Iconic comedian and “America’s funniest father” Bill Cosby introduced his project Cosnarati on Ustream (go here in case you missed it) and on other social platforms. And this week also marked the launch of Harvey Knows Best, a State Farm Insurance sponsored series of online animated shorts featuring comedian, host and author Steve Harvey.

The first in a series of 48 digital shorts launched this week. Each short is a vignette of Harvey ranting, raving and pontificating on some aspect of life in his signature comedic style and wit. Anyone familiar with the JibJab “Elf Yourself” campaign for Staples will note a similar use of digital with the Harvey Knows Best series, which is being promoted by SandersWingo, State Farm’s African American agency of record. Each video can be viewed on smartphones and on MP3 players. Take a gander:

NEW YORK — Oct. 22, 2009 — Today Microsoft Corp. announced the worldwide availability of its new Windows 7 operating system. Windows 7 delivers on a simple premise: make it easier for people to do the things they want on a PC. The new operating system offers a streamlined user interface and significant new features that make everyday tasks easier and allow people to get the most out of computers of all styles and sizes.

“With Windows 7, there’s never been a better time to be a PC,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. “Together with our partners, we’re bringing more choice, flexibility and value to the market than ever before. With Windows 7, you’re sure to find a PC that fits your life.”

Building Windows 7 has been a collaborative process from the beginning, with Microsoft’s engineers and designers working with customers and partners to build an operating system that delivers on the vision of the PC, simplified. In a speech in New York, Ballmer thanked the millions of volunteers who helped improve the product by testing early versions.

“A project with the global customer reach of Windows can only be done as a team,” said Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live Division at Microsoft, speaking at a launch event in Tokyo. “We are grateful for the valuable contributions from customers, partners and developers around the world that helped make Windows 7 such a collaborative project.”

On Sale Worldwide Today

The global availability of Windows 7 is joined by an unprecedented array of new PCs and software programs. With more PC options available for customers today at a wide range of price points starting under $300, customers can choose the PC that fits their personality, style and needs, from netbooks, ultrathin notebooks and highly interactive multitouch laptops to all-in-one desktops and high-end, water-cooled gaming machines.

A newly launched section of Windows.com called PC Scout will guide users through selecting and purchasing the right PC. Customers can purchase PCs with Windows 7 or software upgrades online or in-store from technology retailers or at the new Microsoft Store, launching today in its first retail location in Scottsdale, Ariz., and expanded online. Retailers and technology partners are also featuring a series of limited-time offers for customers looking for great deals on Windows 7-based PCs, devices and software. Information on these offers can be found at http://www.windows.com.

Not sure if you missed yesterdays coverage (late coverage) of the BlackAtlas.com preview, it included video and a nice overview of what the value proposition of Black Atlas would be.  I was really interested in seeing what the site would look like and the different functionality it would have and to be honest, if I would use the site on a regular basis.  Others I spoke to were just as interested.  That is until I went to the site and it had yet to be launched.  I’m no early riser by nature so it was about 10am when I went to the site only to notice that it had yet to launch.  I’ve checked back frequently throughout the day (even right before writing this) and the site still continues to say it is down for maintenance.

I hope American Airlines won’t leave us on the runway too long waiting for takeoff.  All promo material and even reps from Burrell pushed heavily that October 15th would be D-day.  No word of ‘tentative’ was in sight or on what may be causing the delay.

Updated: Looks like the site is up and running (6:08pm).  BTW Joe Schmitt I don’t respond well to threats, please don’t send me direct messages like this again:

Thanks in advance.  -angela

American Airlines developed BlackAtlas.com in partnership with Burrell Communications and Juxt Interactive and is a “social networking” site that will allow travelers to share travel experiences that may be unique to African-Americans with each other and the community there.  The site’s content will be user generated for the most part however Nelson George will serve as the sites travel expert vlogging and blogging his travel experiences on the site.  Blogalicious had many gems (both hidden and in-your-face) and the video below was one of them.  Venita Griffin the site’s Digital Content Manager does a semi-preview of the site but mainly explains what the site will be and how they will use bloggers to help contribute to the site.

Interesting sell. I got a chance to chat with Venita since initially it appears that BlackAtlas.com is a stand alone social network with yet to connect with other social networking services like Facebook or Twitter.  She assured me the site would connect with those popular services and others in Phase 2.  I reached out to her at a later date to try an get an idea when Phase 2 is slated for but have yet to receive a response.  We’ll update the story as soon as we hear soemthing.  Especially since the offering is indeed interesting but much of it’s success will rely on the integration of those other services regardless of how many bloggers they get to contribute to the sites content.

Since contributors and users will be able to rate/make recommendations, connect with other travelers with similar interests, answer questions based on their personal travel experiences and build travel itineraries based on user recommendations you can see how leveraging a users social graph is critical.

The overall offering as of today (it has yet to launch) seems great.  I’d use it…once they make it talk to other services so that I can share easily with the site.  Avid travelers may find it useful especially when looking for connections to Black culture while traveling.  Burrell’s co-CEO McGhee Williams Ossee elaborates:

“From a Jamaican restaurant in Milan to Santa Monica’s Ink Well Beach, there are uniquely African-American experiences enjoyed by travelers around the world. BlackAtlas.com is a forum that encourages travelers to share these stories and gives them the opportunity to better plan their next trip with a few key activities or places in mind.”

