Imagine the outrage from parents, teachers, and the community if a school announced that some of its students would have access to textbooks, research papers, and literature, but other students would be denied those resources.  Some students would be branded as worthy, while others as second class.

It baffles me that broadband Internet access in our schools is not seen as such as concern. However, it is encouraging to hear that this digital divide is not being accepted in some schools- just look at two districts in North Carolina — Asheville and Green County.  “We have kids with voracious appetites for information. It’s our responsibility to give them the tools they need to satisfy their own curiosity of learning,” an Asheville media specialist says.  And Greene County educators say its program to provide laptops “breaks down the digital divide between students who have access to technology at home and those that don’t, and it also better prepares students for a workforce that is increasingly reliant on technology.”

I applaud the efforts of these schools.  What lessons could their experience mean to your schools?  You can read more over at http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20091109/NEWS01/911090308“>Citizen Times.

And speaking of Asheville, Mayor Terry Bellamy has made broadband access among the high-profile issues on her agenda.  She doesn’t miss a chance to discuss how the gap must be closed on the digital divide.  I’m sure thinking like that is one reason that in 2005 she was the first African-American elected as mayor in the city.  I’m just as certain it is one of the reasons that just last week she was re-elected for another four-year term. Lastly as you go to the article above. Read the comments that follow it. How can we expect children to be excited about these opportunities when there are people who are in their own community who bash it and devalue it?

Next up: Part 2 of Creating a new generation of technology entrepreneurs.

Black elected officials from around the country are urging the Federal Communications Commission to ensure that new regulations on network neutrality do not ignore closing the digital divide.

In a letter sent to the FCC last month, the groups asked the agency “ensure that any new rules proposed can clearly be shown to benefit all consumers and not expand the digital divide facing disadvantaged populations.” The FCC is one of the agencies responsible for developing and implementing a national broadband plan.

The groups signing onto the letter are the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the National Organization of Black Elected Legislative Women, the National Conference of Black Mayors, the National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials, and the National Association of Black County Officials. Collectively they are known as the Joint Caucus of Black Elected Officials.

In addition to their letter, the Joint Caucus has also submitted comments to Notices of Proposed Rulemaking (also known as NPRM, which is how agencies let the public know they are planning to issue rules and regulations), reminding the FCC and the National Telecommunication and Information Administration that keeping various socio-economic groups in mind during this process is critical, and is taking on greater importance during the economic downturn.

Other groups representing diverse groups are also working to bring more attention to the often-dismal rates of Internet access in areas with heavy minority populations. Earlier this week Native Public Media, an advocacy organization that encourages media ownership among Native Americans, issued a report highlighting how Native Americans are adopting new technologies and creating their own ways to bridge the digital divide.

The report, New Media, Technology and Internet Use in Indian Country: Quantitative and Qualitative Analyses, which was issued in conjunction with the New America Foundation, notes that broadband penetration on Indian lands is less than 10 percent. Despite such low numbers, Sascha Meinrath, Director of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative, said the group found a “dramatic uptake” in the use of web-based technologies among Native Americans.

Updated: It looks like the coercing certain Black Elected Officials have undertaken to put pressure on the FCC to be mindful of EVERYONE a national broadband plan effects has no sign of letting up.  We just got a tip regarding a subsequent letter that had been sent to the FCC.  We uploaded to full letter below:

Black Elected Officials Urge FCC to Keep the Digital Divide in Mind

Last week the Journalism Educators Association hosted their fall national high school journalist’s conference in Washington, DC, and I was honored to host a session for a small group of young writers. Early estimates say there were more than 6,000 high school journalists from across the country attending, and their excitement was visible—a couple of Metro stops from the convention hotel I noticed groups of kids with cameras and note pads out capturing stories.

On the way to my meeting room, I passed a group of students of color working on a story about diversity at the conference. One of their interviewees said it was more diverse than she expected and she was really excited about it. I totally remembered that feeling from my days as a high school reporter, where I was often the only person of color in my classes and competitions.  In my group chat diversity came up again—clearly the issue is already on these kid’s minds.

Later that day I read in Richard Prince’s Journal-Isms that AOL’s new news site, Sphere, boasts 17 writers, none of whom are people of color. My heart fell for those kids I’d talked to just a few hours earlier, who keep hearing that newspapers are disappearing but still want to write because they love it. How sad to think that these kids could hear this news and think that now even the web isn’t for them.

When I read the AOL spokeswoman’s response to questions of the lack of diversity was “we are just starting, it’s going to be a diverse staff. It’s super early,” I went from heart broken to astounded. Your legitimate reason for not having any people of color on that list is that they weren’t in your early plans? And you’re comfortable admitting this? Is it because AOL has their Latino and Black Voices sections that they aren’t worried about diversity issues?

