By Jabari Johnson, BlackWeb20.com

Microsoft and Sony have recently slashed the prices of their gaming systems and now Nintendo has done the same with its popular Wii console. Nintendo is lowering the price of the Wii by $50 to $199.99. “Wii has reached more video game players than any game system before because it attracts everyone—both men and women, and people of all ages,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. Read the rest of this entry »

By Sherri L. Smith, BlackWeb20.com

Since the release of the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972, the console has been king in the world of video games. As the technological capabilities of what CPUs and game developers could do increased, a cold war of game consoles began. Many consoles were rendered obsolete or failed to bring in the dollars (Atari 2600, TurboGrafx-16, and Sega Dreamcast we hardly knew ye) were issued a one way ticket to the landfill. Only three companies and their respective console survived the clamor. Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft have been locked in a nine year battle for console supremacy. Read the rest of this entry »

The Microsoft Corp., under fire for juxtaposing a White man’s head on the body of a Black man in an advertisement targeting a Polish audience, apologized Wednesday, saying the ad was being yanked. The original ad showed the photo of three smiling people – a White woman, Black man and an Asian man – sitting at a conference table. However, the same photo appeared on the Web site of Microsoft’s Polish business unit – but the head of the Black man had been replaced with that of a White man. Strangely, whoever Photoshopped the head apparently forgot to change the color of the hand. “We are looking into the details of this situation,” Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos said in a statement Tuesday. “We apologize and are in the process of pulling down the image.”

U.S. Students Lag in Math and Science
Children in the United States lag behind those of other developed nations when it comes to their abilities in math and science, the U.S. Education Department found in yet another national study. In mathematics, American 15-year-olds were in the bottom quarter of countries – including Finland, China and Estonia – compared with nations in the Organization for Economic Development. While math scores of foreign students improved over a three-year period, those of U.S. students remained the same, the department’s National Center for Education Statistics found. In science, the United States falls behind countries such as Canada, Japan and the Czech Republic. “We are lagging the rest of the world, and we are lagging it in pretty substantial ways,” said Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “I think we have become complacent. We’ve sort of lost our way.” One of the problems, Duncan says, is the difficulty in finding good teachers. “I think we should pay math and science teachers a lot more money. We pay everybody the same,” he said. “We have areas of critical need – math, science, foreign language, special education in some places. I think we need to pay a premium for that.”

Microsoft Ad Racist
In a move that looks just plain racist, Microsoft photoshopped a Black man’s head out of one of its ads targeting the Polish market and put an awkward-looking head of a smiling White man on his shoulders, presumably to make the ad more palatable to Polish people, bnet.com reports. Apparently Microsoft prepared two web sites touting its IT infrastructure software, benet.com reports. One was in English and one in Polish. “The English one featured the usual politically correct rainbow coalition of smiling everymen: A White woman, a Black man and an Asian man,” according to bnet.com. “The Polish site, however, featured a badly edited [W]hite man’s head sitting on top of the shirt collar of the man who was [B]lack in the English ad. Microsoft has issued an apology, according to bnet.com.

By Robin Caldwell, BlackWeb20.com

Everyone should know the words to Common’s I Use to Love Her and if you don’t you can view them everyday, if not wear them, with Microsoft’s Softwear clothing line. Common designed several of the shirts and is the spokesperson for the new line of gear inspired in part by an era when both hip hop and PC technology were renegade and new. Read the rest of this entry »

By Angela Benton, BlackWeb20.com

Are you a MAC or a PC?  Are reading this list you’ll surely be a PC:

1.  Get Productive

Get things done quicker and easier with new features like HomeGroup, Jump Lists, the all new TaskBar, and reduced interruptions from those pesky Windows Update pop-up boxes.  Jump Lists are a quick way to access files you’ve recently used, just right-click any icon in your taskbar.  Jump Lists help you access what you need quick but HomeGroup will surely save you hours of time espeially if you have multiple computers in your home.  Essentially HomeGroup is sharing files across the PCs and other devices (like printers or scanners) just as if they all shared the same hard drive.  To only will it be easier to print from any computer with HomeGroups you won’t have to worry about an external hard drive or searching through multiple computers for what you need.

2.  Embrace the Cool Factor

Many of the interface features that have many people in love with Apple products are coming to Windows 7.  Not only is there a large Task Bar (mentioned above) you’ll also fall in love with Windows Touch which is like your iPod Touch or iPhone but larger.

Need I say more?

Read the rest of this entry »

Obama plans to meet with U.S. governors.  President-elect Barack Obama plans to sit down with the nation’s governors next week to hear about their financial woes. As the national economic crisis is ravaging state budgets, Obama, Vice President-elect Joe Biden and the governors will meet in Philadelphia Tuesday during a conference at Independence Hall sponsored by the National Governors Association. Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas told The Philadelphia Inquirer that 40 governors and governors-elect planned to attend. Many states are facing budget crunches because of the sluggish economy and are calling on the federal government to develop an economic stimulus package that would support road, bridges and energy projects and protect states from rising Medicaid costs, the Inquirer said. Economists have said they think aid to state and local governments should play a key role in any stimulus package because the states have less borrowing authority than the federal government and are more adversely affected by an economic downturn. Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell said Obama reached out to the governors association for opinions on the stimulus package. “Revitalizing infrastructure is the best economic stimulus you can get,” he said. “Unlike the bailout, it creates hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of good-paying jobs that can’t be outsourced.”

Tech jobs are still out there. Despite our nation’s struggling economy, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that more than 300,000 technology-related jobs remain unfilled for lack of qualified workers. Only 5 percent of American college undergraduates today are pursing degrees in science or engineering, compared with 42 percent of university students in other countries like China and India, federal statistics show. As a response to these statistics, Microsoft, in conjunction with the Oscar de la Hoya Foundation, created a technology competition to inspire teens and young adults to get excited about technology-related careers. They also will build online communities through non-profit technology training programs. The winning teams belong to the Brotherhood Crusade, the Oscar de la Hoya Foundation, and the Boys and Girls Club of East LA They will participate with Oscar de la Hoya in a special lunch and award ceremony that will take place at the Boys and Girls Club in Venice, Calif., on Monday, Dec. 1.