BlackAtlas.com launches tomorrow October 15th and I am SO looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the site too.  Will you use it?

AT&T has launched the “Spirit of UNCF” sweepstakes, an digital competition that enables visitors to either vote from their website Vote Spirit or by texting VOTE to 65579.

At stake are two incredible on-campus experiences: a campus-to-community technology education fair powered by AT&T Technology and an exclusive Hollywood-styled red carpet campus viewing party, complete with a celebrity host from the 2010 UNCF An Evening of Stars^® Tribute to Lionel Richie presented by Target. One lucky voter will also win a complete AT&T Technology makeover and VIP trip for two to the live taping of An Evening of Stars^® for next year.

The winning HBCU will be announced on Monday, Nov. 16, 2009 with the individual sweepstakes winner announcement to follow. The on-campus rewards will occur on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010, to coincide with the national televised airing of AEOS on ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, and CW affiliates and nationally on BET Networks and WGN.

Users of the site are encouraged to upload video that shares their fondest HBCU memory.

Our Markus (Robinson) will be voting for FAMU. Which HBCU is your choice? So far, Southern University is leading in the top ten.

It began with this:

And as the Huffington Post’s Jason Linkins reports here:

Actor/comedian Tracy Morgan is now tweeting from a verified Twitter account (@RealTracyMorgan) after succumbing to the pressure of new celebrity sighting website OMGICU. Welcome Mr. Morgan to the family and follow him. {smh}

If you’ve ever used a service like Last.fm or Pandora, you can probably appreciate how nice it is to have a piece of software figure out what you what music you’d like to hear based on what you already listen to. These are called content discovery engines because they use what they know about you to figure out what you might like. Now, Jinni provides us the same type of experiences, but for movies and TV shows. They just launched their public beta, so it’s worth a look if you can’t decide what to watch.

Once you sign up and fill out the basics on your profile, you’ll be asked a series of Like/Dislike questions regarding what you like to watch. It covers the types of Genres and Plots you might be interested in. This is only the beginning, though. Once you choose to view your Recommendations, you’re prompted to take the Movie Personality Test. This is a more detailed and specific test that takes you through rating groups of movies on a scale from Awful to Must See. Once you’ve rated 20 movies you like, you will start to see an analysis of your personal tastes.

After you start rating movies, the magic starts to happen. Jinni begins to tell you what movies you probably want to see. Sometimes, we decide to do family movie night. It often seems like we spend more time picking a movie than actually watching one. It’s painful. With Jinni, I can always get an idea of what I want to see. I can even connect with others on the site to collaborate on what we both might enjoy.

Jinni is a pretty slick service that I will probably end up using on the regular. Along with Pandora and Last.fm, it’s an example of how we can use computers to learn more about ourselves and to make us a little smarter. Not only does it find out what you want to watch, but it will show you where you can obtain the movies and TV shows. It will even like out to free content where available. Even if you’re just trying to remember the name of a movie based on a few random facts about it, the search is awesome and can usually find that movie that’s right on the tip of your tongue.

Microsoft project has come a long way since 1987. From primarily desktop-oriented scheduling software, to a more diverse set of PC and web-based tools for groups, teams, and companies. Microsoft Project 2010 is being touted as the biggest release of Project in a decade. There are 4 basic areas that have been enhanced to provide a better user experience and to make Microsoft Project 2010 a more useful solution.

Simple and Intuitive User Experience

• Project Professional and Project Server both use the Fluent User Interface (aka Ribbon), based on Microsoft Office. This helps users discover new tools relevant to what they’re doing at the moment.
• Intuitive Excel-like behavior adds the ease-of-use of Excel to the power of Project’s scheduling engine.
• Powerful new views like the Timeline View and Team Planner.
• Web-based project editing brings the power of Project to the web.

Enhanced Collaboration and Reporting

• Built on SharePoint Server 2010 to bring the power of SharePoint’s business collaboration platform with Project’s advanced portfolio management. It also shares the same interface as SharePoint.
• Easily create reports and dashboards on the fly.
• Better time and status reporting.
• Connect teams with SharePoint Sync to allow two-way round-trip synchronization of tasks and schedules. This allows team members to update their status on SharePoint and stay more connected as a team.

Unified Project ad Portfolio Management

• Common experience across full PPM lifecycle, including centralized administration.
• Flexible project capture and initiation so that organizations can also capture work that may not be part of a project yet.
• Enhance governance through workflow.
• Powerful portfolio selection analytics.

Scalable and Connected Platform

• Extended interoperability with other Microsoft products like Exchange Server so that team members can report status directly from Outlook, for example.
• Simplified Administration.
• Rich Platform Services make it easier to connect with 3rd-party products.
• Enhanced Developer Productivity through integration with Visual Studio.

