attached as well. Many of the use cases that have been discussed for NFC usage involve mobile commerce. However the idea of using NFC outside of commerce was discussed in general at Where; mainly as a why to reduce/remove the friction that exists between people and places.

I’ll definitely be back next year, I hope to see you there too.

South by Southwest (SXSW) kicks off next week in Austin, TX starting on March 11.  The annual conference has three parts:  the interactive festival which focuses on technology and design, the music festival, and the film festival.  Since the SXSW organizers have noted the importance of diversity, efforts have been made to select diverse panels and speakers.  Here are seven interactive panels and one film panel that explore various types of diversity.

Diversity in the Digital Age

Date and Time: Saturday, March 12 at 9:30 AM
Presenter: Anne Hunter
Snippet: “With the plethora of niche sites it’s hard to deny that the Internet has increased the amount of social, political and personal groups one can join. But is this cross sharing really creating diversity? In this session, Anne Hunter, VP, Advertising Effectiveness, comScore, will provide a comprehensive understanding of how the digital age has affected diversity.”

The Elevation of Black Women in New Media

Date and Time: Saturday, March 12 at 11:00 AM
Presenters: Angela Benton, Deanna Sutton, Kathryn Finney
Snippet: “The “Elevation of Black Women in New Media” panel will consist of 4-5 successful web entrepreneurs coming together to help new media websites and/or blogs targeted to women of color help take their blog/website to the next level.”

Sausagefest: Getting More Women Into New Media & Tech

Date and Time: Saturday, March 12 at 12:30 AM
Presenter: Alexia Tsotsis
Snippet: “How can we work together as an industry to encourage the kind of diversity that will free up the very best of our collective talent to rise to the top? Women are great. Men are great. But the ratio in this industry – not great. This panel will address that, and how to change it.”

No. Great Minds Do Not Think Alike

Date and Time: Saturday, March 12 at 3:45 PM
Presenter: Joe Gerstandt
Snippet: “Where do good ideas come from? Diversity. There is a growing body of evidence showing that cognitive diversity can play a powerful role in increasing the ideation and innovation capacity of a group or community.”

100% Viable, 1% Visible – Minority New Media Entrepreneurs

Date and Time: Saturday, March 12 at 4:30 PM
Presenter: Kiratiana Freelon
Snippet: “While minorities (Latinos and African-Americans) are consumers and producers of the content on new media platforms, why aren’t they creating internet companies as often?”

How to Ensure a Diverse Tech Event

Date and Time: Saturday, March 12 at 5:00 PM
Presenter: Erica Mauter
Snippet: “We’ll explore what event organizers like O’Reilly and SXSW are doing to encourage new people to attend. We’ll explore the barriers individuals face as well as opportunities for contribution within the community.”

Minority Report: Social Media for Decreasing Health Disparities

Date and Time: Sunday, March 13 at 11:00 AM
Presenters: Aimee Roundtree, Greg Beets, Jen McClure, Maryland Grier, Wenying Sylvia Chou
Snippet: “Since social connections play a vital role in patient awareness and maintenance of health, social media seems ripe for helping alleviate some of the health disparity, particularly given its pervasiveness in communities of color. This session will cover current uses of social media toward this end, discuss the problems and potential of these applications, and share opportunities and incentive programs for developers.”

Preparing the Next Generation of Diverse Filmmakers

Date and Time: Tuesday, March 15 at 3:30 PM
Presenters: Vicente Williams, Rebecca Yee, Rashad Robinson, Rhianon Gutierrez, Dagoberto Patlan
Snippet: “If you’re a minority, person with disability, LGBT or woman, entering the entertainment industry can be a daunting task. In this panel we’ll follow the career track of a fictitious diverse entertainment professional from high school through to their golden years.”

Ahhh wasn’t CES great?!!! Sure we weren’t able to be there like Mario and Sherri but they looked out w/ up to the min. coverage just for you guys. If you missed any of the live streams be sure to check past episodes in the player below. Til’ next year!

Check out today’s show and catch-up on any past coverage in the player below. While we normally don’t post on the weekend’s we’ll have special coverage tomorrow as well w/ Mario live from CES! Don’t forget to follow @BlackWeb20 for Sherri’s live updates as well.

Be sure to come back today at 5pm EST for an additional hour of live coverage from CES w/ Mario.  Don’t forget to follow @BlackWeb20 for Sherri’s live updates as well.

Join Digital Lifestyle Expert Mario Armstrong and other tech bloggers, experts and commentators as we bring you live wall to wall coverage of the CES 2011 show in Las Vegas. Tune in to the live stream each day as we fill you in on the latest news, interviews and product announcements—from gaming to wireless to tablets to home entertainment we will bring you the BEST and WORST of CES. Chat with us, call-in and be a part of the show and we will also have some cool giveaways so stay tuned in each day. For latest updates: follow@marioArmstrong & hastags #CES #MarioAtCES #CES2011

Mario and friends will be broadcasting live on the dates and times below, you can catch it of course here on Black Web 2.0 in this post but we will also make it easy for everyone by creating new articles at scheduled air times.

* Weds. Jan. 5th 1-2p PST (4 pm EST)

* Saturday Jan. 8th 1:30p-3p PST (4:30 pm EST)

Also don’t forget to follow Black Web’s own Sherri Smith on Twitter as she tweets live from the floor and events. You can check her full stream below:

Last year, I had the privilege of traveling to Las Vegas for the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show. As one of the biggest tech shows in the country, CES is where media, analysts, celebrities and tech companies come to see what’s in store for tech in the coming year. Held annually at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the three day convention is a non-stop flurry of activity with people coming as far as Japan to show off the latest in TVs, apps, gaming, auto-tech and so much more. By now, you’ve probably read a few articles predicting this year’s big tech items such as the HTC Thunderbolt and the Samsung Galaxy Tab. As I prepare for this year’s convention, here are a few items I’m excited to see.

House of Marley - The family of legendary Reggae singer, Bob Marley are releasing a line of eco-friendly headphone and iPod docks set to debut at CES. Aside from photos of some very stylish-looking products, details on either line has been scarce. What is known is that sales proceeds will go to the 1Love foundation to carry on Marley’s message of love, peace, and unity.

SOUL - This year’s CES has another celebrity entering the headphone market. Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, will be present a line of headphones, earbuds, and audio equipment. Presented in the fall of last year, the SOUL line of audio products is a collaboration between Ludacris and home theater company Atlantic Technology.

Jerry Rice & Nitus’ Dog Football – You read it correctly, retired NFL Hall of Famer Jerry Rice is coming to CES. The All-Pro wide receiver will be demoing “Jerry Rice & Nitus’ Dog Football” an upcoming Nintendo Wii at CES 2011. Game developer JUDOBABY has teamed with Rice and his dog Nitus to release the first in a series of Pet League video games. The game will feature a number of celebrities with star acting as quarterback with seven dogs to direct via the Wiimote.

Common and BlackBerry  - You’ve probably seen the commercial for the BlackBerry Style, RIM’s new flip phone-style BlackBerry. During the commercial you hear Common’s “Be” playing in the background. During CES, Common will be in the building to promote a new BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) campaign where fans will be able to chat with him live from the show.

That’s just a taste of what you can expect at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Stay tuned for more coverage during the show.