Featured Archives - Page 8 of 29

March 30, 2015March 30, 2015

Sources: Jay Z’s New Streaming Service Could Be the Biggest Threat to Apple’s Upcoming Beats Music

The world of digital streaming may be gearing up for the battle of the decade all thanks to Jay Z’s latest business venture that may come dangerously close to stepping on Apple’s toes.

Jay Z only recently purchased Aspiro, the Swedish company behind Tidal and WiMP, but it seems he’s already transformed Tidal into a top-notch competitor with the potential to overshadow Apple’s upcoming Beats streaming service.

There are certain names, certain brands and certain businesses that are deemed undefeatable in the eyes of many — hip-hop mogul Jay Z and tech giant Apple are among the names on this list.

So who wins a battle that pits both of these giants against one another?

According to the New York Post’s sources, here is how the match is stacking up so far.

In Apple’s corner we have rap icon Dr. Dre and mega-producer Jimmy Iovine who have been teaming up to overhaul Apple’s upcoming Beats music service.

In Tidal’s corner, we have hip-hop mogul and versatile entrepreneur Jay Z, international singing sensation Beyonce, self-proclaimed creative genius and rap veteran Kanye West, the leader of her own navy and Billboard chart-topper Rihanna … need we go on?

To be fair, all of the music moguls involved have a list of connections in the music and entertainment space that could trump a full encyclopedia set in length, and it’s hard to imagine any of them wouldn’t get their phone calls answered when they’re ready to talk business.

Sources claim, however, that Jay Z is possibly the only man who is actually more connected than the Beats duo.

“There’s only one person with a bigger Rolodex than Jimmy Iovine and that’s Jay Z,” one source said.

Jay Z’s advantage doesn’t just stop at connections and contacts either.

While Tidal is earning a reputation as the streaming platform “by artists, for artists,” Apple’s iTunes service has already garnered a negative reputation for playing hardball with record labels.

That type of reputation could be difficult to overcome as the company prepares to launch its Beats service.

“Jay Z’s whole approach is, they’re created by artists, supported by artists,” one anonymous label executive told the New York Post. “The more players the better.”

With Roc Nation under Jay Z’s belt as well, he has a plethora of key players in the music business that his company represents, including Kanye West and DJ DeadMau5.

It creates a possible team roster that is not only extensive in size and impressive in the overall quality of music, but also extremely diverse.

With his own loyal following of hip-hop heads, his wife’s team of pop-loving BeeHive dwellers and DJ DeadMau5’s fanbase of both progressive-house music lovers and those who are just fascinated with his funky mouse heads, Tidal already has a diverse network ready to be tapped into.

Not to mention Tidal made a huge play by securing a deal with Taylor Swift shortly after she cut ties with Spotify.

“If you are Jimmy, you’ve got to be thinking, this guy is beating me to the punch at trying to get all the artists,” another source said.

Jay Z’s rumored guest list for his New York launch event for Tidal on Monday is yet another look into the wide span of award-winning artists who are getting behind the service.

Reports revealed that Rihanna, Madonna and Coldplay are just a few of the major stars who are rumored to be attending the lavish event.

It all signifies a few powerful first blows coming out of Tidal’s corner, but since Apple’s Beats service doesn’t plan on launching until the summer it’s hard to gauge how powerful the response will be from the opposing corner.

Regardless, one thing is already certain.

As another source put it, Jay Z is clearly “disrupting Apple’s venture.”

March 26, 2015March 26, 2015

Young Blerds Celebrated at White House Science Fair as President Obama Dedicates $240M to Diversifying STEM

President Barack Obama has repeatedly voiced his interest in helping diversify careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), and the 2015 White House Science Fair marked the president’s latest effort to follow through on his word.

This year marked the fifth installment of the White House Science Fair, but the gathering had a particular focus — diversity.

An incredibly diverse group of students were gathered together at the White House to present their own incredible achievements in STEM.

Students from across the nation, and even as far as the U.S. Virgin Islands, demonstrated their amazing potential to be tomorrow’s leaders in Silicon Valley.

With STEM careers being in high demand and officials fearing a possible deficit of people to fill these jobs in a few years, it’s important to get more youths into such fields.

What’s more important, however, is to make sure that marginalized communities are not continuing to be overlooked as the nation prepares to welcome the new wave of engineers, programmers, developers and more.

Silicon Valley has been heavily criticized for its stunning lack of diversity and it’s a trend that has been true throughout all areas of STEM.

The president is hoping to help change that by committing $240 million in private-sector commitments to help diversity STEM fields.

“We don’t want to just increase the number of American students in STEM,” the president said at the White House Science Fair. “We want to make sure everybody is involved. We want to increase the diversity of STEM programs as well. That means reaching out to boys and girls, men and women, of all races and all backgrounds. Science is for all of us. And we want our classrooms and labs and workplaces and media to reflect that.”

Progress is still being made in hopes to make that vision a reality, but at least that vision was realized at the science fair.

