Monday, November 23, 2009

Five tech gift suggestions on Today in two minutes and twenty-six seconds:



{and in under five seconds: Kindle for readers, Ooma free phone calls in US, Kodak Zi8 for portable HD video, Jawbone PRIME for quiet calls, Samsung LCD TV for couch potatoes}

Friday, October 30, 2009

Is using wifi safe? Yesterday's Today Show segment shows how easy it is to sniff unsecured packets of data. I offered a few tips but wasn't able to convey that the odds of something bad happening when using unsecured wifi are very low. Case in point, I share my home wifi.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

How to get smarter about social media? Some recommendations from the NAMIC conference panel with Kay Madati, Laela Sturdy, Denmark West:
Forgot to mention my appearance on Oprah last week - her favorite new gadgets.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Oprah's new favorite jeans + gadgets? See this Thursday.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Below are three biographies of varying length.

Also, in case it is helpful, Wasow rhymes with Picasso (or, if you know your African geography, Burkina Faso).

One-hundred word bio:

Omar Wasow, 38, is a Ph.D. candidate in African American studies and Government at Harvard. His research focuses on race and politics, particularly in relation to education and crime. In addition, Omar is the co-founder and strategic advisor to BlackPlanet.com, a social network he helped grow to over three million users a month. Omar also works to demystify technology through regular TV and radio segments. In 2003, he helped found a K-8 charter school in Brooklyn. He is a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the Aspen Institute’s Henry Crown Fellowship. He can be reached at owasow at gmail dot com.

Short bio:

Omar Wasow, 38, is a Ph.D. candidate in African American studies and Government at Harvard. In addition to his graduate work, Omar is the co-founder of BlackPlanet.com and an on-air technology analyst. Under Omar’s leadership BlackPlanet.com became the leading site for African Americans, reaching over three million people a month. Omar also works to demystify technology issues through regular TV and radio segments on shows like NBC's Today, CNN's American Morning and public radio's Tavis Smiley show. Similarly, Omar tutored Oprah Winfrey in her first exploration of the Net in the 12-part series 'Oprah Goes Online'.

In 1999, as a result of his active participation in a number of social issues, particularly the charter school movement, Omar was selected to be a fellow in the Rockefeller Foundation's Next Generation Leadership program. In fall 2003, a K-8 charter school that Omar helped found opened in his hometown of Brooklyn. In 2007, in recognition of the promise of his academic research, the National Science Foundation selected him for a Graduate Research Fellowship. Most recently, the Aspen Institute selected him for their Henry Crown Fellowship that recognizes emerging leaders. He received his BA in Race and Ethnic Relations from Stanford University. He can be reached at owasow at gmail dot com.

Long bio:

Omar Wasow, 38, is a Ph.D. candidate in African American studies and Government at Harvard. In addition to his graduate work, Omar is the co-founder of BlackPlanet.com and an on-air technology analyst. Under Omar’s leadership BlackPlanet.com became the leading site for African Americans, reaching over three million people a month. Omar also works to demystify technology issues through regular TV and radio segments on NBC's Today Show, CNN's American Morning and public radio's Tavis Smiley Show. Similarly, Omar tutored Oprah Winfrey in her first exploration of the Net in the 12-part series 'Oprah Goes Online'.

Omar's success as a credible and friendly guide to the Internet led Newsweek to name him one of the "fifty most influential people to watch in cyberspace," and People magazine to call him the "Sexiest Internet Executive." Successful Meetings Magazine named him one of the "21 Top Speakers for the 21st Century."

In 1999, as a result of his active participation in a number of social issues, particularly the charter school movement, Omar was selected to be a fellow in the Rockefeller Foundation's Next Generation Leadership program. In fall 2003, a K-8 charter school that Omar helped found opened in his hometown of Brooklyn. In 2007, in recognition of the promise of his academic research, the National Science Foundation selected him for a Graduate Research Fellowship. Most recently, the Aspen Institute selected him for their Henry Crown Fellowship that recognizes emerging leaders. He received his BA in Race and Ethnic Relations from Stanford University. He can be reached at owasow at gmail dot com.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Department of Shameless Self Promotion: 90 seconds of fall tech trends on Today.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

For those at my TS2 Keynote, below are the 10 projects for integrating social media and face-to-face marketing:

  1. Read Clara Shih’s The Facebook Era or the free ENGAGEMENTdb report
  2. Set-up a Twitter account, use and promote a hashtag, get to 100 followers
  3. Post status updates to your personal facebook account every day for two weeks or create a page for your event on facebook and get 200 fans through regular outreach
  4. Join an industry-related online community or electronic mailing list and post a question or comment
  5. Create and moderate an industry specific electronic mailing list where members can post questions, jobs, news items, comments. Try Yahoo Groups or Google Groups
  6. Start an industry-specific blog with news, comments and other info. Try WordPress.
  7. Build a private year-round community to for the folks who attend your conference or event. For something simple, try Ning. For a more sophisticated community, try a consultancy.
  8. Use Twitter to start a breaking news feed for your industry.
  9. Program or partner to develop an app for facebook, Force.com, iPhone, OpenSocial.
  10. Develop a multi-channel approach including services like social networks, blogs, wikis, apps, YouTube and a private branded online community to superserve your audience.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Tavis Smiley and I discuss the evolution of smartphones and growing competition.

Monday, May 18, 2009

In the fight between Google and WolframAlpha, who's Bambi and who is Godzilla? Tavis Smiley and I debated on his show.

Labels:

Thursday, May 07, 2009

The Kindle is great for a curated reading experience but a real pain if you're one of those crazy people who wants to read your own documents or interact with readers and authors. For more of my beef, see Three Problems with the New Kindle.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

TV Appearances:

Here is a a 90-second clip with highlights of various TV appearances:
Tavis Smiley and I discuss the hype and substance of Twitter on his public radio show.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Tony Cox of NPR's News & Notes interviewed me and another guest about the "Obama Effect On Social Media".

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Monday, November 24, 2008

Frank Davies at the San Jose Mercury News gives my Internet President essay a shout out.

Unfortunately, according to political columnist Dick Polman at the Philadelphia Inquirer, I'm "a tad pie-eyed."

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Check out my article on The Root addressing how Obama became our first internet President.

Friday, May 23, 2008

Headshots:

A handful of headshots can be viewed in this gallery. Higher resolution versions can be viewed by mousing-over an image and selecting one of the different "Photo Sizes" from the pop-up menu. "Original" is the highest resolution format though, be forewarned, the images are very large and range from two-to-four megabytes, each. Here is an example of a shot in original format.

To download an image, Windows users should right-click on the photo and Mac users should CTRL-click.
Some press clips:

Below are links to some articles profiling Omar:
- Stanford Alumni Magazine, BlackPlanet’s Universe, March 2004
- New York Times, Entrepreneur Takes Black-Oriented Site Out of Red, November 2002
- New York Times, Silicon Alley’s Philosopher-Prince, May 2001

To download an article Windows users can right-click on one of the above links and Mac users can CTRL-click. Also, if you're curious, check out this additional random assortment of articles from Fast Company, The Village Voice, Entrepreneur, More Village Voice, The Daily News, Wired, The Industry Standard, It's All Good, Wikipedia,
Oprah, and Reason.