Breaking: Essence Lays Off Digital Team

Via Journalsticks:  After relaunching their website last week, Essence magazine laid off its web team today citing budgetary reasons. “They told us it was downsizing,” says one Essence employee. “We’re very confused. We worked so hard for the relaunch.” Another insider tells J’sticks: “This is normal practice. Companies relaunch with new [site] schemes that allow them to [...]

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Creating a new generation of technology entrepreneurs Part 1: Changing the Value Proposition for Urban Youth

Being a pro athlete or an entertainer is great but the odds are extremely high for people to have careers in those fields. But that is who our youth see. And one of the largest problems is that our youth don’t see people they can identify with in technology entrepreneurial roles so they don’t believe it is in the realm of possibility for them. Yes, they love to use Facebook but they never think that they can create the next Facebook. So I ask the question what can we do to change their value proposition. Let’s talk about any ideas people have and start working to making this become reality for our youth.

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Black Media, Instead of Mimicking Blogs Why not just Acquire?

As of late we’ve seen so many traditional Black/Urban Media companies either redesign as blogs, create blog properties as part of their holdings, or transform their content channels into blogs.  In nearly every case that I’ve seen this happen not one company has been able to knock it out of the park.  In many cases [...]

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File Sharing Breach Exposes Congressional Investigations

Last week a fresh political scandal hit the streets of Washington, DC, when a document listing dozens of investigations of Congressional leaders was leaked to the Washington Post. Such a leak would normally be a huge breach of confidence and trust toward those involved in the investigations. However, it appears one of the investigators themselves [...]

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Fall Back: Don’t Forget to Change Your Clocks

It's that time of the year again, where we have to remember to change the time on our clocks (stoves, car dashes, alarm clocks, watches). On Sunday at 2:00 a.m., we're to "fall back" and revert our clocks to Standard Time, which means we gain an hour. Wooo hooo!

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The Root 100 Recognizes Black Technology Innovators and Advocates

Last week theRoot.com published The Root 100 a list of 100 emerging black leaders nationally and globally. The list includes ten individuals who are making their mark in the areas of technology, new media and advocacy in closing the “digital divide.” They are:

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Visiting Y Combinator’s Startup School with Ev, Zuckerberg, and Hsieh

I decided to make the trek out to Berkeley to check out this year’s Startup School (and to let it serve as a serious peptalk–it’s working).  Startup School has been held since 2006 by the folks behind Y Combinator, a venture capital firm that specializes in funding early stage startups.  Teams can raise up to [...]

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Windows 7: It’s Vista Done Right!

Windows 7, Microsoft's answer to the vexing problems and negative feedback update from Vista, finally made a public appearance October 22. I've been using Windows 7 Release Candidate as well as received a copy of the final version before the public did. Is it all that it's cracked up to be? In my now turning three months of using Windows 7 RC, I have a lot less headaches than my two years of using Vista.

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Ed Lover’s C’mon Son! Domain Name Trouble

Many YouTube stars have websites of their own where they can direct their audience for more information, merchandise, and much more. With the viral success of radio personality Ed Lover's "C'mon Son!" video series, (the series reached over half a million viewers in under two months), it seemed that the next step for the video blogger would be his own website.

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BET.com ditches BET On Blast, Takes note from Hulu

Though the BET On Blast video player was nice when it launched a little over 2 years ago video on the web has certainly moved in another direction.  Specifically if you happen to be a television network.  BET.com recently ditched the BET on Blast player, which many thought was hard to navigate, and leveled the [...]

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