Scary side of Webcams

A Webcam in a girls' locker room in the Nashville, Tenn., area. That's the story (and now lawsuit) with which the New York Times led. "Like each Web page, each [Net-connected Webcam] has an address, and unless the cameras have been concealed behind software firewalls, their addresses make them specifically searchable and identifiable [by any Web surfer]. A Google search one day last week indicated more than 10,000 such Web cameras," the Times reports. It looks like, as with many Net-related technologies, the law has not caught up with Webcams. Nor with the camera-security policies of sellers and buyers (such as schools) of Webcams. Then there's the difference between accidental and deliberate access to Webcam images. In the girls' locker room in Tennessee, the images of teenage girls in underwear were protected only by a default username and password that the school had never changed. "Lists of default passwords for many different types of computer systems are available on almost any 'hacking' site," and hackers probably aren't the only people interested in access to these kinds of Webcam images. Now we need to tell our young athletes to check locker rooms for cameras before they change. And we also need to find out where schools and daycare centers have security cameras installed!

Police tech for protecting kids

Not easy to read, but this article at NorthJersey.com provides a wide-angle snapshot of the downside of various technologies where child-exploitation is concerned. "The battle against child pornography on the Internet began more than a decade ago, when pedophiles began exchanging explicit pictures of children through e-mail. The rapid development of digital video cams, peer-to-peer file sharing and camera phones made the problem more complex. Now it's real-time gaming and mobile videos - mini-movies on wireless phones - that vex law enforcement." But cops are now, for example, using file-sharing technology to track file-sharers who traffic in child pornography. "The software has already identified 200,000 people who have downloaded child pornography, about 3,000 of them in New Jersey," NorthJersey.com reports. They also can now intercept pedophiles' Web cam photos and extract photos from camera phones "even after they've been erased." As for multiplayer games online: "Real-time gaming, which allows X-Box and PS2 players to compete against people across the world, may pose a new problem, law-enforcement authorities fear. Young players could become comfortable with a competitor they know nothing about and begin to divulge personal information, they said." (Thanks to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children for pointing this piece out.)

18-year-old spimmer arrested

Young New York resident Anthony Greco was recently arrested at Los Angeles Airport in what federal prosecutors said was the first criminal case involving "spim" (spam via instant-messaging). He is "suspected of broadcasting 1.5 million ads for pornography and cheap mortgages, the Los Angeles Times reports. He is also allegedly an accomplished extortionist. Prosecutors said they "lured him" to L.A. for "what he expected would be a meeting with the president of MySpace.com," a blogging service popular among teens. "Greco had threatened to tell other spammers how he sent the unsolicited instant messages to MySpace users last fall if he wasn't given an exclusive marketing contract with the company, according to a sworn investigator's statement filed in Los Angeles federal court." About 39% of IM users under 30 have received spim (66% of 19-to-30-year-old Americans IM), according to figures cited by ClickZ Stats (figures for teen IM-ers weren't available as of this writing). Although not as common as spam, serious spim growth is expected - "from 1.2 billion messages by year-end 2004 to 17.9 billion messages in 2008," InfoWorld reports. Here's the latest news on spim viruses at ZDNET.

Pay attention?!

This is not really news: We computer users (and our children) have never had more distractions. "In the era of email, instant messaging, Googling, e-commerce, and iTunes, potential distractions while seated at a computer are not only ever-present but very enticing," reports the New York Times. The problem is, we can do so much more than fix a sandwich or sharpen pencils. Now we can remix a song, send baby pix, carry on multiple simultaneous conversations, and check the weather from four different sources on one's desktop - all at once, of course. This still amazes me. The good news is, "a growing number of computer scientists and psychologists are studying the problem of diminished attention." Not all, it seems, view it so much a problem as a reality. "And some are beginning to work on solutions." For example, "one piece of software in development learns to assign a level of urgency to incoming email messages while shielding people from messages they can see later - based on an assessment of how busy they are." What a relief! ;-)

Kids & 'toys'

My headline should actually be "Kids & electronics." The latter stole the show at the American International Toy Fair in New York, the Los Angeles Times reports. One toy industry publisher said he doesn't even call it a toy fair anymore. On the floor cell phones, digital video cameras, walkie-talkies, edu-game systems, and digital "pets" were the hot new items. "Even the most old-fashioned of toys, such as stuffed animals, are getting electronic makeovers," according to the Times. Such as Mattel's Elmo and Winnie the Pooh plush toys, which - for $39.99 - allow a parent to use computer software and a USB cord to configure them to know their child's name, sing his or her favorite song, and say, "it's time for your nap."

Ignore 'FBI' email

Tell your kids to delete any email that looks like it's from the FBI, and definitely don't open the attachment the email tells you to open. Not much is known about these virus-carrying emails, but this: They "appear to come from an fbi.gov address. They tell recipients that they have accessed illegal Web sites and that their Internet use has been monitored by the FBI's 'Internet Fraud Complaint Center," the FBI told the Associated Press. The FBI is investigating the email. Here's CNET's coverage of this and its roundup of recent virus attacks.