Those high school students looking for diversity at a conference deserve better than this.  All the kids who were there do. The pool of opportunities are slimmer than ever for traditional journalists, but if these kids still believe there is a value to their dreams, lets be wise enough to give them some role models who a) look like them and b) aren’t afterthoughts. There’s a plethora of professional news writers of color who would be awesome for Sphere’s operations, thanks to their talent and experience.

Sphere.com says its network of writers will continue to grow every week. So to AOL, if it’s not too early for you to think about diversity, let us know and we can put you in touch with some folks who might be interested.

The African-American Internet Summit is upon us again and last year proved to be lively from what I hear.  The one day summit will be held this Thursday November 19th in Chicago at the Wyndham Hotel and has plans to have a heavy focus on internet marketing.

The Summit will examine how numerous Fortune 500 companies have effectively used digital platforms to reach African Americans including State Farm, AT&T, McDonalds, Toyota, American Airlines, Ford, Walmart and the U.S. Navy. Among the advertising agencies invited to participate and make presentations are UniWorld Group. GlobalHue, Sanders\Wingo, Burrell Communications, Vigilante and Carol H. Williams Advertising.

”Think of this as the 2.0 version of our 2008 Internet Summit,” said Ken Smikle, President of Target Market News. “We added marketing to the title because we’re putting an emphasis on how the Internet and digital platforms reach the $800 billion African American consumer market. With the boom in social media, there needs to be more dialogue on how marketers continue to explore and use the hundreds of targeted digital media platforms available. The financial opportunities are too great to ignore — especially in this economic climate.”

The issues that will be addressed by panels of experts at the Summit include:

- Case Studies of How Leading Companies Market to Blacks Consumers on the Net
- What the Latest Research Reveals About Internet Usage
- The Obama Factor: Internet Lessons For Savvy Marketers
- Marketing to African Americans Through Targeted Social Media
- What the Loss of RushmoreDrive.com Signals to Digital Platforms
- Engagement vs. Traffic: What National Advertisers Value Most
- How the Internet Empowers Black Women Consumers
- Are Local Advertisers Being Ignored as Revenue Opportunities?
- Digital Decisions: Is Your Content Audience or Advertiser Driven?
- How Black Media Has Incorporated and Adapted to the Web

I’m looking forward to speaking here and also hearing many of the presentations.  There is still time to register if you are planning on attending.  Registration will not be accepted onsite.

Just about all the leading websites for African-American women have redesigned lately.  Surely you remember the hoopla that surrounded Essence magazine’s redesign and the layoff of a large portion of their digital staff nearly a week later.  Clutch Magazine also redesigned about a week after Essence improving several content items and adding a new twist to it’s signature clean design direction.  Not to be out done Honey launched this morning with a new look and a much better understanding of not only their audience (sweet spot of multi-cultural 22 year old’s) but also a better understanding of what it takes to be a contender online.

This latest redesign is a MUCH needed improvement from past incarnations.  Though I’m not their target audience visually it is a much better design.  Functionally it is a much better design.  And my briefing of the product disclosed there is a much better strategy as well.  Of all the features launched; HoneyTV, Swarm Blog Network, Live Social Feeds, and the Career Section; the most compelling are HoneyTV and the Live Social Feeds.  The revived magazine’s goal seems not to shun it’s print roots but focuses on moving forward by integrating technology based features into the site and not just focusing on content alone.  Chuck Baker the site’s CTO and GM disclosed they spent months looking at how users interacted with some of the most popular site’s today, one being World Star HipHop.  While at first glance it might seem like a stretch for Honey to look at such a site but the execution of HoneyTV will tell a different story.  HoneyTV is the site’s branded video portal.  While competitors in the space have launched video features on their sites to-date they have all focused on delivering content.  Honey will not only delivers their own exclusive content on HoneyTV they will take a much more legalized cue than WSHH and syndicates content that already exists on the web from 3rd party’s in the portal also allowing for their audience to embed and share from their site.  Impressive considering the functionality is being done with Wordpress…a tricked out version of course.

Honey’s Live Social Feeds are interesting.  The pull from all activity related to Honey and has prominent placement on they site’s homepage.  While you can view Honey activity from Twitter and Facebook you can also view HoneyNews and updates from the Swarm Blog Network.  There is also the option to view all.  HoneyNews will essentially take some of the most popular stories on the web form the day written in the Honey voice and offering their take on the topic.  Though the feed is not real-time just yet Baker says they will be including that functionality in another release and may even entertain (depending on the popularity of course) allowing this feature to grow into its own application.

