A 20-year-old tech lover and YouTube sensation is giving consumers the upperhand when it comes to making decisions about their next tech purchases.
There used to be a time when consumers were forced to take every TV commercial or Internet ad at face value but YouTube is giving tech lovers the platform to really put new products to the test.
Marques Brownlee has become one of the most popular YouTube sensations by doing this.
Brownlee hasn’t even earned his cap and gown from college just yet, but he didn’t let that stop him from creating an online empire that most people will recognize as MKBHD.
Brownlee has uploaded video reviews of a variety of smartphones, including the iPhone 6 and Google Nexus 6.
While his smartphone videos are some of the most popular uploads they certainly aren’t the only things the young tech savvy YouTube star has gotten his hands on.
A quick stroll through his channel will reveal reviews for iPads, the Apple Watch, camera equipment and even the Tesla Model S, an incredibly stylish electric car that has been making quite a buzz in the automobile industry.
With such a large variety of reviews, Brownlee’s channel has garnered nearly 2 million subscribers, which makes his channel more popular than that of Kanye West, Marvel, Cover Girl and Disney Animation.
His channel only recently started picking up steam, although he launched the series of tech reviews roughly six years ago.
Now that he has mastered a particular filming style and brought an incredibly likable personality to the videos as well, his virtual empire is growing faster than ever.
“If I’m going to give someone advice on what to buy, you want a personality to back it up rather than some robot telling you X is better than Y,” he said, according to Wired.com.
The professional Ultimate Frisbee player said that the channel makes enough revenue from ad to “pay for itself” and “make it worth [his] time.”
In the future he hopes to continue expanding the types of products that make their way into his hands for reviews.
“Anything with an on button is fair game,” he said.
While his post-graduation plans aren’t clear just yet, the channel’s success will likely leave the young YouTube star with some rather interesting career opportunities before he even slips into his cap and gown.
Eight female entrepreneurs from Africa are preparing to pitch their innovative ideas to an esteemed group of angel investors and fellow entrepreneurs in America in hopes they can receive the support and financial backing they need to take their businesses to the next level.
The entire African continent has become a breeding ground for startups and young entrepreneurs and now She Leads Africa is bringing eight of those emerging entrepreneurs to Washington, DC, for the Diaspora Demo.
The Diaspora Demo is one of the largest gatherings of investors and entrepreneurs from all across the globe who have their eyes locked on the innovative companies that are coming out of African.
The social impact pitch competition will kick off next week and based on the eight young women that She Leads Africa will be bringing to the competition, there will be an abundance of creative business ideas that will have investors digging into their pockets.
One of the ladies will be pitching her business AfriTrade.
AfriTrade is an “intuitive online securities platform customized for the retail segment in Nigeria and abroad to trade on the Nigerian Stock Exchange,” according to the Tribune.
Then there is Eve & Tribe, the clothing brand designed specifically for the African woman who wants affordable, contemporary clothing that is made with her specific body type in mind.
Thandos is another company with fashion at its center but it has a focus on the creator rather than the consumer.
Thandow provides aspiring African artists with a platform to create women’s footwear designs.
Other companies from the eight entrepreneurs include: Mother’s Delivery Kit, which will provide women in Nigeria with the supplies they need to ensure a safe and hygienic childbirth process; Tastemakers Africa, which will become the world’s first mobile app geared specifically towards upscale, curated experiences throughout the African continent; Zuvaa, an online shopping experience that will give African fashion labels the platform they need to boost sales and revenue; Loue 1 Voiture, which will allow users to reserve cars from different rental companies in Morocco; and Tomato Jos, which creates and distributes tomato paste in West African for the domestic market.
In addition to other individual entrepreneurial greats, major partners will be at the event hoping to see what could some day become the next generation of innovative businesses.
AllAfrica.com, ThoughtWorks, Evernote, The Africa Channel, Africa 2.0, Impact Hub, Toniic and many more are supporting the Diaspora Demo day and making it possible to significantly extend the platform that these emerging entrepreneurs would have had otherwise.
