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Welcome to African American software choice.

There is ethnicity
in software, Wiki!

African American software products have been on the market since the beginning of the personal computer revolution. BlackSoftware.com editors have copies of the first African American software packages. For the sake of simplicity, we'll use the word African American and Black interchangeably here. Software is useless without hardware so let's start at the beginning when an African American hardware engineer made his breakthrough discovery. Its important to remember that the first African American software, mathematics and physics student to receive the Ph D. degree in computer science was Mr. Clarence A. Ellis in 1969.

See this transcript to read what WikiPedia said about our "ethnic software" proposal.

The African American software image appeared a few years after Dr. Mark Dean of IBM and his team, developed a critical technology for the IBM PC personal computer. Microsoft's Bill Gates was working on a new operating system at the time. The IBM PC went to market in 1981. It was not long after these important developments changed how everyone would use computers that the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing software program helped millions of users improve their typing skills. It began selling in 1985.

The face on the retail box package was adapted from model and Haitian-born Renee Lesperance, a black woman who was discovered by one of the software developers at Saks 5th Avenue Beverly Hills in 1985. Ms Lesperance's face became the symbol of Mavis. She was chosen because the software developer had a favorite singer named Mavis Staples and Renee reminded him of the singer. Dr. Mark Dean, the African American inventor, now holds three of IBM's original nine PC patents. The IBM PC soon dominated the personal computer industry and its success lead other manufacturers to make clones of the brand.

In 1999, blackSoftware.com opened the world's first black software store online with products categories black fine art, general use clip art, multimedia CD-ROM, reference packages, software covering math, language arts, science, history, and PC games were represented.

$45,000 STEM contract announced


new ASHAWARE'S AfroCentric Software Suite Version 5.0 review released! read online or download it.

FREE CLIP ART

right-click to save and use.

Pick up some DJANGO influences
from blackSoftware.com.

black clip art fashion model image   DJANGO image ideas from the blacksoftware.com collection black clip art at blacksoftware.com

black clip art of a black woman dancing on a record album

DJANGO going image type from the blacksoftware.com collection black clip art of african americans on the beach   an african american couple

Black Clip Art
featuring black and white clipart.

black and white clip art black woman fashion

black and white black woman business dress  Black woman. A lot of black clip art is drawn by black men like this beautiful black woman in a fashionable dress.

  black and white clip art business woman  Drawings tell stories. We have learned a great deal about our ancient ancestors from their drawings.

What do you think people will say 5,000 years from today when they see these images?



Hip Hop Art Store


  black and white clip art black group organizing  organizing people on the move


black and white clip art images and a weird guy hiding between the lights

Black woman clip art stick figures  black and white clip art black woman fashion  

black and white clip art movie set man

black and white clip art of married couplemarried with children not yet

blackSoftware.com says blackSoftware is code, text, images and multimedia that is actively representing African-American and Black peoples lives and culture when expressed with computerized pencils, software code, and colorful electronic crayons.



Black ISP offering domain name reservations, web hosting and email accounts monthly plans, search engine marketing and more.


Our African American software recommendation guide is here and we have added FREE online classes for K-12 and college levels too.

Black technology newsletter.

blacksoftware.com logoblackSoftware.com has explored African American made software products and ideas since 1999.


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the Ancestors

African American software choice extends to programs helping you trace your roots. A popular package is Family Tree Maker Deluxe (on sale!).

You saw on TV how the PBS Special "Finding Your Roots" traced the lineage of Oprah Winfrey and others. African-Americans find looking for descendants fasinating as would any other race whose heritage chain has been broken. You can use any of the programs linked above while you check with U.S. Federal Census where the starting point for African-Americans is about 1870.

Features of the Family Tree Maker African American software sections help you compare the family trees of ancestors from a database with 250 million names. Also online are African Americans slave narratives and journals. In an article on The Root web site, Henry Louis Gates identifed five sources of DNA testing African Americans can use to find out what people they come from.

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This item not for sale, a part of our personal
photo stock collection, it is titled
"Lady Looking."
Black woman looking for someone photo stock

  Clip Art Store | Educational Software Store

blacksoftware.com logoAfrican American software choices are expanding. The hot growth areas are vertical applications used for music sound recording, education, business tools, cell phone apps and more. There are ongoing KickStarter projects hoping to fund African American software development successes. The African American software developer can be found working with STEM organizations and community coding camps.

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We'll review your programs. Instructions for software publishers: Submit a file to spiritdatatree@yahoo.com and we'll review it. Or call (617) 942-1301 to introduce yourself. Thank you!

African American Software Highlights

First up - URBAN CLIP ART - a software package from Cultural Skies. Contents: 350 Black clip art color Images and 10 Design templates for desktop and web publishing.

a red-haired attractive black lady on blacksoftware.com color black clip art clip art on african american software site
white guy on black clip art sitemulti-culture guy in a green shirt clip art on blacksoftware.com

we want to hear from you

For clip art, there are Black Church Clip art kits, Business Clip art, fashion, hispanic/latino and urban clip art packages. The artist were mostly influenced by street scenses and hip hop - in fact, most African American software artists today were born during the 1990s when hip hop culture and rap music were banging setting trends.