Other interesting things of note include the Swarm Blog Network where the company plans to recruit bloggers not to have their own blogs on HoneyMag but to have their own columns.  It will be interesting to see if this positioning will have an effect on the quality of Bloggers the Network will attract.  Honey has a goal of attracting 1500 writers and blogger for columns on the site.

With so many magazines as of late trying to find the right balance of transition of their brand online; many going out of business completely; Honey not long ago introduced Digital-only covers.  Digital covers in the past design were just nice.  In the new design they sing.  If you are like me and love the experience of magazines, flipping through the pages and such, but also consume most of your content online you’ll be able to respect how features are treated in Honey’s new design.  No I’m not talking about those Flash renditions of magazines where you can page through, I sorely dislike those.  Honey was able to find a good balance between how features are treated in print publications and how articles are consumed online.  Each “cover feature” has the cover included at the article’s onset and then with cleaver layout design strategically places accompanying images and pull quotes while the article flows through out.  The best thing about it is there is no paging, you scroll up and down like you would any other article online yet the feeling (at least for me) is similar to my experience when reading a feature in a print pub.  This works well for Honey given the brands past history as a print pub.

Though traffic growth has been somewhat slow Philmore Anderson, Sahara Media’s (Honey’s parent company) CEO, says their corporate strategy includes acquisitions as well as building other brands in-house.  “We want to touch multi-cultural women at every stage in their life not just the 22-ish year old’s Honey’s demo is.”  He went on to say this strategy will expand into other verticals as well not just multi-cultural women, it will include men as well as many other verticals.  It appears HoneyMag is on the right track after a rocky start.  Their new formula of improved design and user experience, leveraging existing technology creatively for their vertical, and clear corporate strategy is sure to pay off in user acquisition.

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) raised the veil of secrecy for a few lucky New York tech writers concerning the 2010 International CES. For those of you that don’t know the Consumer Electronics Show is like the techie Superbowl or maybe it’s more like a cotillion. Everyone has on their best business casual outfits showing off their latest and greatest additions to the tech universe and we journalists, geeks, and gawkers lap it up like honey.

So despite the recession and some gloomy sales statistics, CES promises to be bigger than ever with a 50 percent increase in the gaming section alone. Some of the top trends at the show include the burgeoning field of car tech, which is perfect since the 2010 Ford Taurus has been named as the official car of the event. Ford’s progress with the voice-activated SYNC system has been incredible and will definitely be on display for all to ooh and ahh over. Some other car tech that made the scene was Audiovox’s adaptation of Qualcomm’s FLO TV for in-car use.

3D technology will also have a big showing at the event with Sony leading the charge with their work with the PS3 and their multi-angle 3D displays. And with a number of laptops starting to include the once-kitschy commodity, 3D may have just made it to the big time. In addition, I definitely expect to see a bunch of accessory companies on scene displaying the latest designs in 3D specs. Yeah, we’re geeks, but we don’t want to look like dorks when we’re rocking the 3D glasses.

With all that said, 2010 CES will be the year of the app. With Apple’s app store reaching 100,000 apps with approximately 2 billion served, apps have become kinda a big deal. iPhone continues to lead the app charge but with Android-powered phones, and Palm rolling out their own app stores, apps are no passing fad. In fact, there are a bunch of printers joining the app fray including the Lexmark Pro 905 which made an impressive show at the NY Preview. I was especially taken with the price and the business card scanner (stay tuned for that post).

2010 CES promises to be a blast with tech as far as the eye can see. I’m not going to say I’m drooling with anticipation, I’ll just kindly ask you to hand me a napkin, thank you. Did I mention that the performer for the annual concert presented by Monster Cable will be headlined by John Legend? Ooh, I think I might need a bib!

Last week’s shooting rampage at a military installation in Fort Hood, Texas quickly became the top news story across the country, and several major news organizations used Twitter Lists to aggregate information coming from local news outlets after the shooting, including the New York Times, CNN, and the Austin-American Statesmen. The Times prominently displayed their Lists on the homepage, just below the latest news stories on the tragedy.  We posted earlier today a few reasons why you should care about Twitter Lists, needless to say this is another one.

We’ve already seen Twitter become the space to get details on breaking news events, often before they hit the major networks or papers, and with the news Lists feature, media organizations were able to quickly pull together a variety of sources. In the old days of Twitter, users would have had to search using the #forthood hashtag, or the name Fort Hood, and risk ending up with a stream of potentially unrelated or irrelevant posts. The Lists feature helped capture real time information from local and national sources providing information specific to the tragedy, its aftermath–a godsend for those searching for reliable information on how to contact family and friends in the area.

