DISQUS

Great list, Natali. I do have to say that #23 made me miss hearing you speak in Spanish when you introduced the Espanol version of Loaded. I'm not sure if that is still being produced, but it was very impressive!

Here's a link to my list of 25 Random things:

http://www.transmyth.com/blog/?p=213

Hi Natali,
Congratulations on your move. I hope that it all went well. I also congratulate you on the success of Loaded and joining as a host on Buzz Out Loud. It is awesome that a podcast can have hosts on both coasts which is a testament to the power of technology!

By the way, I just found out that if you Google "Del Conte", then your site is the first link. Searching for "Natali" results in you being the second link. So, it looks like you are getting the appropriate amount of "Google Juice"!

Natali,
Although I have never met you in person before, I have to say that I am proud of you.

I remember when I first saw you on Cranky Geeks and thought, "Wow, she seems nervous. But, she seems to know her stuff."

Then you had the guts to put together your own show (TeXtra), and I thought, "Wow, she seems nervous. But, now I know she knows her stuff."

Finally, you made what must have been a very difficult choice, and you joined CNET requiring a coast to coast relocation.

Never let it be said that a Del Conte isn't brave . . .

Now I get to see you on Loaded. And you don't seem nervous any more.

Congratulations on your first year in NYC.

Regards,

Anjuan Simmons

I think that Twitter has gained enough momentum and market share (not to mention mindshare) to be really hard to beat. We saw Pownce die and Plurck has no where near the cachet of Twitter. So, I think that any new microblogging service will have to use the 5 tips you mention above as well as have the support of a heavyweight like Microsoft or Google. Even then, I think that the only microblogging service we will be talking about this year will still be Twitter.

I'm also looking forward to 2009. Part of it is the new family moving into the White House, but another part is the possibility that a lot of technologies (like cloud computing and car tech) will come into their own (IMHO) in 2009. Despite America's current deep economic recession, I think that the first decade of the 21st century will close with a number of revolutionary technological advances.

I nominated YPB. I wish you all the best!

Barack 2.0 shows the fundamental power of Web 2.0. That is the power of the platform. It was not too long ago that the only to reach a large audience was to use traditional media outlets such as radio, television, or large publications. This often cost a lot of money and made tracking the number of impressions difficult.

Fast forward to today, and anyone can reach hundreds if not thousands of people using applications like Facebook, Twitter, and the other sites that feed Barack 2.0. I have hundreds of people who follow the updates I make to my profile on those sites, and most of the are people I have never met. The power of the platform is no longer in the hands of traditional media channels. It will be interesting to see if Web 2.0 can help a man become President of the United States.

I think that men exaggerate their number of sexual partners and women deflate their number of sexual partners. There are many reasons for this, but one simple answer is the double-standard. At least in American society, a man who has a large number of sexual partners is usually considered a virile and sexually successful person (often by both genders). A woman who has a large number of sexual partners is usually considered loose (in more ways than one), immoral, a slut, etc.

Furthermore, men usually can have sex with a woman and leave it as just a physical event. Women usually form a strong emotional connection to the sexual act. Therefore, a woman who has a large number of sexual partners if often assumed to be overriding this emotional bond and thereby acting "unnatural". Quite a few men would see such a woman as "damaged goods" and avoid making any long term commitments to her. However, they would probably use them for sex.

Honestly, I would imagine that the guy who took part in your threesome may have felt the same way. He probably wouldn't date you or the other woman who took part in your menage, but he would probably have another threesome with you. Have you talked with him since the "event"?

Anyway, I think that is why most women under-count their number of sexual partners. Having a high number often puts them out of the running for the men they want to date. Of course, many men don't care, but I think a lot of men would not marry a woman who had 100 partners. However, I think many women wouldn't mind marrying a man who had 100 partners.

I think Facebook's new design is opening it up for bigger and better things. I "got over" my Facebook "gotta try all these apps" phase a while ago. I think it's a stage that almost everyone goes through after being on FB for a few months. However, I still have friends that give me "app eye fatigue" whenver I go to their page on the old design. With the new design, the essential information (like profile info and wall posts) is there while everything else is contained on other tabs.

