A mom's heads-up: Teens in chat

As huge as IM is with kids and teens these days, chat has not gone away, Lauren, a mom in California, is here to tell you. Mother of two boys 13 and 10, Lauren has configured the parental controls on the computer they use so they cannot chat online, and their computer is one of two she has placed "side by side so can I watch all their online activity." Why so hands-on? Because of her own experience in online chat. Lauren recently emailed me an "open letter to all parents who have teens online" because of it. Please click to this week's issue of my newsletter for details.

New round of P2P lawsuits

The Recording Industry Association of America filed it latest round of lawsuits against file-sharers yesterday. Of the 757 sued (bringing the number to 14,800 in the US), "about 64 were filed against individuals using college networks," Reuters reports. For more on this, see "MI court rejects P2P suit [against parents]," "Anti-P2P software for parents," and "File-sharing realities for families." The 757 sued are at 17 US universities, according to Good Morning Silicon Valley's somewhat tongue-in-cheek coverage.

Bold Net goal in Maine

The former governor who put laptops in the hands of 7th- and 8th-graders statewide is now working on making Net connectivity available for free to any household in Maine that can't afford it. Angus King, who left office in '02, has started a foundation, the Maine Learning Technology Foundation, to extend the laptop program to connectivity for all students," Stateline.org reports, in keeping with his vision for Maine to gain "an economic edge by becoming the most digitally literate state in the nation." At least where tech-enabled students are concerned, the numbers are positive. "Independent studies by researchers at the University of Southern Maine say the positive impact of the laptop program is being felt statewide." More than 80% of the teachers surveyed last year said students who are using the state-provided laptops were more engaged in their schoolwork and produced better work, and 70+% of students surveyed said the laptops "helped them to be more organized and complete higher-quality schoolwork more quickly."

From Wikipedia to wiki-textbooks

I have to admit to a little skepticism about this - how could a "textbook" written and edited by the online masses be reliably accurate? What I discovered in reading CNET's piece about Wikibooks is that mine was an old, narrow view of textbooks. Wikibooks won't necessarily replace textbooks (at least not for a while); they add something new to the equation. They're a teaching tool. They're also a catalyst, lighting a fire under very proprietary textbook publishers that take years to get new material into the pipeline. But the teaching-tool part is the really interesting one. CNET cites U. of Massachusetts biology Prof. Steven Brewer's vision of "teachers - at any level - asking students to examine existing Wikibooks entries for accuracy and relevancy and then appending their findings to those entries … teaching tool and a work in progress all at once." The Net as it should be - a tool to enhance the immediacy, richness, and empowerment of collaborative learning, teaching kids critical thinking in the process. There's much more about this in the CNET piece, including some pitfalls that will have to be worked out - do check it out. BTW, if you want to see how the Wikipedia works, with its "749,000 some articles in English alone [among its 10 languages]," see this other CNET piece. It really is the information version of the open-source Linux operating system. I wish we could make this newsletter just as open-source - send in your comments (or post just below)!

MTV on phones

Music videos have been on the Web for some time. Now they're coming to cellphones - MTV-produced ones, anyway, USATODAY reports. "MTV will create and distribute videos with Warner artists such as Green Day, Sean Paul and Twista for cellphones and other wireless gadgets." Warner's the first of the major record labels to strike a deal with MTV for the phone platform, USATODAY adds. Pricing will depend on what the phone companies offer, whether pay-per-video or subscription. Here's another view from the San Jose Mercury News. A phone content-rating system is in the works in the US (see my 5/6/05 issue, though there are signs the cellphone services are interested in selling porn on video-enabled phones (see last week's issue).

Videogames & ADD

"Son, don't forget to do your videogaming tonight." Ever think that sentence would spill from a parent's lips?! Well, USATODAY reports that some kids who have attention deficit disorder are being prescribed videogame therapy by psychologists - aided by the S.M.A.R.T. BrainGames system currently being used in 50 US clinics (according to the psychologist who adapted it for this type of therapy). Working with a PlayStation 2 console, the "consists of a special controller, a helmet with built-in sensors for monitoring brain activity, and a Smartbox that receives the brain signals," according to the USATODAY piece. When players are calmly focused on the game, it plays normally; when their minds wander, "the Smartbox sends a signal to the controller hindering acceleration or character movement in the game." The system was among 40 projects on display at a recent "Games for Health" Conference in Baltimore, Md. - "an offshoot of The Serious Games Initiative, which seeks to push the evolution of games technology to aid in problem solving, public policy and social issues," USATODAY adds.

Anti-P2P software for parents

The US film industry released it last February (see my coverage), and now the free software's available under a different name in six more languages at a site representing the recording industry worldwide. What Parent File Scan and Digital File Check do is 1) scan your PC and tell you what media files (video, music, photos, etc.) and file-sharing software you may have on it, and 2) let you delete any of those files and programs. The very easy-to-use app, which works only on Windows PCs, is designed to help less-than-tech-literate parents educate themselves about multimedia on the family PC, but TechWhack.com in India suggests that, these days, "when the kids at home are smarter than their parents when it comes to using computers … we at TechWhack doubt that this application is going to make much of a difference." In other words, this software may not be able to find the more sophisticated work-arounds young digital-media fans are undoubtedly already developing as P2P services "go legit" (see this blog post). Here's Digital File Scan at the London-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry's site. You can get Parent File Scan at the Motion Picture Association of America's site, RespectCopyrights.org, or through its developer's site. And coverage of its release at the BBC and the International Herald Tribune. See also "File-sharing realities for families."

