A *little* help for parents

I was thinking “out loud” in this newsletter/blog when I wrote, "Video iPod: Mom's-eye-view” after the debut of this little video player and music videos on iTunes. Two things got me to thinking: the label “explicit” I saw next to some of the videos listed in iTunes that day and how mainstream online music videos had become (having just read that users look at 350 million music-video clips a month at Yahoo Music alone! - see this). So I wondered what parental controls there were for this vast video area of cyberspace, whether child-protection tech had caught up. Then Niel Macdonald, tech coordinator for St. Christopher School in San Jose, Calif., and former Apple engineer, emailed me a thoughtful reminder (I had, after all, reported on this last April).... [Please see this week's issue of my newsletter for Niel's comment and more on tech aids for parents.]