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Calaxy wants creators to become more independent. As AFROTECH™ previously reported, Calaxy is the brainchild of tech entrepreneur Solo Ceesay and NBA star Spencer Dinwiddie. It serves as a social marketplace where users can create more meaningful experiences to engage their fans. With the added benefit of direct-to-consumer monetization, Calaxy eliminates the need to rely solely on brand and advertising deals. In 2022, Calaxy raised $26 million in a funding round led by The HBAR Foundation and Animoca Brands, with participation from Polygon. A portion of the funding was dedicated to expanding into the Web3 space. Calaxy has since developed “Worlds, ” allowing creators on the decentralized social marketplace to customize no-code apps. These apps enable creators to set up shops to sell subscriptions and digital experiences directly to fans and customers, otherwise known as the “population.” Additionally, creators can access wallets that store cryptocurrencies and NFTs, according to...
Last week, Apple announced plans to launch the latest product in their long-running line of budget-friendly phones . The device, which many consumers tentatively titled the iPhone SE 4, is expected to release later this month, with a presale kicking off on Feb. 21. The initial announcement came jam-packed with surprises and updates, leaving Apple loyalists with plenty of new specs to pour over. If you’re interested in learning more about the iPhone SE 4, we’ve got you covered, with a brief but thorough deep dive into the latest Apple announcements , and a look ahead at what we can expect from the actual smartphone hardware. What Is The iPhone SE 4? The iPhone SE series dates back to 2016, when Apple execs decided to offer a budget-friendly alternative to their standard numeric line of smart devices. Unlike its contemporaries, including the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, the SE would offer the latest in iOS services crammed into the outdated body of a previous model. While the device...
As Kendrick Lamar prepares to take center stage at Super Bowl LIX, alongside SZA, keep a close eye on the production. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Apple Music (@applemusic) It will all be spearheaded by Lamar’s agency pgLang, which embraces creators from authors, film and television directors, producers, musicians , and more who are aligned in the vision to produce “quality” and “unconventional concepts,” its website mentions. Currently, 30 individuals and five executives are on board the pglang team, and they will have a hand in Super Bowl LIX — held Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025, in New Orleans, LA — working on edits, production, stage design, sound tech, and more. During a press conference with Apple Music, the Super Bowl’s main sponsor since 2022, Lamar highlighted the importance of pgLang’s team, giving them their flowers and acknowledging that their collective efforts are what made it all possible for the show to reach its finish line. “Shout out to pgLang…That’s my...
Apple has a new app on the market. On Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025, the tech company introduced Apple Invites, which allows Apple device owners to create custom invitations to round up friends and family for any occasion, the tech giant shared in a news release. The app lets users invite friends from their contact list to an event, share the invite with a link, add photos to shared albums, and interact with an Apple Music playlist. “With Apple Invites, an event comes to life from the moment the invitation is created, and users can share lasting memories even after they get together,” Brent Chiu-Watson, Apple’s senior director of worldwide product marketing for apps and iCloud , said. “Apple Invites brings together capabilities our users already know and love across iPhone, iCloud, and Apple Music, making it easy to plan special events.” While an iCloud+ subscription, which starts at 99 cents, is required to create invites, anyone — including Android users — can RSVP and view information...
Black-owned edtech company Beanstack has secured another investment from Mark Cuban. The platform was launched in 2013 by Felix Brandon Lloyd (CEO) and Jordan Lloyd Booke, a husband-and-wife duo with extensive backgrounds in education. Booke served as Google’s head of K-12 education outreach from 2011 to 2013, while Lloyd worked as a teacher and dean at the SEED Public Charter School for seven years. The idea for Beanstack was sparked while they were reading to their 2-year-old son, inspiring them to focus on increasing literacy rates. “The early idea for our company came one night when [me and Jordan] were reading a book to our 2-year-old son and soon-to-be big brother,” Lloyd told AFROTECH™ in a previous interview. “He pointed to biracial characters on the page that looked like him and said, ‘That’s me, and that’s little sister.’ The power of reading was so clear. We immediately decided to put our backgrounds in education to work on a new business idea.” Beanstack initially...
TikTok will remain operational for at least another 75 days following an order from President Donald Trump. On Monday, Jan. 19, 2025, during his first day in office , Trump — who has the authority to delay the ban for up to 90 days — ordered the federal government to pause enforcing the law that would ban TikTok nationwide, according to Forbes. The move gives ByteDance, the China-based owner of TikTok, more time to sell a stake in the platform or reach a deal with Trump. After signing the executive order, Trump said he believes the U.S. is entitled to 50% of TikTok and warned China that blocking any deal he may make would be considered an act of “hostility” and lead him to impose tariffs ranging from 25% to 100%, per Forbes. On Sunday, Jan. 20, Trump had promised to sign an executive order on Monday rescinding the ban, prompting TikTok to restore service for its more than 170 million American users after it initially took the app dark the night before. STATEMENT FROM TIKTOK: In...
Apple is on the lookout for bright developers. The tech giant will soon be jumpstarting its 2025 Swift Student Challenge, which was created to empower rising developers, creators, and entrepreneurs. Its website mentions they will be tasked with scaling their ideas into an application leveraging tools that include Swift Playgrounds and Xcode. Previous winners include Keitaro Kawahara of Japan (PuzzlePix), Ruoshan Li of China (Deep Blue Tangram), and University of Alabama at Birmingham student AJ Nettles, who submitted an application named CryptOh. As AFROTECH™ previously told you, his app includes an interactive guide that explains the importance of password security and serves as a password manager and generator. “I wanted to make it easier for people to store their passwords and not have them on a random sticky note on the edge of their computer,” he told AFROTECH™. Nettles was among the 50 Distinctive Winners out of 350 winners of the challenge in 2024, and he was able to meet...
AJ Nettles wants to work at Apple one day after meeting CEO Tim Cook. The second-year student attending the University of Alabama at Birmingham has affirmed his journey in cybersecurity, one that began at an early age tinkering with computers while living in the small town of Monroeville, AL. “Our family had our first computer near when I was 5, and I really had fun interacting and playing around with it, learning about the internet and things like that,” Nettles told AFROTECH™. “Then I like to play games, so that kind of helped feed back into learning about technology overall, like computer science, and thinking about how it works and stuff. I was first exposed to it when I was young.” By the time Nettles reached the end of his time at Monroe County High School, he gained robotics experience and became more interested in learning about computer science and building technologies. “I had a bunch of different accounts for everything to play my games and email and all that. And I used...