New PC security tips

In addition to the basics - a firewall and anti-virus and -spyware software - there are five tips for further security, reports USATODAY's Kim Kommando. These are good and, particularly for parents, the two about 1) having the PC the kids use function as a limited user account (to keep outsiders from taking control), and 2) telling your kids to "watch out for crush sites." A real vulnerability for family PCs is kids' natural curiosity, playfulness, and tendency not to think about consequences. So when they get a message with a subject like "Someone has a crush on you" or "How does your body rate?", they'll quite likely click to the site with the "answer." In the case of the crush come-on, "a link [in the email] directs you to a site that resembles a dating service. To find out who has the crush, you must guess by entering the correct email address," Kim writes. That's one way spammers collect email address and screennames. The link in the email can also take gullible ones to nasty sites that upload malicious software code on their PCs. You get the picture - this is good fuel for a family discussion on PC security (and kids' critical thinking).

Netscape has flaws too...

…but no security patches for them as yet, the Washington Post reports, which means "the bad guys" can use it too to take control of PCs. It occurred to me I should pass this along also, since Netscape didn't come up in the discussion I linked to. Even though the browser is "driven more or less by the same 'engine' as Firefox," Netscape hasn't issued an update to fix the flaws, writes Post security writer Brian Krebs. Nobody who uses a Web browser gets to have even a false sense of security these days!

Firefox secure?

For Firefox users, the browser and questions about its security have been in the news a *lot* in the past few days. Washington Post security writer Brian Krebs points to a debate at Slashdot ("news for nerds") about it and says the nine latest security flaws in it "appear to be" plugged in the latest version, 1.0.7 (Brian links to the download page). CNET's Robert Varnosi writes that "Microsoft has only patched two-thirds of the critical vulnerabilities within Internet Explorer, while Mozilla can boast an 86% patch rate." Another Washington Post piece does the big picture on the browser battle. Part of that is market share, with Explorer having slipped from 95% to 89%, Firefox having achieved 4%, and Opera - which is now free - now at about 1%. Both their battle and all of ours with PC security are ongoing - see my recent lead feature on this for a comprehensive approach.

'GTA: San Andreas' back in stores

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will be back on shelves Oct. 18, again compliant with the "M" (Mature) game rating and with a bit of "value add," Reuters reports. There will be a special edition for PlayStation 2 with a DVD add-on and, for Xbox, it'll be bundled with GTA 3 and GTA: Vice City. GTA: San Andreas had been pulled by retailers because of sexually explicit content that had upped its rating to "Adults Only." See my 7/22/05 issue for background and the Entertainment Software Rating Board for a description of the ratings. Unless or until there's regulation of game sales to minors, parents concerned about violent or sexually explicit content will want to pay attention to these ratings on game packaging.

Virtual epidemic

Or might it be a "pandemic"?! It's not the first time game characters have fallen prey to the spread of a virtual disease, but this time it's happening in "the most widely played massively multiplayer online (MMO) game in the world," the BBC reports. That would be World of Warcraft, which claims 4 million players worldwide. The current "deadly plague" seems to have been launched at the murder of "the fearsome Hakkar, the god of Blood," when he was killed in the Zul'Gurub dungeon, newly added to the game. But wait, there's hope in virtual reality: "Luckily the death of a character in World of Warcraft is not final so all those killed were soon resurrected," according to the BBC.

Two views of MySpace

I've recently received emails representing two interesting perspectives on teens blogging at MySpace - one from a 20-year-old musician in Florida who blogs there himself and one from a librarian in the Midwestern US (she asked that the state not be named) about blogging happening at her library. The musician wrote in part that his "main problem with it is that obviously it's not meant for people under the age of 16 at the least… I mean, I'm about building a good fanbase and networking with other musicians, but there are a lot of kids just wasting time on there ... they're passing along chain letters about all sorts of subjects, including alcohol and sex.... I try not to upset them but I warn them about being on a website like this, putting up pictures of themselves and talking about what schools they go to, with links to their friends. If someone dangerous wanted to find them, this effectively makes it much easier. I mean, they don't give out any home addresses in their information, but when you have under-16s who have posted what school they go to, where it is, and their interests, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel this is a potential breeding pool for predators." Please see this week's issue of my newsletter for more.

Why do they blog?

Basically for therapy, was the biggest answer to a recent AOL survey of 600 bloggers. "About 31% of bloggers said that, in times of high anxiety, instead of seeking any counseling, they either write in their blogs or read blogs of others facing similar issues," according to CNET's report on the survey. It's gratis, virtual group therapy - provided others are "listening" and posting. Other reasons cited by respondents: because of an interest in journalism (16%), to stay on top of news and gossip (12%), and to expose political information (8%). As for teen bloggers, I suspect AOL Community VP Bill Schreiner got closest to their motivation in his explanation for the findings: "In a way, blogs serve as oral history. When it comes to sharing blogs and reading other people's blogs, we like to connect with people, learn about their lives, and find common ground. There's no pressure to write about a particular subject or keep blogs maintained a certain way, and it's not necessarily a popularity contest" (see AOL's press release.

More P2P shut-downs

Updating my "P2P services go 'legit'" item on Wednesday, there has been further bad news from a file-sharer's perspective. WinMX ceased operating, Reuters reported Thursday, and The Register reports that eDonkey closed its doors. Meanwhile, four of Israel's most popular P2P services were shut down this week, Israel's Nana Net-Life magazine reported. [Thanks to BNA Internet Law for pointing out the Nana story.] It'll be very interesting to see what phoenix rises from these ashes, since - judging from past digital-music developments - workarounds are inevitable.

