Games on phones in India

Mobile gaming is taking off, as "one of the fastest-growing activities among the tech-savvy in India, the BBC reports. Citing research from market researchers In-Stat/MDR, the piece says India's mobile gaming market will be $26 million by the end of this year and is expected to reach $336 million by 2009 (globally, 220 million people will be playing games on phones by then). In India, the number of cell-phone users grew by 1.4 million in October alone - up to 44.9 million and surpassing the use of fixed phone lines. The growth is attributed to India's large under-25 population. All this spells jobs for publishers, developers, animators, musicians, and content providers. "Currently, India has six big games developers and four mobile operators that offer games to their subscribers," the BBC adds.

Oz gaffe: Porn sent to schools

It was a case of good intention gone very much awry. In an agreement between the New South Wales police and the Education Department, an officer inadvertently emailed child pornography images to 1,800 schools "while trying to warn principals about children at risk of abuse," Reuters reported. The images, sent so that victims could be identified, were supposed to be cropped for decency, but "computer problems have meant that in some cases the entire pornographic image was revealed when the email was opened," according to Australia's ABC News Online. There was nothing in the coverage about anyone but school administrators having seen the images. According to Reuters, the incident occurred "during a police crackdown on child pornography that has so far resulted in more than 200 arrests, including police, teachers, clergy and the owner of a child-care center, after more than 400 raids."

AOL's PC security reviewed

America Online is smart to be selling peace of mind for PC users with its latest version, but 9.0 doesn't fully deliver, the Washington Post reports. "Having brought you online, AOL is saying, we're going to keep you safe from all the things you're worried about there," writes Post tech writer Rob Pegoraro. "That is an eminently laudable goal. But it's one that this release can't quite achieve." His first complaint is that, though anti-spyware software comes with 9.0, the two most important security pieces - firewall and anti-virus - have to be downloaded and installed separately. Then users have to heed reminders in the "Safety on My PC" panel to install updates. The other main problem - though probably more a temporary bug - is that these security add-ons are just that - not seamlessly integrated into the service. But it's a great first step, and, heck, it's all free, for which AOL deserves some credit. In these days of numerous and growing security headaches, PC peace of mind is the worthiest of intentions, and AOL clearly has moved beyond good intentions.

Calling all young Webmasters!

December 6 is the deadline for Web developers under 18 to submit their projects to the Cable & Wireless Childnet Academy. To qualify, they must be a key person in the development of a site that benefits other young people. Two examples:



* ChildSoldiers.org, which spotlights the experiences, art, poetry, and plight of children caught up in war, beginning in Sierra Leone and now throughout the world. The project, according to its site, "has its roots in a friendship between two teachers at opposite ends of the Earth, who are both part of iEARN, the International Education and Resource Network."



* MatMice.com, a site created by three Australian teenagers (and sisters) which hosts kids' Web sites and provides easy tools for site development - all for free. At last check, 867,308 people had developed home pages at MatMice.



Winners receive a place at the Academy, which will be held in Jamaica next spring (3/26-4/1); a grant from the project development fund totaling $50,0000+; an all-expenses-paid trip for two to Jamaica (must be accompanied by an adult); and follow-up Web support from Childnet and the Academy's mentors and trainers. Webmasters in any country are welcome to submit. Here's the "How to Enter" page at the Academy's site, based in London.

Net porn compared to cocaine

It's the new crack cocaine, according to clinicians and researchers testifying on Capitol Hill. They said Internet pornography leads to "addiction, misogyny, pedophilia, boob jobs and erectile dysfunction, Wired News reports. Testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee's Science, Technology and Space Subcommittee, Mary Anne Layden of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Cognitive Therapy, called the Internet "the perfect drug delivery system." It removes inefficiencies, such as the middleman or having to get to some physical place to partake. About the "drug" itself, she said, "porn addicts have a more difficult time recovering from their addiction than cocaine addicts, since coke users can get the drug out of their system, but pornographic images stay in the brain forever." Testifiers acknowledged, though, that "there is no consensus among mental health professionals about the dangers of porn or the use of the term 'pornography addiction'," according to Wired News, and many psychologists find the term problematic.



In related news, Spain's National Police this week announced they "have arrested 90 people, including 21 juveniles, in the country's largest operation against child pornography distribution." CNN reports that the arrests occurred in 26 provinces, and the "suspects include schoolteachers, students, software engineers, civil servants, military personnel and domestic cleaning personnel."