In today’s digital age, more and more people are trying to find creative ways to display their memories and get their beloved images out of old photo albums that will eventually be banished to bookshelves or coffee tables only to never see the light of day.
WeMontage may have the perfect solution.
WeMontage allows users to upload their most cherished images, and the company will create a custom reusable wallpaper using those pictures.
The timing of the innovative product couldn’t be any more perfect.
With technology trends pushing toward creative solutions to displaying pictures and interior design trends boasting chic wallpaper as the solution for a great accent wall, WeMontage takes advantage of both industry opportunities.
The ability to customize the size of the collages also means that users don’t have to cover an entire wall with the images if they choose not to.
The removable images can be printed on a smaller scale and take the place of bulky picture frames and pesky nails in the wall.
WeMontage creator James Oliver believes that one day more consumers will decide to ditch the hammer and nail method of displaying pictures for a much more simple peel and press solution.
The product’s reusable design also doesn’t damage walls, making it the perfect solution for college students or renters.
According to Oliver, the idea came to him one day when he was watching a home renovation show on HGTV.
“I saw an interior design show on HGTV and they were covering the wall with large photo collages, but there was no way for me to do it,” he said.
The designer on the show used a much more complicated method to get the massive sheets of photo paper up on the wall, and Oliver wanted to make an easier way for consumers to get the same look for less effort.
Thus, WeMontage was born.
As of October, the company had nearly 1,000 paying customers getting their personalized images turned into chic displays.
While the company focuses on personal images like family photographs, it’s important to note that users can upload any images they want as long as they own the photo or already received permission to use the photo.
This means aspiring photographers could display their own images around their home or music lovers could post concert photos of their favorite artists on their walls without having to purchase any frames.
Once it’s time to move or redecorate, WeMontage collages peel right off the wall and can be reapplied later without any hassle.
Before she launched Blerdology, tech savvy entrepreneur Kat Calvin was busy putting young girls all across the Washington, D.C., area in training to become successful, educated leaders in life.
Blerdology hosted its inaugural event in 2012 and marked the first nonprofit hackathon series specifically geared toward African-American women in the tech community.
As it turns out, however, the hackathon was only the latest venture from founder Calvin who has dedicated much of her time to empowering young women through science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
Roughly four years ago, Calvin launched Michelle in Training, a nonprofit organization that teaches young women the type of skills they need to become successful leaders and possibly the next tech entrepreneurs of their generation.
“Our mission is to teach college-bound high school girls the professional and life skills they need to succeed,” Calvin said to Atlanta Blackstar.
While the nonprofit doesn’t only focus on technology-based skills, it does take a particular focus on making sure young women are introduced to STEM careers.
“We have a special focus on STEM because these days that is a profession and a life skill,” Calvin said.
Last year, Calvin explained exactly why she considered STEM skills like coding to be so essential for the young women who are a part of her organization.
“If you can code, you can find a job, especially like now – every single thing is done [online],” Calvin said on her website. “Even if you run a brick and mortar [store] selling antique buttons, you have to have a website! If you code and you can develop a website, you will have a job. Coders and graphic designers at the end of the earth will be the only people who still have jobs.”
In addition to making the D.C. girls a little more tech savvy, the nonprofit also focuses on “study skills, health and wellness, etiquette and appropriate dress, leaders” and much more.
According to Calvin, these are the skills that can help mold the young soon-to-be first generation college students into strong, confident professionals.
The core values of the organization are the skills that Calvin insists many students aren’t learning in urban high schools, according to the official Michelle in Training website.
“Social intelligence, philanthropy, cultural awareness, educational curiosity, civic responsibility and personal branding,” are all listed as core values at Michelle in Training and are often referred to as “MiT skills.”
Other exciting activities that MiT girls have been a part of include outdoor camping trips, archery classes and a once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet President Barack Obama.