I am sure that Facebook will fix the problem with apps breaking in the new design. This lack of ubiquitous support may have even been intentional in order to force the app creators to take another look at their often crappy code.

I believe there are a few key reasons that black women are so susceptible to AIDS infection:

* Legacy Slave Mentality: During slavery in the United States, the most valuable contribution a black female slave could make to society was via the vagina between her legs and the womb in her stomach. Her vagina could be used to provide pleasure (often to white slave masters) and her womb could make more slaves. Women were often used to breed with multiple physically superior black men (”bucks”) to produce strong children who would become strong slaves. This tendency to have multiple sexual partners has, in many ways, been passed on to black women today.
* Poverty: For multiple reasons (the legacy of slavery and racism being a big one), many black people live in poverty. People in poverty cannot afford to do things that people with money do to entertain themselves: travel, play golf, watch an opera, etc. However, one form of entertainment that has a very low price tag is sexual activity. Couple this with my first point, and you have a lot of poor people having sex with multiple partners. Therefore, people in poverty (again, many of whom are black) have a higher rate of unplanned pregnancies as well as the other outcome of such behavior: sexually transmitted diseases.
* Strained Black Male/Female Relationships: The relationships between black men and women in this country has almost always been strained. Black families were often torn apart during slavery which seriously damaged the fundamental part of any ethnic group. Today, many black women are doing better than their black male counterparts in terms of education and income. This causes black men to often resent black women and compensate by being overly domineering. Therefore, black men may insist on sexual activity without condoms and threaten to leave the relationship if this demand is not men. Black women may feel that they have to give in to these demands in order to keep the man.
* Lack of Education: Along with poverty comes a lack of access to educational resources. Despite the plethora of information about HIV and AIDS, many black people know very little about it. In fact, some black people think that AIDS has been cured since Magic Johnson (who famously admitted to being infected) is still alive and looking well.

These factors (and many more) make black women extremely vulnerable to HIV infection.

Hey Neha,
Happy Anniversary! As always, I wish you the best!

Great site design, by the way.

Excellent points. We spend too much disposable (and not-so-disposable) income on the video game industry to not have representation within the ranks of the game makers. The Multiplayer blog did an excellent job profiling those who both make games (like Morgan Gray) and those who cover the gaming industry (like N'Gai Croal). However, I am positive that there are more black people in the gaming industry, and I hope that they network together to influence the industry. I also hope that young people realize that they can have careers working in the game industry instead of trying to be the next LeBron James.

Loren's comments and the discussion about it during the panel at this year's SXSW inspired me to create AfriTechnology.com (http://www.AfriTechnology.com). It's an online community designed to give black people working in the technology industry and place to network, discuss, and help each other. I am still building out the site, but registration is free and I am already encouraged by my handful of members.

I also think you did a great job moderating the panel. I believe you mentioned that you were setting up a site to let tech bloggers network. I don't know if you set it up, but I hope that AfriTechnology can fill that role and complement your site.

Things like this make me glad to be 6' 2". However, I am happily married to my own beautiful funky brown chick . . .

I am intrigued by the non-atheist requirement. Do you care if a potential mate is Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, et al? Can he simply be a deist? Why are you against dating atheists?

Folks have moved on, but I do want to respond to some of the replies that referenced my comment.

@Rachel Kramer Bussel, @Lee Coles: I said in my post that these are not necessarily my views. My point was to describe (right or wrong) what a lot of American men think about women who engage in certain behavior. I agree that this type of thinking can be damaging (and even dangerous). However, a woman's behavior does affect how men respond to her. If you disagree, try this experiment. Have a woman try six months of wearing revealing clothing and having sex with every guy she dates. Then have her try six months of dressing modestly and staying celibate. I guarantee that you will see a difference in the kind of men who are drawn to her as well as how her relationships work out.