The $64k question for online kids

How to keep kids safe on the Internet has long been a controversial issue - partly because, as with no other medium before the Net, it always bumps into free-speech protections. Some think children's safety should be legislated, others feel filtering's the answer, a lot of techies think the problem's overblown, and many people in this field feel families should be able to pick and choose from the complete menu - education for kids, parenting tips, school policies, filtering and monitoring, and the occasional law (such as the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, one of the few legislative efforts that actually took effect in the US). UK dad and technology commentator Bill Thompson thought his daughter had a very reasonable recommendation: "She believes that net safety should be a central part of the [Net and tech] teaching she gets at school, from reception onwards, and that teachers are the ones to show children what is safe and what is not," he writes in a commentary for the BBC. "That way it is unavoidable, it does not rely on parents who may not bother, know or be able to explain, and it becomes part of the general awareness of life that you pick up in school." He adds that it's not the only thing we should be doing to protect online kids (and it would probably be more practicable in the UK than in the US), but better tech training at school (which includes media literacy and critical thinking) would be a big step forward in any country. But I'd like to hear what you feel is the best way to keep kids' experiences with technology safe and constructive. Please email me!

Don't be caught by the phish

"Phishing." It's a trendy techie word, yes, but it's also a growing Internet plague that every family should know about and a financial scourge that involves identity theft, fraud, and in some cases personal bankruptcy. The good news is, you can pretty much avoid it by making sure everyone in your family remembers one simple rule: Never give out personal information online. In its "How to Fend Off Phishing," the Washington Post reports, "real companies almost never send email asking you to submit personal data." That means financial data like social security numbers, bank account numbers (for kids, of course, it also means personally-identifying information like gender, name, location, or favorite anything). But it's hard to believe how effectively some phishers' emails can trick smart people. They come with very real-looking bank logos and addresses (that are easily faked) and they get us right where we're vulnerable, e.g., saying our PayPal account has been charged $237, and the item we've ordered will soon be shipped. The Post has published a whole series on this, including real people's stories of phishing victimization (tricks and tactics to watch out for), "A Brief History of Phishing," and "Catch the Phish: Take the Quiz" (something to do around the PC as a family, maybe).

'10 worst video games'

Last week the best, this week the worst. To round out the video-game picture (see last week's "Kid-tested, parent-approved video games"), this week children's media watchdog, the Minneapolis-based National Institute on Media and the Family, released its "Ninth-Annual MediaWise Video Game Report Card" on Capitol Hill. "Doom 3" and "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" top the list (at the very bottom of the report). Here's ABC News on the "Report Card." The Institute also offered its Top 10 for children and teens, and only one game - "ESPN NFL 2 K5" - overlapped with FamilyFun.com's top 10, however FamilyFun only looked at games for the 6-to-12-year-old age range.



Meanwhile, a coalition of children's, women's, and church groups led by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility also announced its picks for the worst 10, ZDNET reports. It pretty much matched the MediaWise list but included "America's Army," "a free game distributed by the U.S. Army as a recruiting tool," according to ZDNET. The highly controversial game that reenacts President Kennedy's assassination didn't make the list because it was released too late (here's a review in Slate and a report in London's Times Online). Some members of the group also criticized the nonprofit Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB.org), which this week released its own research, finding that "more than 80% of parents considered the group's ratings appropriate and helpful." [See my 9/24 issue for more on the ESRB and its ratings.]

Gregarious teens: Marketers' dream

This really dates me, but I remember poring over the Sears Catalog to develop my holiday wish list. Now, of course, wishes are sown in IMs, phones text messages, emails, and blogs, the Seattle Times reports. What parents and many kids don't realize - but marketers certainly do - is that a lot of the viral advertising going on in cyberspace originates with corporations. "Rather than wait for cool teens to pick the next 'hot' T-shirt (or shoes or new musician or even deodorant), companies are increasingly targeting gregarious teens as underground spokespeople, paid in free products, discounts and cutting-edge cachet. The goal is what's called "real life product-placement" - getting a popular teenager to wear/use one's product so that it will take off in his/her peer group and then - via physical events and cyberspace - spread to other peer groups. It brings new, infinitely broader, meaning to "word of mouth." For example, Procter & Gamble's viral marketing unit is called Tremor.com, and it "boasts 200,000 'of the most influential teens in the US'," according to the Times. What we all, especially the teenagers we love, need to be aware of is that - because IMs, phone-texting, etc., are so integral to teens' social lives - viral marketing is more influential than TV ads or catalogs ever were. It can actually affect their social standing and sense of self. That's the message of the critics of "stealth advertising," and they provide a healthy counter-balance to this powerful phenomenon. The Seattle Times article would be a great resource for any family or classroom discussion aimed at developing critical thinking.

India: Snagging young cell-phoners

It is a small world. Does this marketers' tactic in India sound way familiar - cell phone companies wooing kid customers with new interactive games, cartoons, and quizzes on phones? "While these companies say the plethora of information will open up a whole new world of 'learning with fun,' telecom experts say it is the trend worldwide to target specific groups like women, children and elderly and the same is happening here [in New Delhi] also," the Hindustan Times reports. So, the Times continues, you have the Whiz Kid (math, wildlife, current affairs info), Word Wizard (vocab booster), Games Garage, and Fact Monster on cell phones. Youth cell-phone demographics are pretty staggering in other parts of the world: 29% Hong Kong children 6-15 use mobiles, 25% in Australia and Japan, and cell phones were the most requested holiday gift last year by kids 10-15 in the UK, according to the Hindustan Times. Thanks to the Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families for pointing this piece out.