Phone viruses on the rise

They're not a big deal yet, but if a cell phone user at your house comes to you some day and says, "Mom, my phone's making calls without me!", it may be a virus. The "cabir" mobile-phone virus has been spotted "in the wild" in the US, ZDNET reports. It "turned up in two Nokia 6600s on display in a California mobile phone store, in what is believed to be the first 'on-the-ground' sighting of the virus in the United States." The phones could've been "infected" by someone walking by the store window who had a phone with Bluetooth on it (technology that connects PCs, phones, printers, etc. wirelessly). It's just a sign of things to come, although there are 30 known cell-phone viruses so far, compared to some 112,000 for PCs. "Experts confirm that there's no need to panic, but admit the threat is growing" as mobiles become the main way to access the Net, ZDNET reports in another article. The ZDNET articles explain which phones are more vulnerable and what past and present phone viruses do to phones (and potentially users' family budgets). Some examples: forcing phones to dial premium-rate numbers, emergency services, or users' entire address books.

P2P lawsuits: Behind the scenes

"Woman Silenced by Music Mafia," the headline reads. Let's be clear: It heads an opinion piece by a student at the University of Texas, Austin (as a demographic group, university students have been a primary target of anti-P2P litigation). But it provides insights into what it's like to be sued for file-sharing by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). For example, in the notice she received from her Internet service provider, Time Warner, "Evelyn" is given the phone number for a "Settlement Service Center" in Seattle, "a business that conducts settlement negotiations with individuals who have been sued." The SSC representative tells her that this wouldn't have happened if she'd shared fewer than 500 music files, the Daily Texan reports. The Service Center then proceeds to sell her on settling with the RIAA. The Daily Texan reporter did a little math on these lawsuits in general: "In January, the Big Music Mafia boasted it had launched another 717 lawsuits against people who share music online, bringing the total number of those victimized to a shocking 8,423. If each one of these victims settled at the pre-inflated average of $3,000, then the RIAA is set to make an easy $25,269,000." [Thanks to BNA Internet Law for pointing this article out.]

Anti-violent games momemtum grows

One good way to look at the issue of kids' access to violent video games is the way Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich boiled it down in his state of the state address: "Buying these games should be up to parents - not kids." So far - because there aren't the age restrictions on sales of "Mature"-rated games that there are on retail sales to minors of alcohol, cigarettes, and sexually explicit magazines - the onus is still on kids. Part of the problem, of course, is that technology is involved - "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll" is much more familiar parenting turf than technology is for many parents, it seems. Anyway, the momentum toward violent-game regulation continues. California and Alabama have just joined the list of US state and municipal governments wrestling with this issue (see "More moves against violent games," 2/4). Leland Ye, father of four, child psychologist, and Speaker pro Tem of California's State Assembly is sponsoring legislation "aimed at curtailing the sales of ultra violent video games to children under 17," CommonSenseMedia.org reports (Speaker Ye had a guest editorial at CSM Friday). He cites some arresting stats: "Right now, according to the Federal Trade Commission, nearly 70% of 13-to-16-year-olds are able to purchase M-rated video games, which are designed for adults. Ninety-two percent of children play video or computer games, of which about 40% are rated M (Mature)." For the latest on Alabama, see the Associated Press article in today's USATODAY.

P2P: New faulty floodgate

It makes you wonder if anything can really stop the flood of file-sharing - lawsuits from record companies, detection software for parents, or low-cost legal music Web sites? Napster.com, which *was* the original "underground" file-sharing service (before Kazaa, BitTorrent, and all the other 2nd- and 3rd-generation P2P networks) and is now a legal music retailer online, is now widely publicized as the victim of an easy hack that turns it back into a vast global jukebox of free, unrestricted digital tunes. "Word spread across the Web recently that a few tweaks of WinAmp, a popular music-playing program, and a small plug-in available on the WinAmp Web site would allow users to take a music file protected with Microsoft technology and produce an unprotected copy," the New York Times (and many other outlets) reports. It adds that AOL, "which owns the company that makes WinAmp, removed the problematic plug-in from the WinAmp site," but copies popped up elsewhere on the Web, and there undoubtedly will be other work-arounds created. This ongoing battle epitomizes the challenges the Internet represents to so many age-old institutions and behaviors - the law, government, ethics, business, and *parenting*, to name just a few. Here are Wired News, and CNET on this, and Napster's challenge of the rumors at InformationWeek.

Info for ID-theft victims

This isn't about our usual kid-tech topic, but it may come in handy if anyone you know has the misfortune of experiencing identity theft. And the ChoicePoint debacle (the consumer-info clearinghouse having been tricked by an identity-theft ring into revealing the profiles of nearly 150,000 people last fall) has been in the news a lot lately. Slate.com took the time to answer the question: What do I do if identity theft has happened to me? Here's more from USATODAY, including a chart showing how many residents in each state have had personal info stolen from ChoicePoint. I *really* hope none of you need this information! [Here's the big picture from the New York Times on the law and commercial data vendors like ChoicePoint.]

'Ctrl-Alt-Protect'?