Privacy experts on kids' privacy

It's an unusual subject for the Washington Post's computer-security expert, but it was probably the school bomb threats that got Brian Krebs writing about kids' privacy, as well as security on a whole different level. "After the fourth bomb threat within a few weeks ["up north" of D.C.], the county sheriff held a town meeting where he urged the parents to check the logs of the online chat conversations of their children to see if any of them had discussed planning the bomb threats." Few of the parents knew how to, Brian reports. He talked to a couple of privacy experts, one of whom is a dad, and - even more interesting than their comments - are all the posts from parents Brian's article elicited. A full spectrum of parenting views. Some of them offer advice (see if you agree) or their own Net-use policies, some just family experiences good and bad. Brian seems to have hit a chord! I hope you always feel free to email me your experiences with kids' privacy online.

Get the Firefox fix!

If Firefox is your browser, do not hesitate to download the latest version. Two reasons: 1) Because it patches some serious security flaws, CNET reports, and 2) because the computer code that can exploit those flaws, letting someone into your computer to take "complete control" of it, has been put up on the Net for any hacker to use, the Washington Post reports. "This is not your run-of-the-mill proof of concept exploit code," reports the Post's security writer Brian Krebs. "It appears to be quite comprehensive, and would allow any attacker to use it with only slight modifications. Brian tells you the best way to get the update right in Firefox (click here for the exact steps), or download the latest version at GetFirefox.com. See also the Post's "Video Guide to Securing Your Computer."

Anti-porn: Phone firms soften stance

"The major American cellular carriers have so far been adamant in their refusal to sell pornography from the same content menus on which they sell ring tones and video games. But there are signs that they may soften their stance," the New York Times reports. The softening appears to coincide with the phone content-rating system the cellphone industry is developing (see 5/6/05). The industry is in a tight spot between not wanting to alienate the parent market and not wanting to walk away from revenues from porn content (in Europe, "consumers already spend tens of millions of dollars a year on phone-based pornography, so sales are expected to grow with the uptake of video-enabled phones in the US). The Times says children's advocacy groups are mobilizing.

Phones & drivers-in-training

The US National Transportation Safety Board is proposing a ban on cellphone use by teenagers learning to drive, Reuters reports. The Board added the proposed restriction to its "most wanted" list of safety improvements for the coming year. The list "also includes older appeals for more states to impose limits on teens' night driving and carrying of passengers," according to Reuters, which adds that 11 states and the District of Columbia "have imposed some limits on wireless technology while driving. Most prohibit cell phone use by drivers who are getting their license."

Hacking's cool at Lego

Lego's taking an open-source approach to product development these days. "When Lego executives recently discovered that adult fans of the iconic plastic bricks had hacked one of the company's new development tools for digital designers, they did a surprising thing: They cheered," CNET reports. They saw that their products' biggest fans weren't trying to rip them off but rather make improvements the company's designers hadn't thought of. But the hack wasn't an improvement on the product so much as its delivery process (and pricing). It's a neat story - check out what I mean at CNET.

P2P services going 'legit'

The end of an era is upon us - the "Wild West" of file-sharing, its decline spurred on, of course, by the US Supreme Court's decision last June (see 7/1/05). "At least five online file-sharing companies have started trying to reach an accord with the music industry to convert the free trading of copyrighted music on their networks to paid services," the New York Times reports, citing Grokster (which had the title role in the Supreme Court case), eDonkey, Morpheus, LimeWire, and iMesh. Grokster, furthest along in discussions, has agreed in principle to be acquired by MashBoxx. The latter, which is backed by Sony and says it'll be up and running by the end of the year, will use technology developed by Shawn Fanning (founder of the original Napster) - a "system of digital fingerprinting to track songs," USATODAY reports. Here's the Los Angeles Times's coverage.

In another anti-piracy development, six major film studios have formed a joint-venture to develop "new technologies to stop the unauthorised distribution of films, particularly via the Internet," the BBC report. Called Motion Picture Laboratories, or Movielabs, it'll be L.A.-based.

Games' 'shadow economy'

True story: A retiring "successful Jedi knight" gets $510 in real money for his identity/game character, "a top-notch light saber, a speeder bike, a nice chunk of real estate on the planet Lok, and a bank account containing millions of Imperial credits," the Washington Post reports. We've seen stories about the darkside of videogames' not-so-virtual alternate economy (including the murder of a Chinese gamer), but we haven't seen such an interesting explanation of how it all works. It's no more complicated than what happens at eBay, but a little different: "a simple trade of cash for the product of someone's labors, except that all the goods exist only within the confines of a computer game," the Post explains, adding that more than 20 million people play these games worldwide and probably spend more than $200 million on virtual goods. Examples of game-trade sites the Post points out are GamingTreasures.com and TheMMORPGExchange.com, and GameUSD.com tracks game currency prices.

'Star Wars' worm in P2P

Tell any file-sharers at your house to beware the "Star Wars" worm. "Some downloaders hoping to snare free Star Wars games are unwittingly finding themselves installing the worm P2Load.A that spreads on P2P networks using the file-sharing programs Shareza and iMesh," Internet News reports. What it does is copy itself as a ".exe" file into the "Shared" media directory that, for example, the iMesh software creates on your hard drive. Then the worm configures your browser so that, if you try to go to Google.com, you're redirected to a fake Google page that returns search results that include sponsored links that make the page's creators money when you click to those pages. P2Load also spoofs other popular Web sites. It's the kind of capability that tricks people into going to sites that automatically upload Trojan or hijacking code that takes over their PCs.

