evernote? devonthink pro (mac)?

sorry...i don't know what goes on in the world of linux...but the above two help me to organize all the web pages, research, and clippings that i use to write.

this is DEFINITELY off topic...but i have to say that while i used to come to BBG for the gadgets, now i look forward to reading the comedic insanity that is John Brownlee and how his style has influenced the entire site.

Good move, guys - thanks for making gadgets interesting again.

cosign with #3...Target sells a set of these for 12 bux.

Black Tech Bloggers are just the tip of the iceberg. The problem with their lack of visibility is the problem with Black blogs overall. Because they properly conflate their online existence with their offline social status, they are condemned to "niche" status.

This isn't just a social phenomenon (or homophily, if you will) - it's not just about "who links to whom". Try googling for "Black tech blogger"* or even better, google for "(Black OR African*American) blog". The web's limitations as a discursive medium come to the fore - how do you disambiguate "Black" (culture) and "Black" color?

But even more interesting to me is the Web's SYMBOLIC deficit...the normative cultural racial portrayal of online culture (the Web) is "color-blind" (as some commenters here have said) but it translates into "White" from my educated (and Black) perspective. For those playing along from home, that means that THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE WEB IS THE CONFLATION OF WHITE (offline) SOCIAL STATUS WITH ONLINE IDENTITY.

The internet is so overwhelmingly White - with all of the cultural, historical, social baggage attached - that POSITIVE mentions of Black culture bring out the "race trolls" with their snarky comments about "not seeing race". and let me be clear...Black people who say that they "don't see race" are just as confused as White people who say that. Facebook is the most popular Website out there right now...and has NO option for identifying yourself by race(!) or even searching for other POC.

Tech is even worse, culturally. When i go to tech conferences, i can count the number of Black people on one hand. The NSF has funded grants in the millions to rectify problems with racial and gender diversity in STEM, with middling-to-poor results in terms of representation. Research about race and technology follows the same ol' path; the stuff that gets published and promoted features deficit models - brown people "just trying to keep up". Public discourse about race and technology focuses on tech illiteracy and dropout rates.

It's unsurprising to me, that there are a surprising number of Black tech bloggers. Black people have had a contested relationship with technology since before the Internet - why WOULDN'T we be all over new tech like "white on rice?" we're just as American as the rest of y'all, with all that portends for our love affair with technoculture.

Thanks for giving this some light, joel. i'm sure it will end up with little or no OVERALL effect on content providers, but for readers like me, it's good to know that people like me write about stuff i like.

now...can you get some POC bloggers over at IO9??!? it's so white over there that i can't even read the damn thing...

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*today's search results are hyperinflated because of the attention garnered by the topic at SXSW (and on here), so the majority of links are not ABOUT black tech blogs..they're about Lynne's comments on the lack of Black tech blog attention, with few links to any of the blogs Lynne or Joel mentioned

yeah..but will there be options for HBCU bands like Florida A&M or Grambling? think "drumline"...i'd buy that (and a Wii, of course) in a hot minute!

^sidb

it reads fast because of pacing..definitely not a lightweight book (based on my reading of Sun of Suns).

Good review, Cory. I just finished "Sun of Suns" and it was a great read...look forward to the paperback version of Queen of Candesce as well. just one question...didn't KS already do a lo-grav swordfight between venera, aubri, and the kid in SofS?