Family PC: What on earth to buy?

The Washington Post doesn't paint a very positive picture when it details why the eternally unprogrammed, blinking VCR clock was the good old days of family technology. But reality isn't always pretty. "More than ever, today's consumers need to plan and research their tech purchases to make sure the parts of their digital dream home will actually work together," the Post reports. It cites a number of families for which that wasn't the case. The good news is that, in the "Holiday Tech Buying Guide" attached to that "reality-based" lead article, is tech writer Rob Pegoraro's guide to buying a family PC. The three things to consider are hard drive, memory, and removable storage, Rob says. "Start with the hard drive: Forty gigabytes, the usual minimum, is plenty if you won't install dozens of games or copy hundreds of CDs to the computer. But for most uses, 60 GB seems a more realistic floor. If you want to edit video, double that figure." Then he goes into families' memory and removable storage needs. This is pure practicality. Not to be missed if you're considering a new computer.

Blending free and fee in P2P

Here's a twist - sort of like iTunes and Kazaa in a single package. "While the music industry attempts to shutter peer-to-peer services in court and in Congress, one company is using P2P networks to promote and pay artists," Wired News reports. It's called Weed and it allows file-sharers to download a song and play it three times for free. The fourth time, they pay a dollar (iTunes-style pricing). Then they can burn it to an unlimited number of CDs, file-share at will, and even post it on a Web page. How does it help artists? They get promoted by their fans - in addition to their 50% of sales. Weed "encourages sharing by awarding a commission to people who pass the songs on to friends who then buy it. The copyright owner always gets 50% of each sale. Weed gets 15% for service and software costs. The fan who passes the music along gets 20% of the sale if a friend buys the track," Wired News explains.



Another idea being played with is Napster founder Shawn Fanning's. His new company Snocap has technology that, rumor has it, "would allow users to share a low-quality copy of a licensed song for free, and would grant them access to a higher-quality version only after they paid a fee," the Wall Street Journal reports. Snocap just licensed Vivendi Universal's catalog of 150,000 songs. A third idea being used right now at P2P service Grokster is a combination of file-sharing and Internet radio. It allows users to "stream and listen to high-quality versions of specific songs - even music that is not available through download software like Apple Computer's iTunes," CNET reports. Because the music is streamed and not downloaded, it's like sampling rather than owning and thus complies with copyright law, its promoters say. However successful, all three approaches are great for online families - because legal and ethical options for the file-sharing so popular with teens are definitely multiplying!

Kid-tested, parent-approved video games

FamilyFun.com gets it. What better way to test video games than in their natural habitat: homes! And who could be a more credible tester than a kid (with Mom or Dad playing fly-on-the-wall)?



It's a formula that Children's Software Revue has used successfully for years, and this year Disney's Family Fun used it to build on its daycare-center-tested toy awards and produce its first-annual, home-tested Video Game of the Year awards. Why? Parents are kind of stuck: "With all this noise about Grand Theft Auto [and Halo 2 last week!], most of us feel somewhat ambivalent about video games," FamilyFun.com VP Emily Smith, herself a mother of two, told me in a phone interview. "But the fact remains that video games are popular, kids play them!" For more on this - as well as other holiday gift resources on the Web - please see the latest issue of my newsletter.

Tracking students with tech

Whether they're mere photo IDs students wear, fancy ones with computer chips, or digital IDs to plug into computers, tracking students is a growing phenomenon - as well as public debate. In Poplar Bluff in southeastern Missouri, many of the 1,300 students in that town's high school are upset about having to wear ID cards to school every day, and there isn't even any technology involved, the Christian Science Monitor reports. In Spring, Texas, north of Houston, the school system has spent $180,000 on a system of computerized ID badges for 28,000 students whose badges are scanned when they got on and off schoolbuses. "The information is fed automatically by wireless phone to the police and school administrators," the New York Times reports. And with the help of AOL and VeriSign, an Internet safety organization called i-Safe plans nationwide distribution to schools of small plastic "sticks" that plug into PCs and verify a student's ID when s/he's online, ZDNET reports. The efforts have both supporters (mostly school officials and parents) and critics (consumer-privacy and civil-liberties organizations), and the technologies have their glitches, but "in the long run," the Times reports, "the biggest problem may be human error. Parents, teachers and administrators said their primary worry is getting students to remember their cards, given they often forget such basics as backpacks, lunch money and gym shoes. And then there might be mischief: students could trade their cards." That last is privacy advocates' greatest concern: students' information getting in the wrong hands. If any of you have experience with or reactions to this, do tell!