My Urban Clip Art Package Software Review

developed by Cultural Skies, distributed by COSMI

The developer refers to it as Urban Clip Art. The package arrived in a vibrant, well-illustrated package competitive for the retail shelf in a brick and mortar store. Open the case and there's a black CD enclosure covered by a cellophane wrapper. You can see the CD title imprint through it and the words Urban Clip Art shines boldly through.

Its a well done product package.

To use the clip art you'll insert Urban Clip Art CD-ROM into your computer CD/DVD drive. The disc might spin up to speed and a pop-up window may appear on your Windowsscreen asking you what do you wish to do. On the Apple, the disc mounts itself and you'll see its icon on your Finder. There is no installation executable setup file with this product. You will not have to make installation decisions but you will need to know how to manage files and folders to keep track of all the individual image files.

Your computer will offer you choices to continue and they are: Open Folder to View Files using Windows Explorer; View the Photos ( computer automatically senses the clip art files as photos, which is normal but there is no photo stock on the CD); Print the Pictures, View them as a Slide Show, Copy Pictures to a Folder on Your Computer; and Take no Action. The disc has 4 folders named urban clip art in JPG, PNG and WMF and a folder named UrbanTemplates and a file titled "License.rtf."

Feeling adventurous, I chose the View Them as a Slide Show disc insertation pop-up option. After a few seconds, one image appeared,stayed on the screen for seconds, then another clip art image appeared. The slide show was on! It was time to sit back and watch the images fly by to get a feel for you'll get.

the first twenty

I took in the first twenty images and turned climbed back into this review I'm writing to tell you what I saw so far. The first twenty images were people. They were clip art people equally men and women. Not one of the first 20 images of people was younger then 20. Most likely there are clip art images of children on the disc, but I'm telling you about the first twenty I viewed.

One image sticks out in my head as very memorable. It was the clip art image of a black woman with a bush of gold colored hair. She could have easily been Hispanic, Latino, African-American, Indian, White, Black Jewish, or mixed. It was a side view of her and the bush was a big as Angela Davis's bush. Now, the men clip art images were not recognizable men, in my opinion. Its been my experience that people who are shopping for clip art have an idea of what they are looking for and aren't too willing to choose from the vanguard unless their creative work demands it.

I hear people tell me they don't want cartoonish-looking characters. People that do are unique in blackSoftware.com's black clip art client universe. At least, it has not been the norm for our followers to want a "stem-winder" of an image. The more the images is like a real person from around the ne ighborhood or across town, the more likely people will want to use it in their creative. On this disc, the images of men and most women in the first twenty pieces were stemwinders.

Most of the characters were unusual. I had to stretch my imagination to see how I could use any of these hip-hop type urban clip art images in creative work I'm likely to work with. My interest is on print and web image use. I don't think the first batch of clip art images I am viewing relate to hip-hop or hipster culture, but they try. I think they are relating to the characters you see in a Fat Albert cartoon tv show or in a Flintstones comic book. They don't look like real people - the artist knows that these are visual examples of what he saw or was instructed to draw. I'm looking for images that look like real people in life. Let's keep looking.

Now, I'm excited!! I've rolled through the next 30 images on the disc. I see some exciting images among them. They appear after the two image panels titled "mind" and "spirit" as the slide show cntinues. There are at least 6 really good ones in that set and they are equally divided between men and women.

Just click and take a look at these two - good1 | good2

So far, I haven't seen images of children but they are probably on the CD. The Urban Clip Art product has 350 images and 10 design templates. Considering the above, we have reviewed the first 60 clip art images of the 350 total in the product. We are not covering the templates in this review. We're stopping here on content coverage. You can explore this product and I'll betcha you'll find items you like.

For more images, buy the product here.

Image Sizes - the Urban Clip Art product images are at least 2,550 pixels wide by 3,330 pixels high. Depending on their orientation they can be larger.

the license agreement

Now, we take a look at wording in the clip art disc license agreement file enclosed. We don't like its software license. There is no reason why anyone who sells content for a creative universe should include limitations on how they intend it to be used. The conflict is - the box cover describes what's in the box and how the software should be used while the license agreement disagrees with the freedom of its intended use.

Take a look at these parts of the Urban Clip Art package software license where it says: you may not use the software on or over a network ...skip. You may not copy the printed materials accompanying the Software or distribute printed copies of any user documentation provided in electronic format.....skip. And it says .. you may not publicly perform or publicly display the Software...

Where the license refers to "software," this is not software. Its a collection of files that have certain rights -- but, there is NO programming code in the package at all and software has programming code. There is no executable SETUP.EXE software installation file in the package. The publisher fails to consider how the product will be used when they selected the wording for the license they have enclosed.

This Urban Clip Art product "license agreement" should consider using a more appropriate license. Here's an example of a consumer friendly software license statement for a clip art collection. "This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you ( the manufacturer).

There you go! If you enjoyed reading this here's another review.

Urban Clip Art for sale

Urban Clip Art $19.95
(617) 942-1301



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