Hacked home PCs...

…are the explanation for a surge in online criminal activity of "almost every variety" in the first half of 2005, the Washington Post reports. The article's reporting on a study by Symantec showing that home PCs are being "hacked into" via vulnerabilities in Web browsers, including Mozilla Firefox. "Security researchers uncovered 25 security holes in Firefox during the first half of 2005, nearly twice the number found in IE [Internet Explorer]," though Mozilla "tends to issue security patches to mend problems much sooner than Microsoft does for IE," and "hackers are still focusing their efforts on IE," ZDNET cites the study as saying. [Firefox users need to check Mozilla.org often for updates.] What hackers do through those browser vulnerabilities is take control of home computers and - without their owners knowing - turning them into zombies or "bots" to create "botnets," which account for "a massive increase in the number of 'denial of service' attacks" against Web sites (from an average of 119 a day to 927 a day in the first half of this year, Symantec found) - often for purposes of extortion (hackers are now in it for the money, not just for "glory"). As for the number of active bot computers used daily, the number went from 4,348 to 10,352 in that six-month period. Here's The Register on the Symantec report. Meanwhile, keep those PCs patched and firewalls running (see ZDNET on ZoneAlarm)! See also "What if our PC's a zombie?!"

MI court rejects P2P suit

Could it be a precedent - a court tossing out a lawsuit against a parent who didn't know anything about file-sharing? That's what happened in Michigan, according to BNA Internet Law's email newsletter. The Recording Industry Assoc. of America (RIAA) withdrew its suit against a woman "when it became clear that the woman had no experience or knowledge of computers. The court denied an attempt to relaunch the case against the woman's 13-year old daughter." Here's the decision in pdf format. I've seen no statistics showing what percentage of the RIAA's some 14,000 lawsuits to date are against parents of file-sharers, but I suspect it's a significant portion. Here's MP3newswire on the growing "club" of parents who've decided to go to court instead of settle with the RIAA. "Not one person has ever been found guilty of file-sharing, or of anything else," writes Jon Newton. "And that's because, until Patricia Santangelo [in New York] came along [as the first parent to go to court], not one person had been willing to risk going up against the labels. This in turn has meant no one has appeared before a judge and no alleged case of 'file-sharing' has ever been taken to its conclusion." The Michigan case BNA cites hasn't yet been reported.

Cyberbullying: Va. gets it

It's a savvy community that recognizes that "these days bullying has no face." That's the lead of an article in the Roanoke (Va.) Times about how Northside High School and other Roanoke County schools are helping students deal with bullying of all kinds, including the anonymous kind that occurs via instant-messaging and cellphones, that can be particularly tough on children because it's faceless, traceless, and 24x7 - tough to get away from. "Bullying, including cyberbullying, is gaining welcome emphasis in Virginia. The General Assembly passed laws earlier this year requiring school divisions to develop local policies to address bullying," the Times reports, and the state's Department of Education and Virginia Commonwealth University have "implemented a new statewide anti-bullying effort that employs a holistic approach - administrators, staff and students - to combat bullying." One catalyst was, basically, self-published child porn: "Two Northside High School girls took nude pictures of themselves and emailed them to their boyfriends, who apparently emailed them to other people. The photos spread to schools throughout the Roanoke Valley and were posted on Internet sites," according to the Roanoke Times. For more on this see "Cybersocializing, cyberbullying" and Cyberbullying.ca.

Mac security: What's really needed?

The subject came up when I talked with CEO Susan Lutz about Eli, her new home-computer-security product (see last week's feature). Her company of the same name is marketing a total solution - for any type of home Internet use (broadband, that is). So of course she's not going to say Mac users don't need her product. Instead, she said that Mac users have a false sense of security: "Malware [viruses, worms, Trojans, etc.] will run on anything." I decided to ask her for details and check out what a Mac tech-support expert had to say about what the Mac users among us should know about security. Please see this week's issue of my newsletter to find out.

Videogames for creativity

Hmmm. Food for thought, maybe, if the Singapore Ministry of Defense can defer a Singaporean teenager's compulsory National Service "so he could finish competing in the finals of the World Cyber Games - the Olympics of online war games," as New York Times columnist Tom Friedman points out. Friedman uses that development to illustrate Singapore's new thrust in its effort to stay competitive in the global economy: supporting creativity of all forms (rather than rote-learning) in education. He points to a tool being used in 35 of Singapore's 165 schools: HeyMath.net, "started four years ago in Chennai, India, by two young Indian bankers … in partnership with the Millennium Mathematics Project at Cambridge University." Parents and educators, check out HeyMath, free to all on the Web, and see Friedman's piece for further details. As for the World Cyber Games 2005, their Grand Final is in Singapore in mid-November, with 800 players from 70 countries competing for some $430,000 in prizes.

