Tech Tips: @Anjuan @BrothaTech @TatianaKing

Tech evangelist BrothaTech recently appeared in a YouTube interview with technology translator Anjuan Simmons.  Both are men of color within the technology space that I highly respect and it's great to see them collaborating on a project. While I have yet to meet Anjuan in person, we've interacted on a variety of social platforms such as Google+ about highly intellectual topics such as the power of Mountain Dew. I ran into BrothaTech at last year's Blogging While Brown convention. He's also known for having some of the most adorable kids on the planet. 

Check out Anjuan and BrothaTech in the video below! In BrothaTech's words: "Just a few of our subjects included where my tech interest came from, diversity in technology, my “BrothaTech” brand, iOS 7, my family, and the XBox One versus the PS4."

Anjuan has a series of other videos on his website with other luminaries within the tech space - here is one with Tatiana King, creator of Love At 1st Byte. Tatiana is my go-to resource for coverage via twitter during live events. Check out the interview with Anjuan and Tatiana below!

Check them out and let them know that Shareef sent you!

Send Your Clones to Conferences Far and Wide

During the weekend of June 21st, two conferences occurred - Blogging While Brown in Harlem, NY and Netroots Nation in San Jose, CA. These are both conferences that cover issues that I am interested in, and I wish I could clone myself and go to both!

 I selected Blogging While Brown, but unfortunately I had to cancel due to a business obligation.  So here I was - two conferences going on and I wasn't able to go to either.  I was pretty pissed. The only solution was to use Twitter to follow the conference and essentially clone myself so that I could be in three places at the same time.

Technology to the rescue!  I used Tweetdeck  to watch both hashtags from the conference (#BWBNYC and #NN13). I also made sure to set up a separate filter for each hashtag and the word "question". This enabled me to watch for questions that people asked (so I could ask follow up questions), as well as find when questions were being thrown out to Twitter community to answer.  

@GetUpStandUp2 The panel is currently taking questions, use #colorofed to engage with the panel and ask your question #nn13

— Dacia (@daciatakesnote) June 22, 2013

RT @ShareefJackson: @ljoywilliams what about kids in school now? How to balance that with long term reform? #colorofed #nn13

— Imani ABL (@AngryBlackLady) June 22, 2013

.@ShareefJackson gets a remote shout-out for his question. https://t.co/Z6g6FX4Lnr Whoop whoop! #TWiB #colorofed #NN13

— Imani ABL (@AngryBlackLady) June 22, 2013

I was able to interact with conference attendees so often that some people actually thought I was at the conference! My little Shareef clones attended the conferences and people actually mistook them for me! Check out the following tweets.

@ShareefJackson You're sooo making me wish I were at #BWBNYC! Will have to live vicariously through your TL. ;)

— Simply Debi (@SimplyDivaland) June 22, 2013

@shareefjackson Quiet as it's kept...I was definitely looking for you at #bwbnyc until I saw that you aren't actually here......

— Lucelia Cherie (@LuceliaCherie) June 22, 2013

@shareefjackson Totally understand. You were just so present that I was literally looking around the room for you! :) Another time!

— Lucelia Cherie (@LuceliaCherie) June 22, 2013

@ShareefJackson Hi! Still at #bwbnyc? If so, I'd love to meet.

— Kelly Virella (@kvirella) June 22, 2013

@ShareefJackson oh no! Well let's keep in touch on Twitter. I'm very interested in science writing.

— Kelly Virella (@kvirella) June 22, 2013

Good luck with cloning yourself and attending conferences from afar!

3D Printing: Making Prosthetics at Home

3D printers from companies like Makerbot are helping to bring home the dream of printing our own 3D objects. They currently are out of range for most consumers at about $2000, but this price will come down in a matter of time.  Unfortunately, this amazing technology only makes the news when it is used negatively, like printing guns to make political points. 

NPR has a positive story about using 3D printing technology to help children born without hands.  The video below shows a cute example of the final result.

Richard Van As, a carpenter who mangled his hand in a work accident, and Ivan Owen, a creator of bendable puppet hands, put their minds together to create a crude version of a mechanical hand prosthetic. After that, the article states:

He emailed MakerBot, a firm that makes 3-D printing equipment, to see if the company would help out. It did, offering both Owen and Van As a free 3-D printer. "Then there was no stopping us," Van As says.

What had previously taken the pair a week's time or more — milling finger pieces, adjusting and tweaking parts — now took 20 minutes to redesign, print and test.

They posted the design and instructions for Robohand on Thingiverse, a website for sharing digital designs. Anyone can download the plans and — with a 3-D printer and about $150 in parts — make a hand.

Thingiverse is a great example of using a social networking site to spread innovative ideas across the world. Props to Makerbot for giving the duo a free $2000 printer to help realize the dream. Such positive uses of technology should be celebrated and given as much news as negative ones. Especially since we're going to all need 3D printers once light sabers become all the rage, as shown in the video below.

This post also appears on TWIB.

Smithsonian #TimeNav: Back Seat Drivers

The Smithsonian National Air and Space museum is unveiling a new exhibit entitled Time & Navigation: The Untold Story of Getting From Here to There. The exhibit will focus on navigators - the folks that served as the back seat drivers for many famous pilots, drivers, captains, and others. Exhibits from famous names such as sea Captain Charles Wilkes and pilot Charles Lindbergh will be featured, as well as Mariner 10, the first spacecraft to reach Mercury.

An excerpt from the Smithsonian blog reads as follows:​

Today, the navigator as a crew member has largely disappeared from most commercial and military long-distance operations, replaced by microprocessors in the form of GPS and inertial navigation systems, but from the 1930s to the 1980s, the navigator was an essential crewmember on many long-distance commercial and military flights.

Be sure to follow my on Twitter (@ShareefJackson) as I will be live tweeting the media preview this morning from 9am - 11am EST.​ I'll be using the hashtag #TimeNav. 

The exhibit will open to the public on Friday, April 12th - make sure to check it out next time you're in DC!

Houston, We Have A Shareef

​I'm in Houston, and I'll be reporting live from another one of my favorite events - NASA social! As usual, I'll be tweeting from @ShareefJackson using the #NASASocial hashtag - check it out!​  I'll bring the latest news even though I'm surrounded by the wonders of Whataburgers and various BBQ places. I even drove past a place named Hot Biscuit ... hmmm ...

This time, I'll get to speak with the crew of Expedition 36, who will be heading up the International Space Station in May of 2013 via the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Image above: Pictured on the front row are Expedition 36 Commander Pavel Vinogradov (left) and Flight Engineer Fyodor Yurchikhin. Pictured from the left (back row) are Flight Engineers Alexander Misurkin, Chris Cassidy, Luca Parmitano and Karen Nyberg. Photo credit: NASA

I'll also get a behind the scenes view of Johnson Space Center, including Mission Control and the Robonaut lab. There are autonomous robots that help NASA with many tasks, including one on the space station itself!

Mission Control is where they coordinate flights once they have been launched, and of course we all know "Houston, We Have A Problem"

​Be sure to follow me on Twitter for the latest updates!