Would that protecting online kids were as simple as hitting the Ctrl, Alt, and "Protect" keys on the family PC! "For some parents, the idea of vulnerable [young] minds trolling cyberspace is as frightening as seeing a fourth grader driving, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. But are they doing something about it? A recent survey by the New York-based Conference Board indicated they are - that 95% of US parents say they monitor their children's online activities (see "Parents monitor kids," 1/21). The Inquirer took a hard look at the survey. If nothing else, the article suggests, the figure shows a healthy increased awareness: "It's significantly higher than any other previous survey findings, perhaps reflective of parents knowing that they should be scrutinizing what the computer is spilling into their homes - whether they really are or not." Experts quoted in the piece were skeptical of the 95% figure. But what really matters is how much communication there is between parent and child about what the latter is doing, seeing, and talking about on the Net. David Walsh, president of the Minneapolis-based National Institute on Media and the Family, "remains convinced" that "there is precious little inter-generational communication about cyberspace." The Inquirer goes on to give anecdotes about how some parents in the Philadelphia area are monitoring their kids - always the best part of articles like this. [The Duluth (MN) News Tribune also ran this article.]

RFID & kids: Good or bad?

Partly because a school in California was going to use it without consulting parents and partly because people don't understand it, RFID has been in the news a lot lately. RFID, aka "radio-frequency identification," technology so far has been used for inventory control and highway tolls. Now it's suddenly in the realm of children's privacy.

Brittan Elementary School, north of Sacramento, Calif., was widely in the news because it was to be the first school in California to test this next-generation bar-code technology on student ID badges. This week the school decided not to go forward with the program "when the company that developed the technology pulled out," the Associated Press reported. The proposed test had sparked protests from parents, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (see its press release), and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (and media coverage nationwide), the San Jose Mercury News had earlier reported. The real issue may be where RFID is headed, when it's associated with people's identities and movements (especially children's). Will future versions be able to "know" or "tell" too much? Please see my newsletter this week for some context and perspective.

Ratings for UK mobiles

It's not a rating system yet. It's actually a step in that direction for UK cell phones. "The long-awaited classification framework for adult content on mobile phones was launched [recently] by the Independent Mobile Classification Body," The Register reports. Basically, it appears to be a set of definitions or labels for content that content providers themselves have to attach to their material. "If they do not, they risk breaching the terms of the contract with their mobile operator client, who is then responsible for enforcing the rules." So, there are a lot of "ifs." But it may be an important building block for mobile operators in the US and other countries to adopt. Content labels or classifications include profanity, sex, nudity, violence, drugs, horror, imitable techniques, and universally accessible. To be in that last category, "content must not actively promote or encourage activities like drinking alcohol or gambling," according to The Register. Examples it offers of "imitable techniques," are "headbutting or use of weapons, or 'detailed descriptions of techniques that could be used in a criminal offence.' In layman's terms, that means no descriptions of how to steal a car while high on drugs and listening to illegally downloaded music." According to Juniper Research, adult content on mobiles and other portable devices is projected to reach $1 billion in worldwide sales this year. (Thanks to QuickLinks for pointing this news out.)

More spam coming (sigh)

Despite news to the contrary last month, spam is on the increase, ClickZ Stats reports. So does the BBC, offering one explanation: all those zombie PCs (in unsuspecting households out there) that got infected by trojan viruses, PCs spammers now use to send zillions of obnoxious emails about mortgages, body enhancements, and cheap prescription drugs (see "What if our PC's a zombie?!"). And now the Washington Post reports that spammers have a whole new distribution strategy. The New York Times says the US's CAN SPAM Act hasn't helped a bit. "The law did not prohibit unsolicited commercial email [just the fraudulent kind] and has turned out to be worse than useless." It basically made spam legal! The inevitable solution, ZDNET suggests: "We're about to become a whitelist world." What's that? you ask. Well, you know about black lists - telling our spam filters and ISPs filtering services what emails we *don't* want. Spam experts say that's no longer effective. Soon we'll have to tell these Internet checkpoints what email addresses we *want* to hear from (like my newsletter please!). Everything else will get blocked. The New York Times mentions another solution that's been circulating - kind of postage-stamp technology that makes the sender "pay." Meanwhile, spam and viruses "are also spreading fast to cell phones and other handheld, wireless devices," the Denver Post reports, citing two recent studies. Oh joy!

'vikings NOT minnesota'

Our kids certainly won't learn how to get the most from the Web in a "computer skills" class, points out a commentator in the New York Times. "A teacher of Scandinavian literature at Berkeley recently described how students used the Web to research a paper on the Vikings." They were smart enough to put "vikings NOT minnesota" in the search box, but they were "perfectly willing to believe a Web site that describes early Viking settlements in Oklahoma," writes Stanford University linguist Geoffrey Nunberg in his must-read oped piece. To negotiate this bottomless, unfiltered pool of information called the Web, our children need to develop what Nunberg calls information literacy. That takes time; it's a learning process. We can't let what Nunberg calls "the legacy of the print age" (our trust in print publishing and the editors, publishers, and librarians who filtered it) or our delight in the convenience of search engines keep us from helping our kids question what they encounter on the Web (or anywhere). "Instruction in information literacy will have to pervade every level of education and every course in the curriculum, from university historians' use of collections of online slave narratives to middle-school home economics teachers showing their students where to find reliable nutrition information on the Web," Nunberg says. Maybe even before middle school! For more on this, see "Critical thinking: Kids' best research tool."