Child-porn conviction overturned

A decision in Maryland's highest court could be a major setback for US law-enforcement agencies' practice of catching online predators by posing in chatrooms as teenage girls. The Maryland Court of Appeals "unanimously overturned the Frederick County Circuit Court conviction of Richard J. Moore, saying he could not be found guilty of committing a crime with a nonexistent victim," the Washington Post reports. Moore had thought he was chatting online with a 14-year-old who was actually chatting with an officer trying to lure him into a physical meeting for the purposes of an arrest. He was arrested and convicted - the conviction that was just overturned. The Post said the court's decision was based on the experience of the state's legislature, which had "tried but failed six times to broaden the law and make it illegal to proposition an adult who the suspect believes is a minor."

'Come and get it'

That - along with "Find it. Rip it. Mix it. Share it" - is the invitation to the UK public from the BBC, where it's new Creative Archive is concerned. The Beeb says it had young people in mind in making these 100 clips of TV shows available to people for free use in their own digital creative work - people used to the idea of getting content exactly when they want it, to mash up however they like, BBC News reports. Very cool for future TV producers and video editors! I hope other media companies will follow suit, since the licensing agreement does restrict use to UK residents. Thanks to BNA Internet Law for pointing this news out.

Web's role in disaster relief

It has become a mainstream tool and medium in times of crisis, according to the Los Angeles Times - in ways the Internet's founders never dreamed 30 years ago. Besides enabling contributions and relaying info fast, "it reunited families and connected them with shelter. It turned amateur photographers into chroniclers of history and ordinary people into pundits. It allowed television stations to keep broadcasting and newspapers to keep publishing. It relayed heartbreaking tales of loss and intimate moments of triumph." The examples are inspiring: Craigslist.com's classifieds site was "jammed with offers of shelter across the country" and more than half of the $500 million+ in donations the Red Cross has received came in via its Web site. You'll find more in the Times article, which also tells how the Net personalizes and humanizes these huge events.

Gaming watchdog gets tough

Now this is a smart move on the videogame industry's part: According to the BBC, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (the industry's watchdog) has told game publishers that from now on they must disclose any hidden content in games, such as the sexually explicit code unlocked by the "Hot Coffee" mod that created such a fracas last summer. Smart self-regulation, I'd say, if the industry doesn't want anti-game laws to proliferate - it not a little late in coming, because state and federal lawmakers have long been trying to implement regulation at the other end, the retail end, of the videogame food chain. In an email to publishers and developers (leaked to gaming Web site Gamasutra), the ESRB warned them that "any hidden material should reflect the games rating," the BBC reports. "Publishers failing to disclose content face 'punitive action'," the email said.

Vlogging on the rise

"From unbashful bloggers to proselytizing pastors, people are using inexpensive software and high-speed Internet connections to share video clips of their lives, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports - a little worrying where teen vloggers are concerned. There are doubtless no numbers yet on how many teens do video blogging because the phenomenon is so new, but there have been media reports of teens posting videos to sites that host them, "a recent check of the Yahoo video blogging group showed it had about 1,200 members," and teenagers are the earliest of adopters." With all the suggestive photos and posts about the intimate details of teen lives in regular blogs, seeing those move into vlogging is no great leap. For more on this, see "Teen vlogs?!," "When it stops being funny," and - for the extreme end of the spectrum - "Self-published child porn."

Teen pleads guilty to phone hack

The 17-year-old in Massachusetts has a self-professed history of hacks and violent threats. He not only pleaded guilty to hacking into Paris Hilton's cellphone account, he also told the Washington Post he made bomb threats at two high schools, broke into a phone company's computer system to set up free accounts for friends, and participated in a well-known data theft at LexisNexis that exposed more than 300,000 people's personal records. Prosecutors in the case say his actions caused victims about $1 million in damages. He was sentenced to 11 months' detention at a juvenile facility, and when he turns 18 he'll "undergo two years of supervised release in which he will be barred from possessing or using any computer, cell phone or other electronic equipment capable of accessing the Internet." The Post tells the story of how he and fellow hackers - known as the "'Defonic Team Screen Name Club' or 'DFNCTSC' for short" - carried out their exploits.

Virtual High School in Va.

Online learning is basically self-directed learning, so it can be a great alternative for some students but it's not for everybody. That's the bottom line of this Gainesville (Va.) Times article about Prince William County's Virtual High School. And whom might those students be? The Web-based school has especially helped students "with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder who have a hard time concentrating with all the activity in a traditional classroom," but what's emerging is the program's value to students who want to "practice for college," the Times points out. Because of its flexibility, the best students become their own time managers and material masters. "There may not be a set class meeting time, but there are set due dates. There is also a mandatory orientation meeting, required times and places for midterm and final exam testing, and set office hours when teachers are available." Check out the article for further insights. [Thanks to TechLEARNING.com for pointing this piece out.]

Calif. law about violent games

California's legislature just passed a bill that requires violent videogame packaging to carry a sticker restricting sales to minors, The Inquirer in the UK reports, "in the same way as adult movies are." The bill now goes to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for signing. California would be the second state to pass such legislation, after Illinois. According to The Inquirer, "this means that while the intended purpose of the bill, to stop children from being able to get hold of these games, will be carried out, it also means that large retailers such as Wal-Mart will probably not carry the games." So the gaming industry will be protesting the bill. The Inquirer makes an interesting point about this impending "kerfuffle," though: "The videogames industry really should have moved faster to address these concerns itself." The article points out that Japan's industry was self-regulating to avoid such legislation, "entering into a deal with retailers to ensure that over 18 games were sold only to over 18s or minors with their guardians present." Meanwhile, the New York Times suggests that Illinois was only the beginning (actually a milestone): federal-level politicians, led by Sen. Hillary Clinton (D) of New York, are "ramping up" efforts to regulate videogames.