After years of launching and growing his own businesses, serial entrepreneur Jon Gosier is giving new life to innovative tech startups.
Gosier has successfully launched and scaled an abundance of businesses and now he’s ready to lend innovative tech startups his expert advice and some substantial financial backing.
The long-time investor and philanthropist is one of eight partners behind the Third Cohort Capital, a seed-stage investment group that focuses on “high-potential technology companies,” according to the company’s official website.
While the entire team is comprised of successful business-minded individuals, Gosier explained that his experience as a serial entrepreneur makes him incredibly valuable to both his clients and partners.
“I’ve started companies and scaled them several times,” he told AtlantaBlackStar. “Having experience as an entrepreneur is invaluable when it comes to investing. It makes me more valuable to my partners who mostly haven’t been entrepreneurs and it makes me more valuable as a mentor and advisor to the companies we invest in.”
Third Cohort Capital offers two financing vehicles to its clients with one option specifically for other fellow Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program alumni, graduates and participants.
While all clients are eligible for equity investments for any amount up to $25,000, only those who have graduated from or are currently working with the Goldman Sachs program are eligible to receive low-interest loans for up to $10,000.
While the company is still relatively new, it already boasts two successful clients who have created innovative mobile apps that are taking tech markets by storm.
Shadow, a mobile application based in San Francisco and Berlin, helps users remember and record their dreams.
By incorporating a social media aspect, the app’s users are also allowed to view the dreams of others around the globe who have decided to share their dreams.
In a more revolutionary aspect, experts believe the dream-viewing app could help make major scientific advancements in the psychology and other health-related fields.
Gosier has also helped to launch Market Atlas, which is described on the company’s website as a “modern financial terminal that uses real-time information and graph search to improve emerging market investment decisions.”
The internationally recognized data scientist serves as the chief technology officer of the self-proclaimed “Bloomberg for Frontier Markets,” which has the ability to help hedge funds, private equity firms and impact investors in Africa make informed business decisions.
These types of revolutionary ideas have led to publications recognizing Gosier as one of the “20 Angel Investors Worth Knowing” and “Innovators of the Year 2013” by Black Enterprise Magazine.
In an industry that has long struggled to highlight the voices of Blacks across the globe, another startup has joined the battle to bring news of the African Diaspora to the media’s main stage.
After years of “push back” against article ideas that focused on the voices of the African Diaspora, Nsenga Burton took matters into her own hands.
The award-winning media entrepreneur launched The Burton Wire in 2012 and officially joined the battle against the dominance of white voices in the media industry.
Before Burton was the owner of her own media organization, she wrote for other publications who often rejected many of her pitched story ideas that focused on the interest of people of African descent.
“I also wanted to highlight news stories that reflected the many experiences of people of African descent worldwide,” Burton told Atlanta Black Star in an interview. “I got a lot of push back and resistance from editors about stories that I pitched about Black and brown global populations as well as stories about African-Americans that didn’t fall into sports or entertainment news categories.”
With mainstream media posing incredibly high barriers to entry for Blacks, the Internet has become the dominant point of entry for people of color to add diversity to news topics and shed light on the issues that they face in their own communities.
“I created a destination for people that wanted this type of news—people living here in the continental United States and abroad,” she said. “I knew what I wanted to see in the news…so I created it.”
Burton explained that The Burton Wire gives priority to a group of voices that “are not necessarily valued by advertisers, cultural critics or society.”
According to Burton, who also serves as editor-at-large for TheRoot.com, her website will fill the void of content online that not only focuses on “African-American users” but takes a particular interest in “Black and brown global populations as users,” while also elevating “philanthropy in the news cycle” and promoting “cultural events, activities and news stories that are often not covered deeply or consistently by larger outlets.”
“The Burton Wire helps people learn more about diverse cultures throughout the African Diaspora…and offers global perspectives on many national and international issues and events,” Burton added.
The introduction and growth of such online content is key to revolutionizing the media industry and forcing even mainstream TV and radio stations to take a closer look at the issues Black people face all across the globe.