Low-cost PCs reviewed

The Mac Mini's been everywhere in the tech news due to its $499 price tag, but for those not ready for total family-PC conversion," there are alternatives in the PC world, of course. The Washington Post recently took the time to answer the question of whether $500 is enough to get all a family wants from a PC, testing eight desktops - systems from Compaq, Dell, EMachines, HP, IBuyPower, Polywell, Sys Technology, and WinBook ranging from $505 to $750. Six had at least 512 MB of RAM. Bottom line: "We found many of these desktops fine for most home and office tasks, but less suitable for high-action gaming and heavy-duty graphics or audio work." Do read the article for specifics. The Post also had what I found to be the best family-oriented review of the Mini (see "Mini's ins & outs" in my newsletter).

Teen jailed for film-sharing

This wasn't just for file-sharing movies also available in video stores (which a lot of people are doing). This 18-year-old in Arizona stood out from the pack, apparently, because he was sharing movies that were still in theaters. Parvin Dhaliwal of Mesa "pleaded guilty to possession of unauthorized copies of intellectual property, which is a felony," the Associated Press reported. He was sentenced to three months in prison, three years' probation, and 200 hours of community service and was fined $5,400. He was also was ordered to take a copyright class at the University of Arizona and to avoid future file-sharing. For other recent P2P news, see "Anti-P2P tool for parents" in my newsletter.

Drive-by disses

On the surface, this is a story about grownups, not teens, but for that very reason it might make a great family discussion point. Joseph Steffen, an aide to Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich (R), was forced to resign last week because of his damaging chatroom posts and emails about the Democratic mayor of Baltimore, Martin O'Malley, the Washington Post reports. "Like millions of Americans for whom the Internet has become part of daily life, Steffen may have believed that what he wrote online was private and as a result felt freer to say things he would not have said in person. But when his online discussion of the intentional spread of rumors about ... Mayor O'Malley became known, his 'private' statements led to a very public dismissal." It's that "disinhibition" that the experts talk about. "People are less comfortable maligning someone face-to-face because they don't want to see the reaction of the other person," according to the Post. "On the Internet, where people think they can remain anonymous, there are fewer inhibitions" (for the teen version, see "Cybersocializing, cyberbullying" in my 9/10 issue).

Bye-bye, CDs?

Yes, pretty soon they'll be obsolete, sound-recording and music-publishing experts are saying. Not huge news, of course, since formats - records, cassettes, etc. - get replaced. What's news is that, for the first time in history, the current format won't be replaced by an object you can hold in your hands. It's being replaced by a "data file," the Washington Post reports. "Think 'Dark Side of the Moon' as an invisible cyberswirl of 1's and 0's. No CD case. No liner notes to flip through. No ... nothing," the Post emotes. Our kids know this. To them it's empowering, it spells choice. They download tunes from the Net, burn them onto CDs, upload them to MP3 players, import them into sound-editing software and mix and "enhance" at will. We're the ones who have to get used to the new focus for record companies: licensing content, not selling products. But we needn't despair: CDs will be around for a while (maybe even as long as we are). And we're pretty hip too - 22 million US adults (11% of the population) own an MP3 player, reports the Dallas Morning News. The Post adds that "CD album sales are bright, but the downloadable digital future is blinding.... During the second half of 2004, more than 91 million digital tracks - songs downloaded from the Internet - were sold, compared with 19.2 million in the same period in 2003. That's an increase of 376%."

Less child porn from Oz

In a way, it's all good news in Australia. The number of complaints in Australia about online child pornography "have soared more than 300%" since 2000, but the number of sites based in that country has "fallen dramatically," Australian IT reports. The growth in complaints to the Australian Broadcasting Authority's Internet Complaints Hotline shows an awareness both of the problem and of a body that apparently can do something about it (the diminishing number of Oz-based sites is obviously good news). "Of 404 investigations completed by the ABA, 293 found prohibited content, including 266 items classified as an 'exploitative/offensive depiction of a child,' or child pornography," according to Australian IT. Only three sites were found to be hosted in Australia and were issued "take-down orders" by the ABA, though they must not have been illegal, because "none warranted referral to police." The bad news for the US is, 75% of the 380 sites deemed illegal by the ABA were based in the US (about 10% in Europe). In the US, complaints about online child porn can go to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's CyberTipline (or 800.843.5678), in Canada to Cybertip.ca (or toll-free by phone to 866.658.9022). Hotlines throughout Europe can be found right on the home page at INHOPE.org.

Advergames & 'the nag factor'

Every parent knows what "the nag factor is"! It's some variation of "Mom, Dad, can I get ___ [fill in name of must-have product], please, please please?!", repeated anywhere from 9 to 99 times. It's what advertisers spend a lot of money generating in as many households as possible, writes guest commentator Nancy Willard, director of the Center for Safe & Responsible Internet Use (CSRIU) and Cyberbully.org. What they've found to be the most effective tool for generating the nag factor online, writes Nancy, is "advergaming." "Advergaming is the integration of advertising messages into online games, and it's all the rage in the Internet advertising community," she reports. For two reasons: 1) Kids don't bother to click on banner ads, and 2) unlike with banner, billboard, and TV ads, with games, "advertisers can create conditions for children (and adults) to immerse themselves for extended periods of time in a fun environment that's all about promoting brand identification and loyalty." Please click to my newsletter this week for examples and links to other people's views on immersive marketing.