Home PC security in a nutshell

Well, a little bigger than a nutshell, but definitely neatly packaged. Even while thinking it'd be pretty impossible to make family PC security easy and mindless, I've been watching for some company to try it. Then Eli, Inc., contacted me. What I found was that it took one ambitious mom - more than just an ambitious computer-security expert - to want to take on the task of securing the kids, computers, and networks in today's households. Susan Lutz, mom and CEO of ELI, based in Mount Laurel, N.J., and Mainz, Germany, has traveled all over the world helping big companies secure their networks, but it took watching her 8-year-old daughter use a laptop to get her thinking very seriously about the family-PC-security problem. For the full story, please click to this week's issue of my newsletter.

Kids' phones: The downside

Cellphones in children's hands are not always a lifeline, the Detroit Free Press points out. "Law enforcement agencies have only anecdotal evidence right now that cell phones can pose a threat to young people. The issue is so new that police haven't even begun to compile data connecting cell phone use to crimes. And even if they did, they say, the numbers likely would not reflect an accurate picture because many of the unsavory situations young people could get into with a cell phone aren't crimes." For example, a case in which parents found nude photos of their daughters (13 and 14) on the girls' camera phones and then learned they had "used the phones to send the pictures to a stranger in California whom they'd met online." The stranger turned out to be a 16-year-old in California who'd shared the photos with his friends. But the article led with the case of a 15-year-old girl whose phone had turned out to be "a lethal tool for a man with a criminal history." These are extreme cases, but because of them, one Detroit-area police officer specializing in Internet crime told the Free Press he doesn't think kids need cellphones.

Home tech support

Firewall, antivirus, antispyware, pop-ups advising us to buy, worms cited in the news - how to make sure all those PC-security must-haves are in place? The New York Times ran a fun, readable account of what one computer owner did to clean up her year-old PC (it had a happy ending!). It's also about the growing unregulated cottage industry called home tech support - how to find someone who can really do what s/he or they, from mom 'n' pops to nationwide chains, claim. BTW, one option is *remote* home tech support while you watch - read about how it works at PlumChoice.com.

Help for kids, parents

Washington, D.C.-based ConnectforKids.org, which keeps us posted on all manner of child-related issues, this week points out a couple of Web resources parents might find useful: "Helping young children after a disaster" from the National Association for the Education of Young Children and a general resource for parents of kids at every age level, KidsHealth.org. The latter covers topics such as helping with homework, dealing with bullying, talking with kids about various tough subjects, disciplining, etc. KidsHealth.org says it has provided some 170,000,000 online visitors with "doctor-approved … accurate, up-to-date, and jargon-free [family] health information" since 1995.

Canadian 'peer power' to fight bullying

Did you know that, most of the time, bullying stops in less than 10 seconds when peers intervene on behalf of the victim? That's from a 1997 study cited in a press release from Canada's award-winning Bullying.org. "It takes great courage for kids to get involved when bullying is happening," the site says. "Young people often don't want to be seen as selling out their peers. They worry that bullies may target them next, and these fears keep the majority silent and passive. It is that silence that gives bullies their power." The press release is announcing "Canada's first-ever national anti-bullying 'Peer Power' youth network." The idea is that kids usually hear from adult experts about bullying. Now they can hear from their peers (aged 13-18) - in presentations they'll give in their communities during National Bullying Awareness Week, 11/14-20. Teachers, administrators, coaches, scout leaders, etc. can register their "Peer Power" teams in the "I Want to Help - Join Peer Power" section of Bullying.org by October 1. This would be a good model for caring anti-bullying youth in any country! And how about an anti-cyberbullying campaign too? FYI, parents, the Oregon-based Center for Safe & Responsible Internet Use has guidelines on this specifically for you at Cyberbully.org (in pdf format; for full disclosure, I helped with its editing).

Creative online music communities

These are so interesting, they're legal (users won't get sued by the RIAA!), and they seem to be popping up at an accelerating rate. The latest is Pandora.com, where digital-music fans can start their own radio stations (up to 100!) by telling Pandora their favorite tune or artist. Pandora will then consult the 300,000-song database of the Music Genome Project that fuels the service and compile a station that plays songs similar to your favorite in terms of musical attributes. Since 2000, when the Project started, it has taken 20-30 minutes per song for its 30 musician-analysts to "capture all of the little details that give each recording" its some 400 musical attributes ("melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics," etc.). Read more about the Music Genome Project here. The first 10 hours is free, a subscription is $36/year, and members can share their "stations" with friends. Here's PC World's review. Another really interesting community, Last.fm, has profiles, user photos, and email like MySpace, but it's even more musically focused. Here's a CNET review of both Pandora and Last.fm. Then there are collective-music-rating services Indy.tv and iRate radio, which - after you download the software and rate some tunes - send you new songs that fit your musical taste. Clearly, the legal music options are growing. But tell me what music fans at your house think of these - I'd like to hear from the real experts (via anne@netfamilynews.org)!

In P2P legal news, the CEO of popular Korean file-sharing service Soribada was indicted yesterday "on charges of copyright infringement," the Korea Herald reports (thanks to BNA Internet Law for point this out). In the US, the RIAA last week filed "its latest round of copyright infringement lawsuits," targeting 754 people in at least eight states from coast to coast," CNET reported.