From movies to music

They're piling on this week. On top of the MPAA's first lawsuits against file-sharers came the RIAA's lastest round. Thdrecording industry trade association sued 761 more file-sharers, the Associated Press reports. Among them are 25 people suspected of using university networks to file-share. The students attend Amherst College, Boston College, Bridgewater State, Iowa State, Northeastern, and the University of Massachusetts, the schools themselves were not sued.

AOL: $14.95 for peace of mind?

The new, 9.0 version of AOL - launched today - is all about PC security, and it may in fact be one of the best options for less-than-tech-literate parents not blessed with in-house, kid tech support. I'm saying this because, at my son's hockey practice the other day, another mom told me her family's connected to the Net, but they hardly ever use their computer because it keeps getting viruses (she didn't know what a firewall was and they didn't have anti-virus software installed - I was glad I could help out). AOL 9.0 "includes McAfee VirusScan Online, AOL Spyware Protection, antispam control and a system to thwart instant-messaging spam (or 'spim')," CNET reports - plus the firewall, pop-up controls, parental controls, and alerts for unauthorized bank and credit card activity that were available to AOL subscribers before. That's all included in dialup customers' $23.95/month service and in the $14.95 "bring your own access" (BYOA) service for customers who want to use a different broadband Internet provider. Which all boils down to $14.95 for peace of mind when you just want to get on with using the Net!

Families shopping for tech

Twenty-year-old Dan Auriemma got his grandmother a cable modem for Christmas so she could move beyond her pokey dialup connection, reports the New York Times - apparently exactly what she needs. But that's unusual, so many of us know. Matching tech gifts to loved ones of different generations is tough, and it's the younger generation, such as Dan's, that's more likely to get it right. Even so, "76% of Americans plan to give a tech gift this season," says the Times, citing a Consumer Electronics Association survey. In our family, it's hard enough for us to buy gifts for our kids, much less tell grandparents, uncles, and aunts what they'd like a month from now. Wish lists are moving targets, so it's better to look at the History file on the PC our kids use to find out where interests lie from day to day. At no time is the *other* digital divide more apparent than in this season. The Times's John Schwartz describes how differently the generations use tech: "Youngsters live in a high-tech bubble, moving from screen to screen throughout their day and typing and clicking and virtually breathing bits. Their parents (my crowd, if you will), having seen computers become personal in their lifetimes, tend to have a working relationship with technology that doesn't necessarily involve the same all-encompassing embrace." Grandparents, he says, tend to view tech more in terms of toys of the tech sort (some with yet another annoyingly complicated set of instructions to remember) than as complementary means to ends - means to be used all at once. Whether or not this is the case in your family, John's piece is great context for families' tech-shopping dilemmas this year. BTW, I'd love to hear from you about the holiday shopping dynamics in your family.

Good idea for picture phones

A UK privacy-rights organization is recommending to cell-phone makers that they make flash standard on all phones, the BBC reports. Privacy International says that camera phones make it a lot easier to take illicit photos without permission - a threat to people's privacy, especially children's. So if a flash accompanies every picture taken with a phone, subject will always know their photo's been taken. If phone makers would adopt this idea, it would save a lot of schools and sports and fitness facilities from banning pictures phones altogether. But they've shown resistance. "In South Korea," the BBC adds, "one of the most advanced mobile phones markets in the world, the government recommended that mobiles phones should produce a loud sound when used to take a picture. The government also considered the use of a default flash, but plans were abandoned after concerns from manufacturers." For an example of where picture phones can intersect with bullying see "Cyberbullying: Parenting problem" in my 5/14 issue.

MPAA's 'favor' to parents

To enlist parents' help in discouraging kids' file-sharing, the film industry will offer free software that detects "P2P files," CNET reports. The Register goes a bit far in its assessment that the Motion Picture Association of America's move "is designed to split families right down the middle. The MPAA hopes that new software will encourage parents to turn their children over to the authorities as file-sharing felons." As for the software, it won't delete, just scan for and find music, movies, and P2P software like Kazaa's, Grokster's, and eDonkey's on a PC's hard drive.



Along with the free software, the MPAA announced it had filed about 200 lawsuits against file-sharers across the US this week. Unlike the approach of the record industry (RIAA), which goes after people who share hundreds, sometimes thousands, of music files, the MPAA is, in some cases, suing people who shared a single movie, according to the Washington Post in its roundup of news stories on this. However, the single-movie-sharers sued are those who distributed a film before it was released in theaters. The Guardian reports that "individuals could be liable for $30,000 (£16,000) for each traded file, and up to $150,000 (£80,000) per downloaded film, if the download was willfully done." The anti-P2P software will soon be available at the MPAA's RespectCopyrights.org, according to the trade association's press release on all of these developments.