The diverse teams helped obliterate all misconceptions that Black people aren’t in STEM fields because they aren’t talented or interested enough.

“Everybody needs an opportunity to go into STEM and learn and expose themselves to such an amazing field,” Stephanie Bullock, the 16-year-old captain of the five-person crew from the U.S Virgin Islands, told The Root.

Bullock and her teammates design rockets for the Team America Rocketry Challenge.

Another group of Black youth were a part of the Village, a division of the Atlanta Children’s Foundation.

The group of young Blerds designed and built a robot that has the ability to lift and carry items on its own.

Their prowess in the STEM field will now give them the opportunity to possibly dominate the GeorgiaFIRST Robotics Peachtree Regional.

It’s an opportunity they have been preparing for with the help of Lonnie Johnson, the inventor of the Super Soaker.

Each of the young men on the team have spent more than two years in foster care but never let their circumstances dictate their own potential.

Many of the young men and women at the science fair carried similar messages.

Another young lady opened up about how her own teachers doubted her when she enrolled in an advanced class.

Tiye Garrett-Mills, 17, admitted that it was a hurtful experience but told The Root that she never let that experience alter her aspirations.

“The thing is, it hurts, but…you have to let that fuel you, you can’t let that stop you, because you can achieve amazing things,” she told The Root. “Two years ago I would not have thought this was possible. But I just shook hands with the president today. I just explained my science-fair project to Barack Obama, and that’s because I didn’t let people stop me.”

It’s a message she hopes all young Black men and women in STEM will listen to.

March 23, 2015March 23, 2015

The Digital Age May Not Be the Utopia Millennials Thought It Would Be

Millennials are the generation of racially accepting, diverse, progressives who are obsessed with technology and only have wonderful things to gain from the digital age.

That’s the idea of the younger generation that has been packaged, pitched and sold for years.

It’s also a perception that may not be as accurate as it initially seemed.

A report published by Al Jazeera proved that millennials aren’t as progressive as they claim to be and now Kentucky journalism professor David R. Wheeler is suggesting that the digital age has a clear message for the young people in its workforce.

“Drop dead.”

That’s what Wheeler says Silicon Valley is really telling millennials.

For years, the technology industry has been perceived as a saving grace for graduates and those who want to be CEOs rather than employees.

Young mobile app developers have high hopes of becoming the next emerging tech billionaires and the unemployment troubles for the younger generation will soon be nonexistent. Right?

Not quite.

“Silicon Valley is tossing millennials aside like yesterday’s laptop,” Wheeler writes in a blog post for CNN.

He lists some troubling and true statistics.

“But despite falling unemployment, college grads age 22 to 27 are stuck in low-paying jobs that don’t even require a college degree,” he adds. “The percentage of young people languishing in low-skill, low-paying jobs is 44 percent, a 20-year high.”

He adds that only 36 percent of college graduates are even working jobs with salaries of at least $45,000.

After adjusting for inflation, it marks a severe decline from the 1990s.

Statistics also revealed that more and more graduates are getting paid less than $25,000, and other studies suggest the younger generation is rarely given the benefits expected from full-time employment.

These numbers aren’t new. In the past, they have been used to suggest that the labor market is more competitive than ever and reveal the lack of value placed on young hires fresh out of college.

That’s always where Silicon Valley promised to be different.

Where other industries failed to value young, innovative minds, the world of tech was supposed to cherish them.

Wheeler says that’s not what’s happening.

The younger generation is not rushing off to become tech entrepreneurs or successful app developers, although that’s what their dreams may have been.

The rapidly growing digital age is actually forcing many young workers into “sharing-economy jobs.”

“The sharing-economy jobs are even worse than minimum wage jobs because they offer no stability or protections for workers,” Wheeler writes. “Sharing-economy jobs aren’t really jobs at all; they’re freelance gigs.”

Gigs like becoming Uber drivers.

Gigs where the major corporation receives the greatest economic benefit from a young worker’s service while the actual driver pulls in shockingly low amounts of revenue.

There are also those long-standing concerns with technology snatching jobs from blue collar workers.

It all points to a bleak reality of more high-tech jobs for some, while many current middle-class workers would be out of work.

It’s certainly something to consider and all the more reason why technological progression must come with balance and caution.

Tech’s limitations should also be defined by ethics and not merely by what is technologically and scientifically possible.

At the same time, one must understand that as time passes, certain jobs will certainly be replaced as other new types of jobs grow in demand.

Hey, at one point men and women were being paid to set up the pins at bowling alleys rather than having machines take over and reset the game in a matter of seconds.

When it comes to a happy relationship between tech and the middle class, Silicon Valley and all those involved will have to work hard to maintain a certain level of economic and ethical balance.

March 20, 2015March 20, 2015

The Childhood Disappointments of a Young African Girl Give Birth to the Super-Powered Black Teen Hero of the Future

At some point, nearly every child had dreams of being a superhero.