More on the Mini

A lot of excitement was generated by the unveiling of this cute little computing item (from real people as much as techies interested in how much Apple crammed into what The Register mistook for a "sandwich box"). Finally, an affordable Apple. Wednesday The Register added its take on the $499 Mini from an average home user's perspective. The best review of this sort I've seen is Rob Pegoraro's at the Washington Post. But for families with PCs who aren't ready to go whole-hog Mac, SafeKids.com's Larry Magid provides a great alternative: network your Mini and PC together and have them share mouse, keyboard, and monitor. "At the risk of offending some Apple enthusiasts, Windows users could think of the Mini as a PC peripheral," Larry writes in the New York Times. It's done with a KVM switch (for "keyboard, video, and mouse"). Larry explains in detail how it works.

School grades online

Grades aren't the only information more and more schools are putting on the Web for parents. "Some teachers include pending assignments, written comments, class participation, and disciplinary actions as well," the Associated Press reports. "Many schools also let parents check whether their kids skipped first period, or whether they had chips or an apple for lunch." The holdup in putting all this information online, it seems, is how much parents are using it. There's a bit of a lag. "Many parents lack Internet access or computer skills," though some parents are pressuring schools to put their kids' performance on the Web. The AP cites figures from one company that sells student-info-management systems, Pearson Education, showing that "only a quarter of its 16,000 school districts buy the parental-access package."

Meanwhile, some students and parents want *everything* to be online - including classes and school itself. The US Department of Education says online public schools are experiencing "explosive growth," the New York Times reports, in a fascinating article about how one got started in a teeny town in Colorado. Parents, too, are engaged in online learning. Though the student in this article at Techlearning.com is a mom, her experience offers unusually good insights into what online classes are like - for parents considering online school for a child.

Tanned chicken & other IM worms

You might want to talk about viruses with IM-ers at your house - particularly those who use MSN Messenger. First, everybody in your family knows that instant-messaging is just as susceptible to worms and viruses as email, right? If your IM-ers get sent a picture of a "baked chicken with a bikini tan," as described by India-based Techtree.com, tell them *not* to click on it! It would launch the latest IM worm, Bropia, which is infecting PCs all over the world right now. "It also releases a second more dangerous worm, called Agabot.ajc, on the infected computer," ZDNET reports. Here's an older but bigger-picture piece on viruses via instant-messaging at PC World - note the IM protection tips at the end.

Student monitored teacher

A 16-year-old student in Texas plugged a keystroke-logging device into a teacher's computer when the teacher wasn't looking and later tried to sell answers to a test. Fellow students turned him in, and he's now charged with a Class B misdemeanor "punishable by a fine of up to $2,000 and up to 180 days in jail," the Houston Chronicle reports. Right now he's attending a different school. My thanks to BNA Internet Law for pointing this news out.

'The Firefox explosion'

If anyone at your house is interested in software code, you might find this Wired magazine story as interesting as I did. And it really is a story - as much about what young programmers (one Firefox software writer started at 14) can accomplish as about the alternative browser's sudden explosive growth. "Even in beta, Firefox's clean, intuitive interface, quick page-loading, and ability to elude intruders elicited a thunderous response," Wired reports. "In the month following its official November launch, more than 10 million people downloaded Firefox." Much more interesting, though, are the two people "most responsible for the browser's success ... Blake Ross, an angular, hyperkinetic 19-year-old Stanford sophomore with spiky black hair, and Ben Goodger, a stout, soft-spoken 24-year-old New Zealander." Here's Firefox's download page at the Mozilla Foundation's site.

Cheaper online tunes

Some digital music fans (including plenty of kids) think $1 a song is highway robbery and say that's why they use the free file-sharing services. Other reasons fans (and industry analysts) of all ages cite include restrictions on what one can do with the songs once they've been purchased. Molly Wood, a senior editor at ZDNET, does a good job of laying out music consumers' current choices (on the legal side of digital music) - from "renting" songs at Napster (when you stop paying, they go away) to buying them at iTunes (but restricted to Apple's player for listening to them). "I'm in a digital music bind, and I don't like it," Molly writes. "I can't imagine why people don't object more strongly to the idea that you can't choose a music player without choosing a compatible music service and vice versa. Maybe it's because the model is similar to ones we're already enslaved by, such as our forced cell phone/carrier marriages. But that's thinking about things all wrong. I wouldn't buy food that can be cooked only in a GE microwave. I wouldn't buy a car that I could drive only while wearing Adidas shoes."



At least cheaper alternatives to iTunes are available. The newest - launched today with 300,000 songs - is MP3tunes.com, ZDNET reports. Created by Michael Robertson, who developed the original MP3.com, it will sell tunes for $.88 and albums for $8.88 and focus on emerging artists, according to SiliconValley.com. Music will be in the MP3 format, "which doesn't have any copy-protection restrictions and can be played on most, if not all, digital music players." Wal-Mart's music service also sells songs for $.88. Even cheaper are some Russian music services, the most well-known of which is AllofMP3.com (with songs for $.10 or less, good sound quality and no restrictions), but some users are getting nervous about their legality. Here's a very helpful article on legal questions about using cheap foreign services at the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, more people are paying for online music. A study found that about 47% of people 12 and older who downloaded music in December paid a fee to do so, up from 22% a year ago, CNET reports.