Tech 'Big Brother' for schools

There's ed tech about learning (see post just below), then there's ed tech about monitoring. The latter, it appears could be good news and bad news. An example of the tracking sort of technology is NetInterlink, which manages all the student data schools gather. It sounds like it could turn schools into social services' best friend. According to the Washington Post, "the program helps schools determine what resources are allocated to each student by tracking which teachers they work with, their grades and standardized test scores, their attendance records, and their financial status, which determines eligibility for subsidized meal programs." It links one school's data to others', so superintendents can get an overview on how well a district is showing up in No Child Left Behind Act terms. NetInterlink says the software was developed with a lot of practical teacher input. The 10-person software company is planning for rapid growth and take-up by US schools (from $2.2m in projected sales this year to $10m in five years).

Tech engages students: Study

In its 2004 survey, the National School Boards Association recently took a look at technology in US classrooms and found that, besides the usual suspect (funding), the biggest challenge facing school districts in the technology area was integrating tech into the classroom. Funding was the toughest for 47.2%, and integrating tech into day-to-day learning was a challenge for 45.7% of districts. But it looks like schools are determined to beat the latter, because 88.5% of districts reported that the use of tech in the classroom increased educational opportunities for their students. When asked how technology had improved those opportunities, 80.4% said students were "more engaged in learning" when tech was in the classroom. Only 16% of districts said that proving that there were benefits for student learning success was a challenge. Our thanks to TechLearning News for pointing out these findings.

Kids checking teacher ratings

...in growing numbers, apparently. I've mentioned the popular RateMyTeachers.com before. There's also RateMyProfessors.com, drawing "roughly 1 million visitors a month" who scan listings for more than 400,000 professors at 4,000 schools and post their own opinions," the Sacramento Bee reports. The paper evaluations which get handed out at the end of a course and which the Bee says get about a 90% return rate are probably more representative than the online versions, where students are more likely to go if they have a beef. Faculty members generally dislike sites like RateMyProfessors and SacRate.com (the former's founder told the Bee he frequently gets lawsuit threats from professors maligned in the rating site), but the ones who don't mind them so much say even the detractors probably secretly check their ratings. Rating sites are increasingly popular even among adults. The Bee cites a recent survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project finding that 26% adult Net users - about 33 million Americans, have rated a product, service or person in a Web site. The biggest raters are 18-to 27-year-olds."

Net music's next step

To file-sharing kids, a CD that tells you to go ahead, "rip, sample, mash, and store" these tunes to your heart's content, should be no big deal. In fact, the new, "100% legal" Wired CD, bundled into Wired magazine's November issue, is an anomaly - and an important next step for the online music scene. You can copy, share, remix, build on, do anything noncommercial that you want with the music on this CD of 16 songs, with the up-front permission of their creators - e.g., David Byrne, Chuck D, Gilberto Gil, Matmos, Spoon, Beastie Boys.



"It's the boldest experiment yet in trying to catalyze support for copyrights compatible with the digital reality of the 21st century," according to the San Jose Mercury News - an experiment by and with the Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization founded by Stanford law professor and copyright innovator Lawrence Lessig. For more on this milestone, please see the latest issue of my newsletter this week.

Canada's anti-bullying week

Bullying stops in less than 10 seconds more than half the time (57%), when peers intervene on behalf of the victim. That statistic from a York University study may be why Canada's National Bullying Awareness Week (11/15-21) this year focuses on "Rise Above the Rest - Don't Be a Bystander." The awareness campaign, sponsored by Bullying.org and the Family Channel, challenges kids to "Take the Pledge" against bullying. Some 55,000 young Canadians took the pledge last year, the campaign's first year. Information on all aspect of the program ("Canada's Caring Kid" awards, guidelines on how kids can intervene without escalating the incident, a workshop timetable, discussion topics, etc.) can be found in the Bullying Awareness Week Toolkit and at Bullying.org (under "What's New" in the left-hand column). Help with online versions of bullying - on cell phones and in instant-messaging, chat, and email - is at Cyberbullying.ca (also by dad, educator, and creator of Bullying.org Bill Belsey) and, more for parents and educators, at the US-based Cyberbully.org. Our recent series on "The IM life of middle-schoolers" may also be useful; it starts here.

Beware Bofra virus!

I've gotten a lot of emails trying to get my PC infected with it - to no avail, I'm happy to report. They all purport to be from PayPal, saying my account had successfully been credited for $175, and I would soon be receiving the item I'd ordered. I have to admit this concerned me a bit the first time I saw it, and I was tempted to click on the link, but instead went to PayPal, logged on to my account, and checked to see if there was any reference to $175 in it. There was not. After I'd gotten several of these, I realized it was yet another email hoax.