The most compelling conversations on the playground centered around what superpower would be the coolest to have or debating the end result of an epic Superman versus Batman battle.

It was action and fantasy that drove most children to have superhero-filled dreams.

For Milumbe Haimbe, that wasn’t the case.

Haimbe also shared a deep desire to become a superhero, but it wasn’t about a cool costume or unleashing vengeance on the evil villains of elementary school.

It was about the possibility of creating and defending a world of peace, a world of economic equality, a world free of stress and depression. She wanted to be the heroine who created a world that was essentially the exact opposite from that of her own.

“I grew up in Zambia in the 1980s, an era that marked the beginning of the country’s worst economic crisis,” she wrote in a special post for CNN. “My childhood memories are of a prolonged state of emergency that was characterized by acute food shortages and an economic decline where the basic needs of the average Zambian family were barely met.”

That very real universe that created Haimbe’s reality left her, her siblings and her close friends working to develop an extraterrestrial language that might be able to reach some of the most popular superheroes of the time.

“Our goal was to send an SOS out to the superheroes in the galaxies,” she added.”…[P]erhaps a spaceship would come down to Earth to save us from our dreary lives and carry us into outer space.”

With so many popular heroic figures to choose from, Haimbe had no idea if it would be Superwoman or the Incredible Hulk rescuing her and her siblings from their “dreary lives.”

What she did know was that the hero would probably be a male and would definitely be white.

At least that’s what mainstream America would want her to think.

The creative spirit inside her grew into an impassioned woman who knew it was about time that younger women in Africa had a young, Black super-powered girl to aspire to be like some day.

So Haimbe created Ananiya.

Ananiya is a 17-year-old girl who joined a fictional resistance at the age of 13 in Haimbe’s graphic novel “The Revolutionist.”

“The Revolutionist” is still described by Haimbe as a “work in progress.”

The series will follow Ananiya as she navigates the complexities of a distant future that is still far too much like the past.

“As the masses are thrust into a state of emergency, Ananiya’s world is characterized by curfews police raids, censorship and propaganda,” Haimbe continues. “Will the revolution overcome? With this literary and visual offering, I describe a world that is both like — and at the same time very much unlike — our own. As a young, Black female, my protagonist, Ananiya, is the most unlikely hero for the revolution.”

March 18, 2015March 18, 2015

New Technology Could Make Communicating With Deaf-Blind People as Easy as Texting

It’s easy for conversations about advancing technologies to become oversaturated with discussions of new smartwatches or weighing the pros and cons of the latest cellphones.

The true heroes of technology, however, have always been the innovative creators who make strides in the medical field, revolutionize communication or help create a better understanding of the world around us.

That’s what makes the Mobile Lorm Glove from the Design Research Lab something truly worth getting excited about.

The lab, located at the Berlin University of the Arts, is continuing to develop the Mobile Lorm Glove, a comfortable glove that may forever revolutionize communication for the deaf-blind community.

The basic purpose of the glove is to translate text into a tactile alphabet known as Lorm that deaf-blind people frequently use to communicate with people around them.

In that sense, it is a new-age translator. An impressive feat, but not necessarily adding up to the “revolutionary” claims.

It’s the glove’s implications, however, that are truly groundbreaking.

The glove isn’t just a way for a deaf-blind person to talk to their friends without them having to learn Lorm. It’s a way to expand their freedom, social circles and even their economic opportunities.

The glove mocks the very barriers that used to be frighteningly hard to surpass without such technology — the barriers that once capped a deaf-blind person’s access to the rest of the world.

Pressure sensors on the glove create a sensation of touch on a person’s hand so they can feel the same sensations they would get if someone who understood Lorm was trying to communicate with them.

Since the glove can decode text messages and emails as well, it also makes it possible for deaf-blind people to have interactions with people who aren’t standing right next to them. This means they can receive text messages from a friend, respond to business emails and even dive head first into the digital comedy that rules Twitter.

The glove even comes with features that are similar to auto-correct.

The BBC explains that in Lorm, the letter ‘S’ would be represented by drawing a circle in one’s hand. If the user accidentally draws a square or triangle instead, the glove still recognizes an ‘S’ as the closest letter.

The glove will also allow its wearer to control how quickly the messages are translated in Lorm. So a younger person who may not be efficient in Lorm just yet could choose a slower pace while an adult who has communicated via Lorm for their entire life can use a faster pace.

These features alone make the glove a truly admirable technological feat, but researchers went a step further.

The glove could actually become a key tool for deaf-blind children in school.

“It supports mobile communication over distance… and it enables parallel one-to-many communication, which is especially helpful in school and other learning contexts,” a report by the Design Research Lab explains.

This means a teacher could send messages to an entire class of deaf-blind students rather than be forced to only use one-on-one communication.

Researchers say the glove is still considered a prototype, but based on its early stages, the glove could be one of the greatest technological achievements and finally create a convenient method of communication that will allow deaf-blind people to socialize more, take on certain careers and not feel quite as closed off from the world around them.