Get-the-patches day

Yesterday was Safer Internet Day (everywhere but in the US, it seems); today might be called Safer PC Day. Microsoft has just released "a dozen software updates to fix 16 security flaws - half of which it deemed 'critical' - in all versions of the Windows operating system," the Washington Post reports. So, on your family PC(s), if patch-downloading isn't automatic or if that little icon didn't pop up telling you some patching's needed, be sure to go to Windows Update to get all the new patches (if you use a browser other than Explorer, go here). They defend your PC from viruses, worms, phishers, They fix vulnerable spots in MSN Messenger (MS's IM software that's very popular with teens), Windows, Explorer, Windows Media Player, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and they fight viruses, worms, phishers, and other hacks and exploits. "Half of the vulnerabilities [the patches fix] require action by a user - such as clicking a link in an e-mail or opening a document attachment - before attackers could gain control of a computer," the Post adds. So tell your kids: Be extremely careful about clicking on links and attachments in emails, and ideally ask the sender what it's about. If they don't answer, don't click."

IM-ing's 'like candy'

"Finish your homework before you can IM" is an increasingly common rule in many households that include tweens and teens. Because "the first thing many teens do at home is get to the computer, connect to the Internet, and check their buddy list" to see who's online, reports the San Diego Union Tribune. Then they're hooked - they could be IM-ing for hours. Also, the size of one's buddy list is becoming a status symbol. But ultimately "what makes instant messaging cool among teenagers is 'presence,' the idea that there's always someone out there available to talk with," the Union Tribune adds in a very readable update on the instant-messaging phenomenon (note that word "presence" - I'm seeing it more and more in ref to online communications). Another really interesting insight comes from a 17-year-old girl quoted in the article as say, "Instant-messaging becomes less important when you become more comfortable with who you are." As for younger IM-ers (it usually starts at around 6th grade), the article quotes one baby-boomer dad as saying that, to his 11-year-old son, IM-ing is "like candy." My own 6th-grader has told me that, basically. It's pure fluff that he said he'll be sick of pretty soon. I think he means it, but I'm not holding my breath. How about you? Email me your kids' views on IM-ing (and your rules and other ways of dealing with it). Or post just below by clicking on "comments." I love hearing from you.

More Net-savvy, greater risk: Study

The more Net-literate kids are the more likely they are to run into risks online. That was the key finding of a two-year study by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). "It is the skilled youngsters, more than the beginners, who are likely to encounter online risks such as bullying, online porn or privacy risks," reads the study's press release. The researchers, Dr. Magdalena Bober and social psychology Prof. Sonia Livingstone, acknowledged that this poses quite a challenge to kids' caregivers: "This points up the dilemma that parents and other regulators face. Restricting children and young people's Internet use reduces the risks but also carries a cost because it reduces their opportunities online." Stephen Carrick-Davies, CEO of Childnet, one of the study's sponsors, highlighted the importance of parents staying engaged in kids' Net activities and helping them develop critical thinking as they move around and communicate via the Net. Fortunately, the research also found that skilled Net users "don't show blind trust. Rather, they are better at searching and more able to find reliable Web sites, for example by checking information across several sites. This is an improvement over what was discovered in a small study at Wellesley College in 2003 (see "Critical thinking" in my 5/30/03 issue). This latest UK study involved "a series of focus group discussions and then a national survey of 1,511 9-to-19-year-olds" throughout the UK. Here's the full report at LSE in pdf format and the BBC's coverage.

Kids' Net safety: Today's the day!

Safer Internet Day is being marked around the world today. The awareness-raising "event, backed by the European Commission, will see over 65 organisations participating in 30 countries from Australia to Iceland and from Russia to Singapore," reports WebUser.co.uk. The day has its own just-launched Net-safety-ed Web site. Canada's Media Awareness Network is using the day to promote parents' involvement in their children's online activities, as is Singapore's Parents Advisory Group for the Internet, Channel NewsAsia reports. Schools in 19 EU member states will be participating in a contest in which they write Internet adventure stories. "The winning story will be published worldwide, and an important event will be organised around the award ceremony," according to Eurofunding.com.

Kazaa slows down PCs

That's the message in an internal document written by the chief technology officer of Sharman Networks, makers of Kazaa file-sharing software. Sharman "employees ... 'hate' installing the ... software because it has ill effects on their computers," CNET cites the document as saying. That's good for young file-sharers and their parents to know too, besides the other questionable, in some cases illegal, results of installing peer-to-peer (P2P) software. The adware and spyware that gets inadvertently downloaded along with the tunes file-sharers are looking for on the P2P networks, in the process of file-sharing, "slow down users' machines" and Web browsing, Sharman itself confirms. Then there's the pornography and viruses that, reportedly, are ubiquitous on the networks. And all of that is in addition to the thousands of lawsuits that media companies have filed against the big-time file-sharers (especially university students). [For details, see "File-sharing realities for families", and to find out what software's installed on your family PC, see last week's "Anti-P2P tool for parents").] If you have digital music fans at your house, at the very least a family discussion about file-sharing would be good to have - or maybe a session in which the kid educates the parent about how it works and how it affects both the PC and "our family's values." If you have digital music fans at your house, at the very least a family discussion about file-sharing would be good to have - or maybe a session in which the kid educates the parent about how it works and how it affects both the PC and "our family's values" (there's fuel for discussion in "A tech-literate dad on file-sharing").