'Generation On'

That's what eMarketer.com is calling today's teenagers, for whom the distinction between online and offline is fading rapidly. Or at least it's becoming less of a conscious thing, the way we unthinkingly turn on lights as evening approaches. In its study (which costs around $700, so I'm linking to the press material), eMarketer is comparing 2008 to now, showing that 87.3% of teens will be online then, compared to 73.4% now. Some parents will find it comforting that the percentage of 3-to-11-year-olds online is not growing quite as fast - from 39.4% now to 43.7% in 2008.

Instant 'fandom' for iPod nano

Watch out, there's a new item that will probably appear on holiday wish lists at your house. The iPod nano, just unveiled today, already has a large and growing fandom (fan community). Apple's much-anticipated announcement was actually about two new products: the 100-song-capacity ROKR phone by Motorola (for Cingular customers), about which there has already been plenty of media speculation, and the nano. (Apple doesn't seem to want to capitalize it.) The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg couldn't have been gushier about the Nano, which replaces the Mini, comes in two versions ($199 and $249) holding 500 and 1,000 songs respectively, has a color screen, and is about 5 credit cards thick with the appx. dimensions of a business card. Google News had more than 600 stories on this; here's PC Magazine's.

Diaster relief from/for gamers

Community is a powerful thing, and global gaming communities no less so. Everquest II and Halo 2 are leading the charge in gaming to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, the BBC reports. Sony Online Entertainment has created a special "/donate" command line for Everquest II players so that, when they type the command in, "they're automatically taken to the American Red Cross's Hurricane 2005 relief page to make a donation. Sony also said that, for Everquest II's 13,000+ players in areas where the hurricane hit, it'll be "suspending billing until such time as they are able to play again" and preserving game artifacts that normally would decay when not used by players.

Indian tutor, US kid

"Homework outsourcing" is distance learning that is distant indeed! The New York Times describes the experience of Daniela Marinaro, 13, in Malibu, Calif., working with English tutor Greeshma Salin, 22, in Cochin, southern India - at a third the cost of a tutor who came to the Marinaro home. Critics say there's no regulation of this "industry," but the Times describes the requirements at least Greeshma's company makes of its tutors: "Mostly with recent postgraduate and teaching degrees, [they] already have deep subject knowledge. They must go through two weeks of technical, accent and cultural training," which includes learning the differences between British English and that spoken in Canada, the US, and Australia. Plus, this company is licensed in California (the Times also mentions distance-tutoring firms in the US). Of course, it wouldn't hurt for US parents to monitor their kids' sessions for a while, to make sure they're going well. Go to p. 2 of the article to find out what Daniela's dad thinks.

Closer look at 'cheap broadband'

If online families wonder if they're getting the full story on "budget" high-speed Internet access, they're smart to wonder. ZDNET columnist Matt Lake explains why people are cynical about the new cheap-broadband services being marketed - but that it's more a labeling problem than a pricing one. Of course, the $14.95/mo. price doesn't factor in taxes, USF fees, and the up-front $19.95 activation fee, but that only jacks up the price to an actual $19-or-so. And of course, customers are locked into a year's service or they pay a bail-out fee of $79. And then, after a year, the price goes up. But you're still saving money if you stick it out (and it's a pain to switch services anyway). And the real issue is the definition of "broadband," and that depends partly on the location of your home. Check out the article for helpful details.

Phones for tots...

…keeps popping up in tech news. Probably because of the amazement of journalist/parents that cellphones have replaced "Barbie Dream House" on 9-year-olds' wish lists. But maybe Barbie's just moved down to the 5-to-8-year-old category not yet being targeted by cellphone makers. USATODAY singled Barbie out in this latest report. USATODAY cites numbers in NOP World Technology showing that 40% of US 12-to-14-year-olds had their own phones last December (up from 13% about three years before). The figure is 14% for 10-to-11-year-olds now (maybe the next study will account for younger kids now being targeted). What I didn't cover in my 7/29 item, "Critics of kid phones," is Mattel's brand for preteens, "My Scene."

Kazaa ordered to stop piracy

An Australian federal court decided that the company that runs the Kazaa P2P Web site encouraged its users to infringe copyright, the BBC reports. The court ordered Kazaa's owners, Sharman Networks, to modify the software within two months to stop the sharing of copyrighted material. "A fresh round of hearings will now be held to determine the level of damages, which could run into the millions of dollars," the BBC added. The Fastrack network Kazaa uses makes up only about 10% of all file-sharing traffic. A new study by UK P2P traffic measurers CacheLogic also found that music is now the "little guy" on the file-sharing networks, making up just 11% of all file-sharing traffic. Video, reports Silicon.com, now constitutes "almost 62% of all traffic on the four largest P2P networks (BitTorrent, eDonkey, Gnutella and Fastrack, the network used by Kazaa." The remaining 27% is mostly games and software.

Filters tested in the UK

Computing Which magazine tested six brands of what's called "nanny software" over there and found the filters wanting. Part of the reason for their low scores was that "most of them were beyond the comprehension of parents, thereby preventing them from fully utilizing the [product]," reported ABCMoney.co.uk. "The magazine said that Apple's Tiger operating system was the only one which exercised some degree of control over unsafe content." Tiger got "top marks" for ease of use, but none of the products did terribly well. Norton Internet Security 2005 was at the bottom of the list with an overall rating of 31%, The Telegraph reported. CyberPatrol 7 got 61%, but nothing should replace parental involvement, Computing Which's editor was quoted as saying in all the coverage. Here's The Guardian and News Factor. Which, like the US's Consumer Reports, only allows subscribers to view its product tests. Which, like the US's Consumer Reports, only allows subscribers to view its product reviews - though CR did make its latest report on Web filters available to the general public last June.