The lists contain Twitter accounts that are mostly local to the area around Fort Hood, like the Killeen Daily Herald, a local newspaper, and News 8 Austin, a local 24 hour news network, in addition to CNN and other national networks.

Fort Hood, the largest active duty armored post in the United States Armed Services, has obviously been devastated by the tragedy, as is the rest of the military, and the nation has responded with an outpouring of support. Twitter was flooded with messages of support for those killed or wounded, their family and friends, and overnight several new Facebook groups titled “Prayers for Fort Hood” sprang up–the largest already has almost 30,000 members.

This Lists feature got another breaking news workout today when another mass shooting was reported in Orlando, and again the New York Times pulled together a list to help track the latest news there. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected by both of these tragedies.

The journalism world and Black Entertainment Television lost a true professional and friend Sunday afternoon when BET.com news producer Tracy Stokes succumbed to complications from kidney failure. He was 37 years old.

BET.com News Producer Tracy Stokes

According to his mother, Lilly Stokes, a retired teacher living in North Carolina, Tracy died a 4:07 p.m. Sunday at Wake Med Hospital in Raleigh. He had pneumonia in both lungs, she said.

Despite his long bout with kidney problems, which meant steady visits to doctors and other specialists, Tracy enjoyed working, and he never used his illness as an excuse for giving less than his best.

“I don’t think most people know just how giving Tracy was,” said Mrs. Stokes. “He really believed in helping people, and he wanted to see folks loving one another. He couldn’t deal with people disrespecting each other. He liked people to be straightforward.”

For those who never had the pleasure of working with Tracy, you were likely connected to him in ways you didn’t even know. If you visited BET.com over much of the past half-decade and clicked on such popular BET.com segments as the “Bring That Week Back” photo flipbook, the annual “Those We Lost” obituary compilation or the “World Lens” section, which highlighted photos of people of color making the news throughout the world, you were indeed connected to Tracy. He worked meticulously on these projects, among many others, and went about his duties as a news gatherer and producer with passion and pride.  Head over to BET.com to read the full story.

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 do more with less, then they cut staff.”

In addition to letting go of the web team, Essence also let go of 4 Editors. Emil Wilbekin remains on staff as the Deputy Editor.

Story developing…

Updated 3:18pm: We are getting reports of about 10 were laid off, one was a Beauty Assistant for both print and digital, no word if she is included in the count for the layoffs in print.

Updated: 3:40pm: 4 cuts from Essence staff include: Fashion Assistant,Work & Wealth Assistant, one of 3 deputy editors and a special projects director who’s been with the magazine since the 70s.

I spend easily 50% of my time reading about technology startups. Watching them get funded, seeing what business models take off and reading the stories of how they went from idea to executed company.  There are so many new technology companies being created everyday. Some fail, some succeed but the great part is that people are taking the chance to create something. One of the things that frustrates me is the lack of African Americans creating technology-based start-ups. Before people start jumping at me saying, “What are your talking about I’m a Black tech entrepreneur?!”

You have to admit that even if you are one or know one, there are not enough of them.   And I don’t buy the argument that we can’t because we have shown creativity and innovation in almost everything we do. When I was running GlobalGrind I was fortunate enough to go to places like Facebook and meet employees from well-known startups like Ning and Digg. What I was always impressed with was the environment of creativity that existed among these people and how everyone there was keenly focused on solving problems. Yes, they were all making money but you could quickly tell that was only part of the value proposition for them. I would always say to myself that if more minority teens knew that there are places to work like Facebook and other startups, and more importantly they can create companies just like this, they would line up around the block to learn how to do it. So what is it? Why in this age of opportunity does Black Web 2.0  have maybe 2 startups to cover a week while sites like Techcrunch cover about 10 a day?

I believe we have to change the value proposition of urban youth. We need to help them understand how great the opportunities are and how much easier it is to start your own company than they think. When I speak to teens at events I usually ask them if they knew that there was a guy who, using free software, in his dorm room created something and he is now worth more than P-Diddy, Jay-Z, and Russell Simmons combined. People rarely guess that I’m talking about Mark Zuckerberg and that he did that in about 5 years.  But after that remark I usually have their attention.

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 they see and the problem 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.  I would love to hear your thoughts.

Here are some good articles to read:
Youth Use Entrepreneurship as a Pathway to Success

Teen Tips for Entrepreneurship

Lesson Plans for Young Entrepreneurs