Currently, African-Americans alone represent nearly 13 percent of the U.S. population but less than 10 percent have any ownership or involvement with American media – leaving news coverage and agendas up to white people who may have no knowledge of or are unsympathetic to issues of the Black community on a global scale.
“If you consider yourself a global citizen with a free mind and an indomitable spirit, then this site is for you,” a message on TheBurtonWire.com reads.
While the website is relatively new when compared to other media outlets, it managed to pull in 500,000 views in 2013.
It has also been recognized by The National Association of Black Journalists, thus earning Burton the Ray Taliaferro Entrepreneurial Spirit Award.
The annual award is granted to “an entrepreneurial venture that informs, engages and empowers a local, national, or global audience of readers and listeners.”
In addition to launching The Burton Wire and serving as editor-at-large at TheRoot.com, Burton is also the Chair and Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Goucher College and Executive Director of the National Association of Multicultural Digital Entrepreneurs. She has been a consistent go-to commentator for major media outlets such as CNN and is currently working on a book that will take a closer look at the relationship between race and reality television.
A former teacher turned tech entreprenuer has found a way to help close the achievement gap for students of severely under-resourced schools by giving educators the power to track their students’ progress with nothing more than a smart phone.
In an interview with Blerds, former teacher and Quick Key creator Walter Duncan said that closing the achievement gap is his passion and this new app has certainly allowed him to do just that.
He explained that schools with more sufficient funding can incorporate technology in the curriculum and grading process in a way that under resourced schools can’t.
This, in turn, widens the achievement gap between well-funded and low-funded schools.
Quick Key is working to significantly reduce that gap.
“Quick Key turns a mobile device into a scanner that allows teachers to grade assessments in paper based classrooms with or without an Internet connection,” the self-proclaimed “teacherpreneuer” told Atlanta BlackStar. “It then gives teachers the student performance data right away. This tool allows a dedicated teacher to improve student performance, irrespective of their schools infrastructure and budget.”
After spending 15 years in the classroom, Duncan realized there was a serious need for teachers to have a tool like this in their hands.
Tracking students’ daily progress and understanding of intense lesson plans is a task that would be nearly impossible to do by hand.
On average, teachers already spend more than 10 hours every week grading papers and assignments, according to estimates.
Ducan’s revolutionary app, Quick Key, will give teachers back those precious hours and allow them to focus on “developing and executing creative and engaging lessons.”
The impact of such an app is even greater than just saving time.
In the long run, allowing teachers to track student progress, have more time to develop lesson plans and prevent any one student from falling too far behind has the potential to boost graduation rates on a global scale and save the futures of students who potentially could have slipped through the educational system’s cracks.
More traditional means of tracking student progress often allows many students to fly under the radar, which means it could be too late by the time their parents or teachers notice they have fallen behind.
The technology behind Quick Key also has the ability to revolutionize the way people track progress even outside the classroom.
“In terms of companies, I would say AT&T, Coca-Cola, Target, Best Buy and Starbucks could benefit from using Quick Key for customer feedback and corporate training feedback,” Duncan said.
The same way the app would help teachers identify areas where students are struggling, the app could allow higher ups at any given company to identify areas where their corporate training programs could use improvements.
“Corporate training is critical to successful companies,” Duncan said. “But tracking participant mastery of concepts can be time consumer and challenging. Quick Key allows companies to track mastery of corporate training in real time.”
Duncan also explained that the app is a tool that should be used to help improve relationships between teachers and students.
In fact, it was his own positive relationship with a former student from Los Angeles that helped bring Quick Key to the market.
“Over the course of my career, I built many healthy relationships with students,” Duncan explained. “These relationships persisted during the time after I had been their teacher. One such student, from Los Angeles, helped to change my life.”
Duncan explained that he had just created a “grainy” video with his iPhone that revealed the app’s prototype and overall vision for the app.