Students' dream (tech) set-up

As a new school year begins, it's interesting to look at education technology from students' perspective (we hear so much from grownups!). Thanks to NetDay, a nonprofit organization supporting smart use of ed tech, the Departments of Commerce and Education, and their just-released joint study, "Visions 2020.2," we now have a clear, very interesting picture of kids' expectations of technology in school. More than 55,000 students in grades K-12 in all 50 states responded to the question: "In the future, you will be the inventors of new technologies. What would you like to see invented that you think will help kids learn in the future?" Please click to this week's issue of my newsletter for their response.

12 of 'Kutztown 13' get a break

They didn't get off too easy, but felony charges were off the table for most of the 13 high school students in Kutzdown, Pa. (see "Student hacks: Criminal?" for the original story). For using school-supplied laptops (with easy-to-guess passwords) to download chat programs and monitor school administrators online, they'd been "charged as juveniles with computer trespass and computer theft, both felonies, and could have faced a wide range of sanctions, including juvenile detention," the Associated Press reports. What most of them got was the requirement of 15 hours of community service, a written apology, a class on personal responsibility, and a few months' probation. "One student who has had prior dealings with the juvenile probation office was not offered a deal and the case was expected to proceed," the AP added. [Thanks to BNA Internet Law for pointing this news out.]

Music-player virus

We're seeing the future, and it's not pretty. Cellphone viruses have been in the news, but this is the first report I've seen of MP3 players getting infected. It's not good because people connect their computers and music players to move music around. The news, however, comes from Asia, and this time the problem is restricted to a player, the 5BG Creative Zen Neeon, that's only sold there. The virus is Wullik.B, which first appeared early last year, spreading through Windows PCs via email, CNET reports. "According to antivirus companies, it's unlikely - although not impossible - that users will transfer the worm from an infected Neeon to their computer. For a PC to be potentially infected, a Neeon user would have to connect their MP3 player to the computer, browse the files and copy the worm to the PC's hard drive." On the phone front, the BBC reports that anti-virus protection is coming. Finnish security firm F-Secure has created the software for cellphones, which will soon go on sale in the UK. "In recent months, more viruses for mobile phones and variants of old ones have started to appear," says the BBC, but so far only on about 10% of them - on smartphones using the Symbian operating system and spreading via the Bluetooth short-range radio system on these phones. "Infection can be avoided by turning off Bluetooth on smart phones." [Smartphones are next-gen phones with multimedia features, e.g. email, Web browser, camera, calendar, music, etc.]

iTunes phone

Hmmm. Tunes on phones. I can just hear it: "But, Mom, then I won't need an iPod." Yeah, right. It will store a decent number of songs, according to the BBC (with two models, 512MB or 1GB of storage, the latter holding up to 240 songs), but I hope the sound quality will be better than that of my Samsung's ringtone! "The handset due to be unveiled will reportedly be the first in a series of iTunes equipped phones made by Motorola that will be given the name 'Rokr," the BBC reports, adding that "what is unclear as yet is whether the phone will allow for music to be downloaded via wireless services or only when the gadget is connected to a computer." The UK's Times Online reminds us that there are other tune phones on the market. "Earlier this month Sony released its first Walkman phone, an attempt to revive the iconic brand that dominated the 1980s in the same way as the iPod has become the must-have gadget of the 2000s."

Katrina disaster: Help *carefully*

Victims of the disaster deserve so much help, but anyone wanting to provide it via the Web needs to make sure it's a legitimate charitable Web page before acting. The Washington Post reports that there are already plenty of phishers and other online scammers preying on people's good intentions. Avoid Web sites with names like Katrinahelp.com, katrinadonations.com, katrinarelief.com, the Post says, and other sites that "ask for money to be sent through Paypal, [where] there is no way to verify who is getting the money." Also beware "phony e-mails pretending to solicit money from well-known charities." A good list of charity links is provided at Investors Daily, and there's advice at CBS News.

Phones & kids 6-12

It seems to be a trend: kid surveillance. MSNBC.com takes a sweeping look at all the options, from RFID chips in amusement park wristbands to monitoring their every keystroke in cyberspace. The New York Times reports on GPS on schoolbuses and Webcams at school, and the Christian Science Monitor editorializes on how much surveillance is too much. More and more the focus seems to be on keeping tabs with phones. Even the Wherify people, who had put GPS-tracking in kid wristwatches, have shifted the technology to phones. After all, 57% of US 15-to-16-year-olds and 18% of 12-year-olds have cell phones, according to Pew Internet & American Life figures MSNBC cites. Then there are parents who get their kids phones for a different kind of peace of mind: no more begging. Take for example Jennifer Walker finally giving in to her 10-year-old, referred to in the San Francisco Chronicle, or the 7- and 8-year-olds who got phones, mentioned at JournalNow.com, which added that "in the 1990s, the debate was whether high-school students should own cell phones. Today, the buzz is all about keeping grade-schoolers connected." The Wall Street Journal suggests that phones and "talk time may be about to replace the weekly allowance as a reward for good grades and clean rooms." The Arizona Republic also looked at the 6-to-12-year-old phone "market." If parents want more control over kid talk time than the family plans will allow, here's a New York Times survey of the prepaid phone plans available. Here, too, are ClickZstats on high school and college student cellphone use.