Microsoft Project 2010 builds on the Microsoft Office Project 2007 foundation with flexible work management solutions and the right collaboration tools for occasional and professional project managers, and includes a pathway to more advanced project and portfolio management capabilities as business needs evolve.

The project management market is still growing despite the recession. Microsoft Project 2010 seems to be coming at the right time. Project management software can help an organization become more profitable by giving them an idea of where they might be wasting resources. It’s also easier to see what areas are lagging and serves to increase individual productivity. With it’s enhanced user interface and tight integration with other Microsoft products, it will be interesting to see what effect this new release will have on existing web-based project management solutions.

Bob Johnson’s interest in internet businesses continues to grow.  While things have been quite regarding his interest in what was said to be a video destination for content producers called Point of You (see our past coverage on this topic) we learned this morning that he will be launching another site.  This one with less focus on fees to content producers as it’s revenue stream and more focus on his philanthropic side.  The site, ClubCharity.com, will launch Fall 2009 and aims to be “the premier online charity auction” with a focus on making it easy for celebrities and corporations to donate.

The site sounds like it could be a joint venture between CharityBids.org but is being positioned in the release as being “developed in affiliation with CharityBids.”  CharityBids was founded in 2007 by a group of young community activists who have advised and guided various non-profits located around the globe on marketing strategies, fundraising initiatives and awareness events that have collectively raised millions of dollars.

Though the CharityBids site and platform is just…okay, we’ll have to wait until an official launch date of ClubCharity to test the waters there.  The project seems to be off to an impressive start with items being donation so far by Tiger Woods, Beyonce, and Emmitt Smith to name a few.  Specifically they’ve lined up auctions for:

• BET, tickets to the 2010 BET Awards Show

• Beyoncé, tickets to her “Sasha Fierce” concert in London

• Michael Jordan, personalized Chicago Bulls #23 Jersey; authentic autographed NBA basketball; custom made commemorative leather jacket for his 2009 Hall of Fame induction; and a personalized copy of Michael Jordan’s book, Driven From Within

• Tiger Woods, personally signed pin flag from his momentous win at the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines

• Emmitt Smith, autographed Reebok Dallas Cowboys #22 Jersey; authentic autographed NFL football; autographed Riddell Dallas Cowboys Helmet

• Roger Federer, match-worn shirt from the 2009 ATP World Tour Masters 1000

• Boxer Mike Spinks Jinx, autographed boxing gloves

• Denzel Washington, an autographed copy of his book A Hand to Guide Me

• Morgan Freeman, two tickets to the Los Angeles premiere of his new film Invictus and a personal meet and greet with the actor

• Judge Greg Mathis, two tickets to the Judge Mathis Show, personal meet and greet with Judge Mathis and round trip flight and hotel accommodations

• James Ingram, a music experience

• Joe Frazier, autographed boxing gloves

Johnson himself has donated for auction a stay at his private villa located off the coast of Anguilla. He has released this statement outlining what his vision for the property it:

“As founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET) and now chairman of The RLJ
Companies, I have had a wonderful experience over the years working with corporations as well
as celebrities to support many charitable endeavors,” said Johnson. “Ideally, my vision for
ClubCharity is to be a major part of charitable giving. We have garnered the participation and
generous support of many well known celebrities and sports figures, who have donated
personalized items or experiences so their fans can bid on and enjoy all while helping support the
charity of the celebrity’s choice,” he concluded.

Similarly corporations will also choose the charity of choice.  Most auction sites make their money off of transaction fees and processing fees however we weren’t able to uncover the site’s revenue model at the time of publishing.  RLJ Companies was contacted for comment, we’ll update the story if we get a response.

Updated: This initiative is not-for-profit and RLJ Companies won’t make any profit off the proceeds of the auctions.  The site also should be up and running in the next week and they plan to market the site using a variety efforts including social media.

Karl Cassell and Gregory Jackson, principals of Our Community, LLC decided to fill a void in Cedar Rapids, Iowa with the creation of an Internet radio station KOJC.com. The startup borrows its name from a now defunct broadcast entity that went out of business in the 1990s. The first station was a community station run by a local non-profit, Oakhill-Jackson Community. Cassell and Jackson’s venture is for profit though they’ve yet to start turning one.

Cassell continues to keep his day job as executive director of the Cedar Rapids Civil Rights Commission as Jackson, a former Rockwell Collins engineer tends to the day-to-day operations of the Internet station. Both have leveraged their relationships and backgrounds to develop support for KOJC.com.

The Cedar Rapids GazetteOnline.com reports:

Cassell and Jackson started the venture with their own money, and are covering operating expenses until the station gains a sound financial footing. The station’s slogan is “Keep on jamming continuously,” and that’s what it does, operating from the Paul Engle Center for Neighborhood Arts, 1600 Fourth Ave. SE. Cassell and Jackson hope to attract advertising and contributions from community organizations and large employers who agree with the station’s goals of community engagement and projecting a positive image for Cedar Rapids’ African-American community. Jackson gets excited when he talks about the growing traffic on the site. The New KOJC gets hits from as far away as Slovenia and Spain.

(Photos courtesy GazetteOnline.com/Stephen Mally)

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