I’ll be honest: this is the first time I’ve ever used the word zettabyte. I’ve heard of petabytes and even exabytes, but zettabytes are a whole new level of bytes. If a zettabyte is beyond your comprehension, too, it’s essentially one billion trillion bytes: a 1 with 21 zeros at the end. To put that into perspective, one exabyte — which equals 1/1000 of a zettabyte or 1 million gigabytes — is roughly equivalent to the capacity of 5.1 million computer hard drives, or all the hard drives in Minnesota.

From Nick Bilton’s The American Diet: 34 Gigabytes a Day

I think niche browsers are a bad idea to start with. Browsers are commodities. For most computer users, their browser of choice is the one that came installed by default on their computer. Inertia, technophobia, and a lack of pressing need means they just use what’s there. Even getting advanced computer users to switch browsers requires a compelling reason to do so. Flock, for example, still isn’t particularly mainstream, despite it’s brilliant integration of services like MySpace and Facebook.

Ultimately, all anyone needs — dare I say wants — a browser to do is display whatever content she or he is trying to view, display it quickly, display it well, and not crash with any sort of regularity.

But let’s say Blackbird is an even more brilliant reworking of what is, in my opinion, the world’s greatest browser. Your problem is still one of positioning. African Americans Are. Too. Diverse. To. Be. A. Single. Market. Niche.

You would think black people would know this better than anyone. Though perhaps my assumption is just as faulty as yours. Maybe all 36 million of us really are interested in the same dozen or so sites, but I doubt it.

The problem with this sort of broad-based ethnic marketing — and I’ll add to that gender marketing — is that it tries to fit this wide range of ages, incomes, regions, nationalities, religious affiliations, and races* into this single, one-size-doesn’t-really-fit-all box.

What speaks to me will not speak to my senior-citizen parents. Gospel-themed anything will not work for my cousin who wasn’t raised in the church and converted to Islam a decade ago. Injecting Harriet Tubman or Martin Luther King into the conversation won’t resonate with Black Caribbean or African immigrants who came here by choice, some not all that long ago. Hell, there are even subtle differences of interest and experience between black folks who went to HBCUs and predominantly white universities.

In other words, what you think is of interest to African Americans probably isn’t of interest to most of us. What’s more, the most techno-literate black folks — you know, those computer users who are sophisticated enough to download and install another browser — already know how to use Firefox and Google. Some of us even use Macs. And while I wish y’all success, the early buzz indicates that almost nobody, not even the black folks, are digging this browser.

Love,

Tiffany

Elsewhere

• Blackbird Is A Custom Browser For African Americans Built On Top Of Mozilla on TechCrunch.com
• Blackbird, The First Web Browser for African-Americans by Karsh on BlackGayBlogger.com
• Blackbird: The African-American Web Browser from GreasyGuide.com
• Blackbird: The African American Web Browser and Philanthropy on the Web From Blog Around Harlem
• Blackbird: I was not waiting for this moment to arise by Cecily

*P.S.: I say “races,” even though I’m talking about black folks, because in the U.S., black ancestry legally and usually culturally means you’re racially black. This applies even if you are of mixed parentage, as Malcolm Gladwell is, or have a non-black grandparent, such as Ming and Aoki Lee (Russell Simmons and Kimora Lee’s daughters).

* P.P.S.: This is also some bullsh*t

From the Future of Web Apps 2008 conference.

I’ve been thinking lately about a dream candidate for my nerd habits, my nerdy business, and the way I live my nerdy life. Regardless of party affiliation, if you’re running for an office from as small as city council all the way up to president, if you hit on any/all of these things, you just might get my vote.

What’s on Haughey’s wish list?

• Broadband everywhere.
• An emphasis on science in schools.
• Early voting by mail
• An overhaul to our transportation and energy infrastructures

Haughey makes more points, and I agree with all of them. A fabulous, thought-provoking read for this election season.

When people complain about a Web 2.0 app or service, the response is often “build it yourself.” The problem is that most of us in the world can’t afford to start up a company, because the jobs that pay the bills take up too much time. There’s a luxury in having enough money put away that you can start a company, and a luxury in being able to start one while you keep a day job that doesn’t take up too much time and energy on top of family.

I was reminded of this Christmas day when showing my cousin a camera phone photo that I captured and uploaded from a beach in Anguilla on my brand new iPod Touch. I wasn’t trying to show off as much as I was trying to share a beautiful photo.

Her comment — something about “rich people” and I ain’t rich — stung. But it reminded me just how well-off I actually am compared to most Americans in general, and most Black Americans in particular.

How does this translate to tech? Part of creating relevant tools is understanding the context in which they will be used and the ways in which people may bend them to suit their circumstances. Money is a big factor in most peoples’ circumstances. It’s the difference between the free phone and a quad-band GSM smartphone with a camera, and WiFi capabilities. It’s the difference between an entry-level Windows machine and anything Apple. It’s having the internet on your phone and not. In other words, it’s everything. And we need to be careful not to lose sight of this.

What with the smoking ban and the fact that Hooters (etc.) is not everywhere, you cannot rely on the venue alone to make sure women don’t turn up. The best way is to let them turn up and then act like a complete arse to make sure they don’t come back. This takes some work. The first way to do it is to make sure you make some offensive assumptions. They are there to accompany their boyfriend or husband. They are new and inexperienced.

Just brilliant. [Via Molly]

So Joel wrote about it, and the comments went straight to typical. Which, of course, means I had to write the Standard Defense Post. The problem is that BoingBoing doesn’t guarantee prompt approval of comments unless you are a registered user and I am over the whole “Registering for Sites I Don’t Often Visit” thing. In other words, there’s a good chance my sh*t is and will forever be trapped in moderation hell. I’m reposting it here for your enjoyment.

I’m too lazy to create an account, especially since this will probably be one of three comments I will ever post here.

Anyhow: Darla Mack and Craig Nulan could not make it and were not on the panel. Cheryl Coward (www.cherylcoward.com) and I (Tiffany B. Brown, www.tiffanybbrown.com) filled in for them at the last minute.

That said @David Carroll: The question isn’t just why aren’t more black people blogging about tech. Actually, I’d argue that there are plenty of us doing just that. The better question — one I’m disappointed we didn’t ask — is Why do we assume that there are no black people blogging about tech?

That’s an issue of perception, geek culture, race, gender and class privilege. One illustrative point: why are Madden and NBA Live fans not conceived of as Gamer Geeks in the same way that players of Final Fantasy or WoW are?

The other point (And why does this even need explaining?) is that the people who are using the produts and tools aren’t involved in creating them. What constraints on people’s income, living situation, culture, etc. are we just completely missing out on because they’re not at the table?

No, that’s not specifically a black thing, but it is something that most people who are not some kind of minority (used in the sociological sense, not the numbers sense) tend not to get. And it’s those same issues that minorities tend to blog about.

The Kremlin piece starts about 6 minutes and 17 seconds into the show [MP3 download].

And you can find the T-shirt in the photo accompanying the post on CafePress.com.

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