The key is not to click on the link provided. That's what leads to PC infection, the BBC reports, taking you to the Web site that turns your computer into a zombie the operators can manipulate remotely. "Essentially, Bofra turns infected machines into small web servers that happily dole out copies of the virus." Besides PayPal, the virus email also poses as a porn provider, saying its links are to a porn site, the BBC adds. This virus is tricky, too, because it doesn't carry infected code with it and thus can get past a lot of anti-virus software. Tell your kids: Don't click on any links in emails unless you're absolutely sure they're from people you know; if you're not sure, ask tech-savvy family members or friends!

MSN's cool search tool

Microsoft's sleek new search tool - meant to rival Google, as well as A9, Clusty, the new Jeeves, and all the other next-generation ones (see "Speaking of search engines," 10/22) - launched today. "It shows all the signs of becoming a very serious challenger," writes the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg. Like Google, it will soon include the option to search your own PC (the whole thing's still in beta, so not all on line as yet). There are a lot of things it does like Google (tho' the former just upped the number of Web pages it crawls to a staggering 8 billion, compared to the 5+ billion MSN claims). Unique to MSN is real answers (from Microsoft's Encarta) to fact-type questions, results "near me" (like local restaurants), and a fascinating new tool called "search builder" that I checked out. Search builder lets you search with in a single Web site you put in the search box; find sites that link to a site of your choice (bloggers will love this); search sites in a language or based in a country or region you specify; adjust your search parameters (say whether you want only very popular sites returned, or sites updated recently, or if you want an exact match to your search query or only an approximate one). As with Google, you can also search just news coverage and images, but Mossberg says MSN's music search is better (maybe because MSN has a music store?): "I typed in 'Rolling Stones' and was able to click on, and hear, previews of several Stones songs right from the search result. I was also able to go directly to a page in the MSN music store where I could buy the songs."



Parents will also want to note that MSN search can be filtered. Its default setting is " Moderate - Filter sexually explicit images only," so if you want most sexually explicit text filtered too, from the main page, click on "Settings" under the search box, then on "Strict" under "SafeSearch." You'll need to click "Save" at the bottom to save this setting for whenever MSN search is used on this computer (it stays that way, even if the PC's turned off, till someone changes the setting). Of course, this measure works best when accompanied with a house rule about not changing search-engine and other parent-imposed settings. Here are the New York Times, the BBC, and CNET's spotlight on this.

'Mobile [phone] clubbing'

Most surprising is that it's silent, but also seemingly spontaneous and every bit as energetic as the dancing that occurs in nightclubs. In this case (at London's Waterloo Station), 20 or 30 people are dancing in a Conga line at 6:45 pm, all to the sound of their own iPods. "Other commuter look on dumbfounded," The Register reports. "It is unclear where the concept of Mobile Clubbing originates but one thing is clear, that in the world of spontaneous mass public gatherings, it has replaced Flash Mobbing." All kinds of people participate, tipped off via chatrooms, phone texting, and sometimes on the spot via their own eyes - whole families, youth, older people, all colors, all just having fun. Sounds infectious. Will it cross The Pond to the States? I'll let you know if I hear of anything, but do I sound old if I say what an amazing age we live in?

Moms are gamers too!

Online gaming is not just child's play. Look at the success of Club Pogo. Its card, board, puzzle, and word games "attracted an astonishing 500,000 subscribers" in its first year as a paid service ($4.99/month), and 75% of its members are women whose average age is 35 (spending an average of 50 hours a month playing games), eContent.com reports. The article cites Pew Internet & American Life figures showing that nearly half (48%) of all broadband Internet users play games online. They're the new online porn, though a bit more respectable, eContent says, explaining that "just as cable TV and satellite companies understood long ago that soft-core porn is the content that brings many people into a distribution network, ISPs like Comcast and RCN are already partnering with games providers in order to add value and differentiation to their high-speed offerings."

Halo 2: Redmond blockbuster?!

Halo 2 is huge news in the tech media this week, and all the hype may add to kid pressure on parents to buy it. The $49.99 video game is the sequel to "the most successful title ever released for Microsoft's Xbox," CNET reports, and big kids around the country stayed up all night just to wait in line for hours to buy this shooter game. Parents, note the "M" rating. According to the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB.org), games rated "M" for "Mature" "have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain mature sexual themes, more intense violence and/or strong language." The game's release rivals Hollywood's blockbuster movie releases. CNN said today that Halo 2 could make $75 million in its first 24 hours of availability in stores (1.5 million copies were pre-ordered). That compared to "The Incredibles," which grossed $70.7 million over the weekend.



"How big is 'Halo 2'?" CNN asks. "When the clock struck midnight, some 7,000 toy, video game and electronics stores around the country opened their doors and welcomed thousands of eager players. In New York's Times Square, the Toys R Us flagship store hosted a massive launch party, complete with celebrity guests," while 1,500 customers wrapped themselves around the block waiting for the store to open this morning. Microsoft's not resting on these laurels, though - there are "only" 18 million of its Xbox consoles in US homes, compared to 75 million Sony PlayStation 2s (and the mere 16 million GameCubes), USATODAY reported.