At the macro level, we're arriving at a showdown, the New York Times reports, as a milestone decision by the US Supreme Court nears. Next month the Court is to hear arguments in a case that pits the US's film industry against two file-sharing networks, Grokster and Streamcast Networks. The Times does a good job of showing how muddy the debate is, that it's about restricting innovation and what people can do with technology as well as copyright theft. Here's good background to the case written for the layman at ZDNET (with a consumer-rights angle).

Trash talk in online games

To some (probably young, hard-core players), the trash talk and profanity of game chat are no doubt part of the online multiplayer game experience. To others (probably a lot of parents), it's shocking and inappropriate. Mary, a reader in Missouri, heard what game opponents were saying to her 15-year-old Xbox player, then - to her credit - got into the game herself to see what it was all about. Here's what she emailed me, saying she felt other parents might like to know about the chatter surrounding these multiplayer games. Please click to this week's issue of my newsletter for more of Mary's story and the latest news on massively multiplayer online games (MMOG - catchy, huh?! - how 'bout massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPG, an acroynym used in a recent Washington Post piece about 18-year-old gamer Rocco's amazing game development success story). [Profanity at school.... I'm adding this April '05 Washington Post retroactively because of its relevance: "More and More, Kids Say the Foulest Things: Anti-Swearing Efforts Falling on Deaf Ears."]

Watch out for 2 new worms!

With these two new worms, your family PC is fine if nobody opens any email attachments. Both involve faces. The funny-face worm, named Wurmark-F, " displays a photo of a man 'gurning' - a British tradition of pulling silly faces," CNET reports. The second one, called Bobax.H, targets news junkies with a photo of Saddam Hussein's face (the email says he's dead), CNET reports in a separate report. Both carry attachments that, if opened, launch trojan software that takes control of the computer (turns it into one of those zombie machines that send out zillions of spam messages). For more on this, see my feature, "What if our PC's a zombie?".

13-year-old 'Linux guru'

Most of us don't even know what Linux is, much less speak with authority on it at conferences. Plus, in an era when researchers are trying to figure out why there aren't enough girls in math and science, this little Linux guru is a girl. [Linux is the open-source computer operating system started by Linus Torvalds and called "open source" because it's continuously evolving as it's contributed to and improved upon by software writers worldwide.] Elizabeth Garbee "may not know as much about Linux as her father Bdale Garbee, Linux CTO for HP and former Debian Project Leader [he helped Elizabeth install her first Debian server when she was 9], but that won't stop her from presenting at linux.conf.au 2005," ZDNET UK reports. Elizabeth will be speaking on "Extending Tuxracer – Learning by Playing," a seminar about making modifications to the popular open-source game, Tuxracer (featuring the fat little penguin who is the Linux mascot), to make it more fun, ZDNET UK adds. The conference will be held at Australian National University in late April.

NBC's 'kids' secret lives' series

NBC's Today Show zoomed in on kids and media this week in "The Secret Lives of Children." The show did a great job of illustrating the problem of growing up (and parenting) in what pediatrician and author Meg Meeker refers to as "a toxic sexual culture." But I feel there was a little too much fear-mongering in NBC's treatment of the Internet - note the headlines, "What you don't know can hurt kids" and "For kids, danger lurks a click away." NBC's Dateline reporter actually joined Internet vigilante group Perverted Justice on a sting that caught some pedophiles visiting what they thought were a teenage girl's house. But the Today Show pieces are worth reading. They make some tried-and-true points - stressing the value of engaged parenting and tech literacy and suggesting that parents should be more concerned about contacts (pedophiles) than content (porn) where online kids are concerned. What these articles don't mention, though, is that Net-initiated sex crimes against kids represent a fraction of overall sexual exploitation of children in the US - in 2000 (latest figures available), there were 500 arrests for Net-related crimes vs. 65,000 overall (see "Rethinking 'stranger danger'" and a study done for the American Psychological Association). Here are the parts of Today's series on what kids are exposed to on TV and on the radio.

Free anti-P2P tool for parents

Hollywood has an interest in keeping kids' file-sharing under control, and now they've delivered on it. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is providing free software called "Parent File Scan" that scans your computer for P2P programs and movie and music files. Here's a review and explanation of how the software works at Freedom to Tinker, personal blog of Princeton University computer science Prof. Edward Felten. He and other experts recommend care in deleting files because the software makes no distinction between legal and illegal ones. If anything, this software is best used as a tool for discussion with our kids about what they're downloading and sharing. Here's advice on teen file-sharing from a tech-literate dad and my feature, "File-sharing realities for families." On the MPAA's software, here's coverage from CNET and the BBC. In addition, the MPAA just filed its second round of lawsuits against film file-sharers, CNET reports, and the RIAA just sued 717 more tune-swappers.



Meanwhile, downloading TV shows (without the expense of TiVo or a cable box) is becoming quite the phenomenon, the New York Times reports. The Times cites BigChampagne.com research showing that, in one week last month, The Simpsons, the No. 1 "Most Shared Show," was shared 924,143 times. Then there's high-minded file-sharing (e.g., P2P communities built around Japanese anime), which also is technically illegal. An example is Anime-Faith, which uses BitTorrent P2P technology. CNET reports insightfully and in depth.

