skins
So, it looks like this will be my new blog for personal updates, since I no longer feel like maintaining Racialicious and a whole other blog about my life.

The new year is off to a great start – tomorrow, I will talk a bit about my theme for this year: reinvention.

Already, new things are popping. Been working on the shiny new redesign of Racialicious, a new header for here, a new business model, and a new crop of special correspondents. But since 2010 went by in a blaze of work, I am also committing to having more fun this year, and taking more time to nourish myself. Changing out of my Eeyore pajamas more than once a week. Actually doing my nails and hair. Reading for pleasure. Slowly savoring a cup of tea. You know, things that go out of the window when you look at a pile of deadlines and a small window of time.

But no more! 2011 is going to be different.

In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been writing that isn’t on Racialicious.

Over at The Root, I wrote about the Minority Media and Telecoms Council’s “Broadband Summit: No Escape From Controversy:”

The remarks spanned the gamut from congressional reform to the need to infuse a social-justice attitude into the expansion of broadband; many speakers declared that broadband was “the civil rights issue of our time.”

Comcast Corp. unveiled an aggressive plan to provide Internet access to low-income households for less than $10 a month. Joseph W. Vaz Jr., Comcast’s senior vice president of external affairs and its public-policy counsel, delivered the rough details of the program and also mentioned the formation of a $20 million innovation fund for minority Internet-based businesses. Philip Weiser, senior adviser to the National Economic Council director for technology, innovation and competition policy for the White House, argued that a thriving digital nation was the only way the United States could compete in the global economy. To accomplish this, those in attendance pressed hard for a future bright with minority media ownership and renewed opportunities for those working in the online arena.

However, the summit was not without controversy. Net neutrality, a huge point of contention for many members of of the black digerati, was often demonized by speakers at the event. Net neutrality is the idea that the Internet remains free and accessible on an equal level to all users, rather than a tiered system in which wealthier users can dominate or restrict the bandwidth available to other users.

I complained to the Guardian that “MTV’s US remake lobotomised Skins”:

Class is a difficult topic to bridge, particularly in a nation like the US – a country built on promise, mobility and the American Dream, attainable through hard work and struggle. The idea that one’s social status may be determined not by hard work but by circumstances of birth and a few lucky breaks is almost untenable to American viewers. To this end, it is remarkable that Skins was imported over from England at all: class issues inform a lot of the characters’ background and perception, which is difficult to translate for American audiences.

The excessive use of profanity, often coded as lower-class speech is highly present in the pilot, when Tony’s father goes off at him about the stereo. The US version is censored, and his father is remarkably cooler, channelling anger at the action, but not the child (at least, until Tony locks him out of the bathroom).

“Common” is used as an insult, clearly understood in the context of south England – in the US version, the characters have to make a comment about “their kind of people” to distinguish class differences and provide a reason for them to feel uncomfortable at rich-girl Tabitha’s party. Back in the UK, the focus is on showing, not telling: Sid hesitates at the door after he is admonished to take off his shoes – the camera reveals mismatched socks with a gaping hole in the toe. The teen’s obvious discomfort belies a discomfort familiar to anyone attempting to mute their class background – but the American version doesn’t bother with this.

And I convinced NPR that Ping was one of the worst ideas of 2010:

This fall Apple music launched a music-focused social network called Ping. The day Steve Jobs made the announcement, tech writers began sounding the death knell for MySpace. But it was not to be. Why Ping is floundering can be summed up in a sentence: Apple doesn’t like sharing, thus, it is difficult for them to build a social network.

The most popular services — the Facebooks, Twitters and MySpaces of the world — allow users to share links, thoughts, ideas, photos and music to connect with each other. Ping, run through iTunes, was supposed to be an evolution in musical connection. But iTunes, being a self-contained fortress requiring endless software upgrades and with more than a few frustrating quirks, isn’t conducive to the type of sharing Web-based networks enjoy across a variety of devices. I can access all three of the aforementioned sites from my Android phone, and I have a variety of apps that allow me to seamlessly integrate these applications into my life. To use Ping, I would have to be tethered to my iMac.

More work ahead – tinkering with this site and the R, editing vids, chasing down sources, and finishing my vision board are all on deck before Friday night. Saturday is the real treat – Si*Se is coming to DC!

    The Hot List
    Spinning: Cascada (don’t ask), Kat De Luna (I said don’t ask)
    Watching: Skins UK Season 1, I Used to Be Fat, Big Bang Theory
    Playing: Epic Mickey
    Reading: Negotiation Genius, The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Anderson