So what's the draw? "Stunning, colorful, cinematic visuals," "a story arc," "evocative, monk-like music," and "fast, violent action," according to the Washington Post, which tells of dads getting together with their consoles as in the old poker days and playing Halo over cigars, peanuts, and beer, with the Virginia Tech-North Carolina football game going in the background. "The main character is Master Chief, clad in armor and a visored helmet, a human super-soldier whose goal is to discover the secrets of Halo and save it from the Covenant, the enemy aliens," the Post explains. Halo 2 brings the battle to Earth, where Master Chief is all that stands between the aliens and mass destruction, the Post adds. Wow, isn't that what the election was about? (Sorry, couldn't help myself.)

Missing school PCs?

Check eBay. That's what a teacher in Los Angeles did - and that's where he found 10 Macintosh G5 computers (worth about $5,000 each) that had gone missing from his digital animation classroom, the Los Angeles Times reports. They were being auctioned off at eBay by two seniors (who were not in animation teacher Alan Evans's class) at the Palos Verdes high school. Evans told the Times he checked eBay because he didn't know of any way the computers could be unloaded quickly on the street. "With a few keystrokes, a listing popped up for the 10 computers at starting bids of $800 each and two addresses that investigators used" to arrest the suspects, both 18. Police found the Macs in a storage facility. None had been sold." Evans was kind of amazed the kids thought they had anonymity on eBay.

Baby bloggers...

...are no longer the brainchildren of only tech-literate parents. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, they're the new "mommy (and daddy) must-have," read not just by doting grandparents, but also by complete strangers. Of course, baby pix and milestones and parenting advice are still the mainstay of baby blogs. "The sites, with names such a 'Daddyzine' and "Bloggingmommies' "are this generation's baby books, although many bloggers also scrupulously record every burp, giggle and bottle in book form as well - which makes you wonder when they have time to actually care for the baby," the Inquirer reports, citing one expert as saying the baby variety has taken off faster than other types of blogs (well, maybe after US-based political ones in the past six months). What is clear is that, with the advent of blogs, or Web blogs, teenagers aren't the only age group making their private lives public. The $64,000 question(s) is: Is this a shift of thinking and behavior or, basically, a mistake? Do people mean to make the intimate details of their lives so public? Certainly, Anne Lear does (the mom whose blog leads the Inquirer piece). On the other hand, Martin Kelly, whose baby was threatened by someone who visited his baby page, would lean toward the mistake side of the question.



Part 2 of that question is: If people generally do want anyone to be able to access their psyches and lives, why? What is causing this trend? Maybe we always wanted to be this public but were only recently able to be because of the arrival of the Web and blogging tools that make it a cinch to put up a Web site? Any ideas, readers? Email me your thoughts at anne@netfamilynews.org. I'd especially like to hear from parents of teen bloggers!

Spyware defined!

Are you mystified by this phenomenon we're hearing more and more about? You are not alone. It's one of the most pervasive - and misunderstood - problems family PC users face. GetNetWise.org recently unveiled its "Spotlight on Spyware," which describes spyware symptoms and the most devious examples, and provides six tips for preventing it from overrunning your family PC. There is also a page listing and linking to a number of Internet service providers' tools for detection and removal of spyware. I would add that there are free scan-and-remove tools not mentioned on GetNetWise's page. A couple that have gotten excellent reviews are Ad-Aware and SpyBot Search & Destroy.



The page on spyware prevention would be a good talking point for a family PC security discussion (if a tech-literate teenager in your house doesn't already have this nailed). In working with kids, I'd zoom in on the first two tips (and take care of the rest about PC security myself) - about being skeptical about downloading strange or free software and paying attention to your computer's security warnings. The best policy might be to have kids ask you about installing or downloading anything and, when a security warning pops up, "come get me before you do anything" (don't "x" it out till Mom or Dad checks it out). As for file-sharing programs, which are reportedly riddled with spyware, have that anti-spyware software installed (maybe even the industrial-strength version that'll cost you $30 or so) if there's P2P activity on the PC.



Email me about how your family is working through the spyware challenge. Are your kids part of the solution yet?

Answered: Burning Qs about cell phones

Suddenly there's plenty of meaty help for families bewildered by all those cell-phone plans and options out there. CNET put together a comprehensive cell-phone-buying guide (flip phones, camera phones, smart phones, candy bar-style phones, you name it!) that includes lots of information on the carriers too. On the latter, with each company - Sprint, Cingular (just acquired AT&T Wireless), Nextel, Verizon, T-Mobile - the guide asks the questions, "Where can I use this service?" and "What should I know about this carrier?" It even looks at phones by personality type - teen/fashion, commuter, gear head, etc. At the Washington Post, techie writer Rob Pegoraro is a little more DC-specific in his just-released "How to Make the Right Call on Cell Plans," but he asks some great questions everyone should hear if they're considering new or different phone service. Questions like: Do you want to make calls from rural areas or overseas, or what service do your friends and relatives use? He notes, too, that if you want to use your phone to go online or if you want a phone with lots of bells and whistles, these criteria may affect your choice of carrier. Here's the Guide itself.

