Dot-kids: Net playground or vacant lot?

Not totally so, but the Web's domain just for kids is more a vacant lot than the popular playground it was meant to be. As well-meaning as its development was, the ".kids.us" top-level domain, just isn't working. It was set up back in 2002 because of federal legislation sponsored by Rep. John Shimkus (Republican-Ill.), and it still has only 20-or-so sites in it, even though more than 1,700 addresses like "mummies.kids.us" were registered when dot-kids opened for business, Reuters reports. What happened? Please click to this week's issue of my newsletter for some reasons and Net-mom's view of the dot-kids sites that are worth a child's time ("Net-mom" and librarian Jean Armour Polly wrote six editions of Net-mom's Internet Kids & Family Yellow Pages).