@Twanna I want to emphasize that I think you are a nice person, and I wish the best for you. It takes courage to put yourself out there, and I applaud you for it. Also, yes, it's possible for a person to get an STI from one sexual experience. However, statistically speaking, you are more likely to contract an STI by having sex with multiple partners than if you are monogamous (of course, with an equally monogamous partner). Just like you are more likely to get blown up if you run through a mine field with one hundred mines than if you ran through one with two or three. By the way, I am glad that you have be able to remain disease free. That's is a testimony, I'm sure, to the effectiveness of using condoms.

Continue being the lovable Funky Brown!

Twanna,
I think the primary question you're asking is in the third paragraph: Why the hell is it so fucking hard to find a man who can handle an extroverted, outgoing, sexually comfortable woman without getting totally fucking freaked out?

I'll try to answer this from a man's perspective (and not necessarily MY perspective, but the perspective of most American men). A woman who is sexually adventurous is considered a slut by most men. Since slut is a word that I don't like and lacks usefulness because people define it different ways, I'll define what I mean by slut. A slut is a woman that a man will have sex with, but he will not marry. No man wants to make a slut into a wife.

So, what behaviors will put a woman into the slut catagory? Here are a few:

- If you're under 30, having a lifetime number of sexual partners that require double digits to count. Despite a few women who report much higher numbers, the median value for the number of sexual partners an American woman has is about 4 (although this number varies depending on the study, but it is around 4). So, I think that men can understand a woman whose vagina has had four or five (MAYBE six) penises go before them, but any more means the man is venturing into slut territory. You get a little more wiggle room if you're over 30, but running out of fingers to count your number of sexual partners is really not a good look for a woman at any age. Again, I am talking about MOST men (and not about my personal beliefs).
- Having sex with more than one person at a time. Since most women don't have threesomes (or foursomes, fivesomes, etc.) as their first sexual experience, the road to multiple simultaneous sexual partners usually mean violating the first point.
- Contracting an STD. Again, since the best way to catch a sexually transmitted disease is having sex with multiple people, this signals to a man (if, of course, you tell him) that not only have you probably had a large number of sexual partners, but at least one of left a quaint viral or bacterial gift behind. And STD's are usually the types of gifts that keep on giving.
- Wearing clothing that emphasizes and reveals your breasts, butt, and legs. Most American men still see good girls as dressing modestly (keeping the goods hidden) and bad girls as putting their wares out in the open.

Yes, many of these reasons I've listed are due to antiquated Puritan thinking, but they are a reality in our country. Also, yes, there is definitely a double standard because men who rack up sexual partners or manage to have multiple partners at once are usually congratulated by society. I wrote a blog post about this (which I hope you don't mind me linking to: http://www.transmyth.com/anjuansimmons/?p=42). To summarize that post, there are biological and chemical reasons that emphasize these sexist attitudes. First, sex, by design, does not favor the penetrated partner when it comes to STD's. So, women (and, also, gay men who are "bottomers") are more susceptible to sexual infections. Therefore, a woman who has an inordinate number of sexual partners is seen to be engaging in reckless behavior. Also, the secretion of oxytocin during female orgasm facilitates bounding emotions in most women. Women, who have a large number of sexual partners are going against this natural process which bonds women to men and keeps most women's sexual partner count low. I high sexual partner count subconsciously scares most men. This is due to the stereotype that sexually adventurous women are emotionally damaged in some way and, therefore, probably wouldn't make good long term partners of loving mothers.

That was a long response, but, basically, having a large number of sexual partners (or, being perceived as such) or engaging in activities like threesomes simply raises red flags in the minds of American men. Yes, they will probably have fun with you (like sex, party, etc), but they probably won't want to do much more. You have shown yourself to be a toy and not a tool. Yes, this is not fair, but women who dress modestly and have (or at least report) a low (or even zero) number of sexual partners will be seen as good girls by American men and receive the obvious benefits. Women who do the opposite will more than likely endure negative social consequences.

Neha,
You have my sympathies. I can imagine that leaving a job before you're ready to go is like a kind of death. You don't get a chance to put things in order nor do you have time to obtain closure on your terms. All you have is the shock of the event and the knowledge that things will go on without you.

It's ok to cry, be angry, wonder what you could have done different, play through endless scenarios, etc. Don't be afraid to take time to mourn the passing of this job because I'm sure it meant a lot to you.