More moves vs. violent games

The idea of controlling the sale of violent games to kids seems to be picking up steam around the US. This week measures were introduced in Georgia's state Senate and in the District of Columbia. In Georgia, two bills were introduced that would make it a crime to sell or rent violent video games to minors, the Associated Press reports, and in DC, religious, community, and political leaders called for a ban on sales of violent and sexually explicit video games to minors, the Washington Post reports. In a briefing, the latter linked games such as the Grand Theft Auto series, Halo 2 and Mortal Kombat to juvenile violence in real life. Similar bans have been considered in Michigan and Illinois, and "a Tennessee lawsuit blames Grand Theft Auto for the death of a man killed by teenagers," according to the Post. But the legal prospects for game-sales bans are uncertain, the Post adds. "Federal appeals courts have rejected as unconstitutional efforts by St. Louis County and Indianapolis to regulate video games."

Mobiles not good for driving: Study

Whether the phone is handheld or hands-free, a 20-year-old talking on it while driving has the reactions of a 70-year-old, "increasing their risk of accidents," the Associated Press reports. That's according to a University of Utah study of 18-to-25-year-old drivers. "In fact, motorists who talk on cell phones are more impaired than drunken drivers with blood-alcohol levels exceeding 0.08," the AP adds. Drivers on phones are 18% slower in braking and take 17% longer to regain speed after braking, the study found. The findings are a challenge to laws that only address driving while talking on a handheld cell phone.

More on mommy blogs

"The world's most thankless occupation, parenthood, has never inspired so much copy," reported the New York Times in last Sunday's Style section, not painting a wholly pretty picture of parents chronicling their family life in the some 8,500 blogs of this nature. "For the generation that begat reality television it seems that there is not a tale from the crib (no matter how mundane or scatological) that is unworthy of narration." Actually, writer David Hochman says, these blogs are not so much online baby scrapbooks as "online shrines to parental self-absorption." And he cites a psychologist's view that this is one way we overcome that feeling of being invisible that comes over newcomers to the parenting experience. One mom said her blog, and all the emails responding to it, helped her get past postpartum depression faster. Hochman links to plenty of examples of daddy and mommy blogs, including one or two that have spawned books. Here's a great *group* blog called DotMoms - nothing like a little mommy and daddy solidarity! And a previous item I ran on baby blogs and a reader/daddy blogger's response.

MSN Search launched

MSN's been beta-testing its new search service for several months. Now, after taking "suggestions from people who used the test version to improve some functions," its own home-grown search engine is officially launched," E-Commerce Times reports. You'll find it right at the top of MSN.com and on its own page. Improvements include 50% faster results and better answers to questions using Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia, according to E-Commerce Times, though MSN says it still needs to work on the "search near me" (local yellow pages-like) feature. The company's main goal is to respond to queries with actual answers, not just Web-pages, ZDNET reports.



Lots of search news these days. Just in: Yahoo's new search-on-the-fly feature, whereby you click on a word or phrase like "Iraq" in a news story and turns up links to related Web pages, CNET reports. Here's last week's search news: "New search perks" and "Answers, pls."

Teens not so Web-savvy: Study

Are we parents techno-peasants compared to our teenagers? A just-released study by market researchers Nielsen Norman Group found the answer to be yes and no. USATODAY and CNN handled the findings a little differently, but both said the findings challenge the widely held stereotype of the teen "technowizard." "The study [conducted in California, Colorado, and Australia] showed that teens quickly succumb to Internet ennui and, unlike their parents, give up quickly on sites that are difficult to navigate," according to CNN. But both CNN's headline and USATODAY's article says that means parents are more Web-savvy. It could also mean we're more patient and read instructions more - it just might be more about maturity. "The Nielsen study asked 38 teens between the ages of 13 and 17 to perform tasks on 23 specific Web sites. The study measured a success rate of 55% for teenage users" and 66% for adult users. "The success indicates a proportion of time the users were able to complete a task on a target site. Teens were found to have poor reading skills, unsophisticated research strategies and a 'dramatically' lower patience level," CNN reports.



This doesn't deter me from believing that teenagers as a whole are more tech- and Net-savvy than parents as a whole. But there's a distinction that these articles fail to make between "media literacy" and "Web literacy." I think adults are generally more media-literate, more critical about the media they consume, on and off the Web, and maturity is part of the reason. Youth, on the other hand, are much more fluent (and adventurous) with the technology itself - plenty critical about how easily they can move around in a Web site and not so much about its content. What do *you* think? Email me! Here's NNGroup's press release. For more on critical thinking online, see my 5/30/03 issue.

Teen worm writer to be jailed

His parents were partly to blame in this case, according to the judge. Jeffrey Lee Parson, arrested in 2003 for writing a variant of the Blaster worm that infected some 48,000 computers, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison, Wired News reports. He also will have to perform community service, be supervised for three years, and pay restitution (a hearing for the amount to paid to Microsoft and other affected will be held later this month). "US District Judge Marsha Pechman, however, did not give the Minnesota teen the maximum 37-month sentence, saying Parson [then a high school student] wrote malicious software and used it to attack other computers partly because of neglectful upbringing and supervision." The original Blaster worm's writer has yet to be caught according to ZDNET UK.