“I asked Jacob, my former student, to help me improve the video, and he agreed,” Duncan said. “I gave him my YouTube password (reluctantly) and went to bed.”
The next morning he “woke up to a different world than the one [he] went to bed in.”
Jacob had posted the video to Reddit along with a heart-warming message.
“The best teacher I ever had created this cool new app, let’s show him we appreciate his hard work,” Jacob wrote.
It wasn’t long before the video went viral and garnered the media attention of major outlets including Techcrunch.
So many teachers started signing up for the app that the servers crashed.
Today, more than 400,000 assessments in more than 40 different countries have been graded using the Quick Key mobile app.
The app is free to download from iTunes and truly harnesses the power to level the playing field for students at under-resourced schools.
One Milwaukee high school is ready to foster the next generation of tech entrepreneurs and skilled developers thanks to a unique, rigorous new program that will be available to 10 schools nationwide.
The Washington High School of Information Technology will be one of the few lucky schools that will offer the new mobile app development and entrepreneurship curriculum, the Milwaukee Community Journal (MCJ) reported.
Students at the school will be teaming up with major technology firm Lenovo and the nonprofit education group National Academy Foundation (NAF) to participate in the program of a lifetime.
This won’t be any average course either.
While tech students at other schools will be flipping through textbooks or penning essays, these students will be working on developing their very own mobile app.
According to the MCJ, students will also be working alongside the Massachusetts Institute of Technology “App Inventor” developers and will create a business plan for bringing their app to the market.
It’s the kind of program that has the potential to make every single student the face of true innovation in the technology industry.
“We’re honored to be one of 10 schools in the nation to be able to provide our students with this exciting, hands-on opportunity to broaden their knowledge of information technology and strengthen their preparation for college and careers,” Washington Principal Tonya Adair told the paper. “This is another important piece in the strong information technology programming our students can access.”
The school has already been adamant about allowing its students to garner real world experience that will help them make an easy transition into the science, technology, engineering or math career of their choice.
The school partners with local businesses that in turn offer job shadowing opportunities to students.
Then there is also the twice-annual Information Technology and Engineering Career Fair that allows students to network with each other as well as the figures behind major companies in the technology and engineering field.
Local firms such as Direct Supply and Northwestern Mutual have already offered internships to many of the students and helped prep them for their college years and future career goals.
With the school having a predominantly Black student body, the revolutionary program will be yet another step at closing the diversity gap in Silicon Valley.
Time after time, tech experts have mentioned education and access to major tech companies as reasons Black children are at a major disadvantage when it comes to getting jobs in the technology space.
For these students, however, that certainly won’t be an issue.
“Our collaboration with companies like Lenovo supports our goal of graduating more students college and career ready, particularly in growing STEM industries,” NAF President JD Hoye told the MCJ. “The Lenovo Scholar Network is a prime example of how businesses and education can work together to provide students with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in today’s fast-paced world.”
Facebook’s global head of diversity, Maxine Williams, is taking a different approach to addressing the discussion of race in Silicon Valley, and, according to her, there’s no room for people to be sensitive about the subject.
It’s been a year since Williams was given the task of improving diversity within Facebook and creating a space that welcomed employees from a variety of different backgrounds.
Needless to say, the task certainly wasn’t going to be an easy one.
While the company still isn’t anywhere near as diverse as it has the potential to be, Williams may have unlocked the secret to really getting things moving forward – stop being so sensitive.
Williams sat down with Forbes and explained that many of the white people in the office were uncomfortable about discussing race.
At one point, she recalled that one white employee asked her if it was OK for them to even use the word “Black.”
“I would literally have conversations with people where they would say to me, ‘Can I say the word Black?’” Williams recalled. “And I was like, ‘Wow, these were the conversations we’re having?’”
Williams said years of sensitivity training and lawyers ready to pounce at the sign of any relatively offensive remark has white people terrified of even bringing up diversity and race in the workplace.
The idea of talking to a Black person in the office becomes a game of social Mine Sweeper where any wrong move can end in absolute disaster.