However, the loss of job does not mean the end of a career. You have worked at two companies (CNET and Revision3) that are held in awe by myself, many who read this blog, and most of the tech-geek-nerd world. Many of us would kill to have your resume . . . ;-)

So, after you take a much needed break, go forward knowing how much value you have as an extremely talented and experienced writer and producer. I truly do believe that the sky is the limit for you, and I join everyone else in looking forward to whatever awesome opportunity you find next.

Weeping my endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

Regards,

Anjuan

While I think that "like calling out to like" is a large part of the challenge that Obama has with older white Americans, I think that racism is also a part of the challenge. There are many people in the white demographic who simply see all black people as inferior. Obama could have all the qualifications in the world, but many people would not vote for him simply because of his racial heritage.

I can't take full credit for the love language comment. Dr. Gary Chapman wrote a book called The Five Love Languages that I have often used to understand relationships.

I think that companionship is a key part of relationships, but everyone has a different Love Language. I think your primary Love Language is quality time. However, you may date someone whose love language is physical touch. So, you both have to work together to make sure you are both giving and receiving love in the proper love language.

Interesting insight into the kind of man to which you're attracted. I think a lot of people fall into the basic rules of attraction: a man wants to most attractive woman he can get and a woman wants a man who can provide her with the most security. That is why you see wealthy (but not very good looking) men with beautiful wives and you see beautiful (but with not much else to them) women with wealthy husbands.

Your post shows that people can change these rules. You seem to want security (hence, someone you can lean on), but you want some flaws here and there so that your man can truly relate to your problems. And you definitely appear to want to offer your man more than a cute girl to hang on his arm.

I think that's the right attitude because it's hard for a man to truly love a Barbie Doll, just like it's hard for a woman to truly love a bank account.

I have to admit that I also sign up for new online services in order to increase the chance that I can use "Anjuan" as my username. Better yet, I often get better URL's like anjuan.newfreeservice.com or newfreeservice.com/anjuan which both look better than my full name. Finally, I think it gives me more Google juice and expands my personal brand by having a presence on multiple sites, but I would have to update and regularly use them all for that to be truly effective.

That is why digsby sounds cool. I currently use Hellotxt.com which allows me to post once and have it update Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Pownce, Tumblr, and other social networking sites. It is much better than my previous practicee of having to visit multiple sites to make the same update.

By the way, Pidgin is a great free multi-protocol instant message tool. I use it to access my AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN accounts. It's open source and has a clean interface. They may have a version for the Mac.

I have only played with both so I will yield to your much more in depth experiece! When I installed Drupal, it looked like a very basic site, but I installed Joomla, and the default site looked like it was much more advanced. I also found Drupal to be hard to use in terms of administering the modules. However, Chris Pirillio is releasing Gnomepal. You can read about it here:

http://mashable.com/2008/03/27/chris-pirillo-gn...

It's basically a preconfigured instance of Drupal that enables the modules that most people find useful.

Also, some people are using Wordpress to build powerful sites including social networks. I still think it is best used as a blogging platform, but it can be extended to do much more.

Wow, please excuse the typos in my last two posts! I'm doing this on my phone, and it does not have spell check!

Drupal is simply a content management site that lets your create fairly complex web sites without needing to know HTML and also bother with uploading your changes to the web server. You basicallyh edit the site using a web browser. If this sounds like what you do with your blog, then that is because Wordpress is a content management system, too. Drupal is better at building out a full web site that does things like credit card transactions or provide forum support. However, I think the Drupal learning curve is pretty steep, and I have always preferred content management systems like Mambo or Joomla (which is a fork of Mambo).

All in all, a good content management system will allow you to set up a professional looking web site with a minimum need to understand the guts of how it works. Although, knowing how to code PHP or Perl helps if you want to do advanced things or troubleshoot errors.

Obama did an excellent job of having a candid discussion about race relations in this country while still keeping it well above the gutter level. However, I don't think a lot of White Americans understand the state of African Americans in this country so many of his points were probably lost. I hope they can at least realize Obama's heartfelt desire to unite our country and acknowledge that he is ready for the White House.