Good anti-spam news

Though the flood of junk email in our in-boxes continues unabated, anti-spam efforts are getting tougher. For example, there is the first criminal prosecution of spammers - against a brother and sister in Virginia who'd "amassed a fortune" in sales via spam, reports the BBC and many other tech news outlets. And the US's Internet giants - AOL, EarthLink, MSN, and Yahoo - teamed up for the second time this year to sue spammers in several states, CNET reports. CNET adds that one of AOL's lawsuits is the first to target junk messages our IM-ing kids are probably seeing more of: "spim," "unwanted messages sent through instant-messaging programs or chat rooms."

Torrent of file-sharing

The low-key P2P service that file-sharers at your house have at least heard of is true to its name. BitTorrent's users are trading a veritable torrent of data online, accounting for "an astounding 35% of all the traffic on the Internet" and more than all the file-sharing services combined," Reuters reports. Citing the findings of UK Web analysis firm CacheLogic, Reuters adds that this P2P traffic "dwarfs mainstream traffic like Web pages" - giving us a feel for how much file-sharing is a part of online activities. The content in that very active data stream is both legal (e.g., video game promos, Linux software code, garage band music) and copyrighted material (movies, tunes, software), according to Reuters. BitTorrent's also true to its name because of the way it works - users don't download whole movie or TV show files, for example, they download fragments of them from other users who have asked for the same collection of fragments that the show or movie represents. The BitTorrent software knits the fragments together so you can see the whole show on your screen. That innovation is what makes this third-generation P2P service so "fast," in other words able to traffic in such huge files as films so efficiently. EDonkey, another popular 3G file-sharing service, reportedly works similarly. The fact that there's so much legal content being shared on BitTorrent is what experts are saying could provide it with more legal protection than older services like Kazaa have enjoyed. At the bottom of the article, Reuters lists four all-legit sites for downloading movies and music.



In other P2P news, the RIAA announced another round of lawsuits, this time against 750 alleged copyright infringers, the Los Angeles Times reports (the movie industry is set to follow suit shortly with as many as 200 lawsuits of its own, The Register reports). On the carrot side of anti-piracy efforts, Sony BMG - in a surprise move "breaking from the rest of the entertainment industry" - announced it would cooperate with the Grokster P2P service on "a venture that combines free music sampling with paid downloads," the L.A. Times also reports. They're calling the venture "Mashboxx."

Juice Box, not juke box

For those of us packing lunches with juice boxes, Mattel's version is a cute play on words. USATODAY calls the new, pocket-size Juice Box video player - which comes in red, blue, or green - "anything but a toy." Because it plays color video and music and displays digital photos, it's being sold in both electronics and toy stores. The price is right for the tweens and teens Mattel's targeting: It "costs $70 and its MP3 Starter Kit, which is needed to transfer MP3 tunes and photos from the PC, is $45. That adds up to $115, which is a good deal for a gadget that works as video player, a photo viewer and an MP3 player," USATODAY reports. But it's music videos they're talking about - not full-blown films, unfortunately. At $115, that would be too good to be true.

Concert on a phone

On a 3G cell phone, that is. The band is Rooster, and their 45-minute concert (probably right about now, Tuesday evening, London time) is the first ever to be "phone cast" in the UK, the BBC reports. It's available to about 1,000 fans paying five pounds each (about $9) for the privilege of listening to Rooster on their phones (definitely says something about the band's popularity!). "3G technology lets people take, watch and send video clips on their phones, as well as swap data much faster than with 2G networks," according to the BBC. "People with 3G phones in the UK can already download football and music clips on their handsets." Concerts will soon be coming to a phone near you - wherever you are!

Taking teens beyond text

That is Virgin Mobile USA's intention. According to CNET, the "wireless operator for teenagers" (about 2 million of them) just announced a new super-speedy cell phone that is "more in line with a teen's short attention span and mercurial mood." [Hmm, that sentiment, which CNET says were from a Virgin Mobile USA representative, seems a bit demeaning.] The Audiovox Flasher V7 phone uses Sprint's wireless network, "which operates at about 70 kilobits per second, or more than twice as fast as Virgin Mobile USA subscribers are used to." That means much faster send and receive time for new features like "My Pix, a photo-messaging and online picture-storage service, and VirginXL, for buying downloadable, full-color games, wallpapers and screensavers," taking them beyond texting, which is what 60% of its customers like to do. Virgin Mobile USA is also trying to be sensitive to its subscribers by recognizing "teenagers' fluid financial state" and offering service without requiring them to sign a contract.