Williams says that to a certain extent that idea needs to be pushed out of the workplace.
“This needs to be a space where people can ask stupid questions and then be forgiven,” Williams said. “In the typical workplace that has employment lawyers, nobody wants you asking stupid questions because they could be offensive. You won’t want to ask that Black person, ‘Do you wash your hair?’ You just don’t. It raises risk … so we become hesitant to engage.”
Williams has flipped that philosophy on its head at Facebook.
“We’ve flipped that around,” she continued. “I’ve said to people: It’s OK to ask those things, but then I want you to forgive people when they ask stupid questions. What I came to see is the hesitation came because I’m operating in a country that has a heightened sensitivity around race, where, quite frankly, white people are afraid to engage. They’re afraid of stepping in the wrong place.”
According to Williams, the push for diversity in the tech sphere will fall short if people continue to be too sensitive about the subject.
“I think sensitivity was holding us back from being bold on diversity,” Williams said about Facebook. “We were bold on products, right? We would achieve things that you never thought were achievable. But on these issues of identity, there was hesitation and sensitivity.”
Williams explained that many times white people were “well intentioned” because they didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or make a remark that could be perceived as racist.
In the end, all that really did was hinder progress.
Williams continues to push employees to be open and honest and ask those “stupid questions.”
That, she says, is the only way to truly get everyone engaged in a much-needed conversation about race.
The virtual collection of Emoji icons on mobile devices might receive a revolutionary update that will finally include ethnically diverse characters.
For at least a year now, Black Twitter has had an interesting question for the creators of the emoji icons: Where are the Black people?
The variety of faces used to express certain emotions and depict common items has long excluded Black characters.
An Asian man, an Indian man and even gay couples fill the emoji repertoire on Apple and Android devices, but if Black users ever wanted a face that looked a little more like themselves they were out of luck.
That’s finally about to change… possibly.
The Unicode Consortium recently announced a possible method for creating a wider range of skin colors for users to have access to.
The proposal is still being reviewed but Unicode Consortium president and co-founder Mark Davis said the odds are looking good that Black emoji icons are on the way.
“It isn’t completely set in stone; we are still collecting feedback on the proposal,” Davis said in an email to the Washington Post. “But I think it is very likely.”
The draft of the proposal said that the company understands that users want to see human diversity reflected in the technology they use and Unicode Consortium is ready to provide them with that.
“People all over the world want to have emoji that reflect more human diversity, especially for skin tone,” the draft said.
The update will do more than just add one Black emoji; it will allow users to take any existing emoji and select the skin tone they would prefer to use.
These skin tone swatches would range from a pale, creamy color to a darker brown/Black option.
The skin tone options would be effective for single faces as well as group emoji icons like couples.
The skin tone options would not, however, allow users to change only one person’s skin color in group emoji icons.
The announcement of the possible update comes after Twitter and other social media platforms served as a catalyst for users to voice their complaints.
Timelines across the country were filled with users pushing for Black emoji.
Some users voiced their concerns by joking about the absence of a Black emoji.
“They have Drake from Degrassi on here but no Black people,” one user tweeted along with the wheelchair emoji.
The tweet was a reference to the handicapped character Drake played in the popular teen series.
Others didn’t feel like the lack of diversity in emoji icons was a laughing matter.
“So there’s a gay couple emoji’s but not black person emoji,” another user tweeted. “Just gonna point that out.”
“I just know this IOS 8 update was gonna come with Black emojis,” another user tweeted. “Y’all can keep this.”
Even pop star Miley Cyrus and actor Tahj Mowry joined the call for more emoji diversity.
“It makes me mad that there are no black emojis…” Mowry tweeted back in March.
Cyrus asked her followers to retweet her message if they agreed with the movement to add a Black emoji icon.
The tweet quickly gained more than 6,000 retweets and 2,200 favorites.
If the plans are approved, the ethnically diverse icons could make their way to mobile devices by mid-2015.
