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Mission Main Street Grants
Chase Financial and LinkedIn are awarding the Mission Main Street Grant to lucky, qualifying small businesses. Chase awards $2 million in the form of 20 small business grants at $100,000 each. The deadline has passed for this year, but for more information on next year’s application process visit Missionmainstreetgrants.com.
This month, Facebook released its new product “Moments” during a time when online privacy has come under attack.
“If you’re unfamiliar, ‘Moments’ is one of Facebook’s sister apps for mobile devices. It works by burrowing into all the photos on your camera, and sorting them into discrete temporal events – that party, that bike trip, that office function – to create ‘Moments.’ The app then tags everyone it recognizes by comparing the faces in the photos to existing Facebook friends (your ‘social graph’ in tech parlance), and invites you to share the resulting ‘Moment’ with everyone tagged in the photo,” reports Jeff John Roberts for Fortune.
This feature will change how everything works for online Facebook users. Because of the constant debate over privacy and the lack of strong laws that prevent social media sites and websites from tracking your location and creating ads suited to you, this feature will not be welcomed with open arms.
In fact, Canada and many European nations have banned the tag feature. Those same countries will more than likely reject the “Moments” feature. In Ireland, privacy watchdogs have noticed that the feature has only a default mode, meaning that users can’t decide to turn it on or off.
According to Slash Gear writer Chris Davies, “the social network claims more than 97-percent accuracy at identifying the right people, juggling in excess of 120m parameters as it builds 3D face models using a neural network. Last year, Facebook said it had trained the network using more than 4,000 people and in excess of four million images.”
The debate over the new app/feature is just getting started. “Moments” was released June 15 and it is available in the App Store and Google Play.
New technologies that help us detect illness and disease.
Source: www.disclosetv.com
“With our robots that can “draw” steel structures in 3D, we will print a bridge over water in the center of Amsterdam. We research and develop groundbreaking, cost-effective robotic technology with which we can 3D print beautiful, functional objects in almost any form. The ultimate test? Printing an intricate, ornate metal bridge for a special location to show what our robots and software, engineers, craftsmen and designers can do.”
Source: MX3D Bridge
On June 25, Eveline Pierre, founder and executive director of the Haitian Heritage Museum in Miami, along with co-founder Serge Rodriguez will host a regional tech summit presented by Miami Caribbean Code (MC2).
“MC2 is an empowering movement and event series with the goal of fostering a bridge between the fast-moving tech world, the Miami-Caribbean community and the Caribbean region. We recently kicked off MC2 with our inaugural Youth Tech Summit in April for local Miami-Caribbean youth and educators,” according to Arlice Nichole, editor of awomansworthonline.com.
The event will feature entrepreneurs and tech innovators looking to expand their networks and connect with like-minded individuals. This space will be used to discuss the future of technology, and there will also be a variety panels that will cover tech innovations, trends and recent developments in the tech industry.
One of the major features of the event is the Caribbean Tech and Innovation Awards that will highlight the achievements of tech leaders from the Caribbean.
There will be a fundraiser for future events and the Haitian Heritage Museum.
Scheduled speakers include founder and host of devLatino Jason Mazier, president of Belle Fleur Technologies Tia Dubuisson and Oracle principal technical consultant Perside Foster. For the full list of speakers, visit MC2’s website.
The Miami Caribbean Code summit will be held in the Miami Design District. There is still time to register. Go to MC2 for more info.
The New Green Arrow comic creative team, writer Benjamin Percy and artist Patrick Zircher, will take the character into familiar territory as they discuss the recent social movements in the United States.
After 41 issues of the New 52 Green Arrow, this new team wants to shake up the comic by having upcoming storylines echo events in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore as the character tackles tough social issues.
“I can’t go into much detail. I don’t want to give away any of the mysteries that keep readers reading. I will say that the first arc has a veiled, incendiary connection to what is happening in places like Ferguson and Baltimore. Green Arrow has a history as a political firebrand,” said Percy.
According to writer David Barnett from The Guardian, “Green Arrow certainly asked the tough questions back in the early ’70s, during an infamous run of stories written by Dennis O’Neil and drawn by Neal Adams, which actually appeared in the Green Lantern comic, though Green Arrow (secret identity: Oliver Queen) had joint billing.”
During that time, Green Arrow and Green Lantern dealt with segregation in America, rising drug usage, and with mental health all in an attempt to save a struggling book.
Percy goes on to say that “DC wanted me to bring that back to the series. This won’t dominate the book – but it will be an essential undercurrent. These are culturally, politically, environmentally dangerous times, and I’m taking a knife to the nerve of the moment. But even as I wrestle with these issues – some of them ripped from the headlines – I hope the story never comes across as editorial or preachy – just relevant. I think stories should raise questions, not answer them.”
DC Comics has been pushing the envelope lately in order to compete with Marvel. The character Midnighter is the first mainstream homosexual male to have a solo series, and recently there was a transgender character introduced in Batgirl.
If DC wants its books to be more reflective of the times, putting Green Arrow in the midst of a new social movement is a good call.
Google’s new gesture technology makes touch screen look obsolete.
Source: Vocativ
Penn State University engineering students in the Design Analysis Technology Advancement Laboratory are using the popular Oculus Rift Virtual Reality headset to enhance online learning.
The research was funded by the Center for Online Innovation in Learning Research Initiation Grant.
According to assistant professor of engineering design and industrial engineering Conrad Tucker, “online learning gives us huge opportunities in higher education. You can connect with more diverse people across greater distances. Online courses also limit you in some ways — there’s little immersive or tactile interaction, and sometimes it’s hard for students to engage with the material. IVR (immersive virtual reality) systems are a potential solution to that problem.”
The students, under the guidance of Tucker, created a demo of a virtual classroom with chairs, desks and a chalkboard. In addition to the headset, there is a glove that allows students to pick up, assemble and take apart virtual objects. In the case of the demo, a coffee pot was the subject.
“Moving forward, we’d love to work with students in other countries. Oculus Rift and other similar technologies allow you to sync your devices with others regardless of location and work on the same project. You can always Skype with people around the world, but you don’t get the same experience,” Tucker explains.
There are no limits to virtual reality in the classroom. Tucker is a strong advocate and believer that virtual reality is the future to online learning.
There hasn’t been a lot of good news about the fairly recent cryptocurrency Bitcoin. This new digital money has been recently connected with the illegal dark net site Silk Road. Because of its lack of regulations, cyber criminals have become attached to it. Even though the currency has a bad rap, many experts believe there is some good for it, and it could help the Black community.
Nicholas Colas Approves
To some financial wizards, Bitcoin will fill a void in the Black community that is currently occupied by pre-paid cards and payday loan services. According to Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist for the brokerage firm ConvergEx Group, believes that Bitcoin can replace these predatory services.
