'Chocolate' phone for tunes

Verizon's Chocolate is more for music tastes than the other kind, unfortunately for chocoholic communicators. But digital music fans may be happier. With this phone, Verizon is making the music-on-phone experience a better one for them, USATODAY reports. The big complaint has been that they couldn't upload their music collections onto their phones. They can upload them onto the Chocolate, USATODAY says. It comes with a USB cable to connect PC and phone for copying MP3 and Microsoft's (not Apple's) copy-protected formatted tunes onto the phone. The Chocolate, which – with a 2-GB storage card – can hold 2,000 songs, costs $149, according to USATODAY (the article includes a picture of the phone). Added 8/4: Later in the week, Wall Street Journal tech writer Walt Mossberg pretty much panned the Chocolate, saying not in this case, but he does believe that "someday, the merger of the cellphone and the music player will result in a great device for consumers."

MN game law thrown out

Minnesota's twist on anti-videogame law was struck down by a federal judge, the Associated Press reports. Unusual because it would have fined minors if they tried to rent or buy games rated "M" (Mature) or "AO" (Adults Only), the law was due to go into effect tomorrow. US District Judge James Rosenbaum agreed with videogame makers (who had sued to block the law) that it violated free-speech rights. He added that the stated "failed to show that the graphic videogames were harmful to children," according to the AP. A US Senate committee recently approved a major study to look into exactly that question (see my 3/10 issue). Minnesota's law was "one of several attempts across the country to prevent minors from getting gruesome or sexually explicit video." Among them, Michigan and Illinois have had game laws killed. See also "Dollhouses & other digital games."

Today's 'cave painters'

Now that the Web is 24x7 reality TV on which everyone's a "star," parents mystified by their kids' need to be so public online need only look at the media and social environment they live in – at society itself, even history, the Washington Post suggests in its very readable, thoroughly reported "See Me, Click Me." Entire lives and innermost thoughts exposed on profiles and blogs are like cave art on steroids, exponentially more public because of what technology allows, we hear from Post writer Linton Weeks. But what's the attraction to self-exposure? parents ask. Pls click to this week's issue of my newsletter for more.

New social networks

Niche social-networking sites, and some not-so-niche ones, continue to open. The latest big-brand one is MTV's "Flux." As with MySpace, users will be able to customize their pages and upload video and other media, but more along the lines of Cyworld (which plans to open an English-language version in the US), they can have avatars, or online personas, represent them. "They can select a basic avatar design and transform it into the image they want to represent them in the Flux community," TechNewsWorld reports. "The avatars were designed by Nexus and resemble Japanese animation - with the ability to walk, talk and show their emotions, giving more of a digital life to the real people they represent" (here's my earlier item on Cyworld). Wal-Mart's "The Hub" for 13-to-18-year-olds is a not-very-social-networking site, The Guardian reports. "Any teenagers wishing to sign up as 'hubsters' need their parents' consent, and entrants face the challenge of looking cool in Wal-Mart apparel: videos and web pages are banned from carrying trademarks, trade names, logos or copyrighted music" – except for Wal-Mart labels. Then there's Utherverse.com, ostensibly for adults only. But The Register reports that "purely in the cause of investigation, we checked out the sign up process for Utherverse. The [Terms of Service] link to a page which says you should be 18+ - and that's it," no other barriers. "Chief executive Brian Shuster said the firm would use credit card age verification for its paid services - although the social networking side of the site is free. He said the company employs site monitors who scour the site for posts from minors," which is what MySpace says too. For more on niche networks, see "Martha's social networking" and "Family social networking."

US House passes DOPA *quickly*

Controlling social networking appears to be high-priority for US lawmakers. They have fast-tracked the Delete Online Predators Act (DOPA). It was passed by the House of Representatives 410-15 yesterday (Thursday), and CNET reports that the Senate could vote on it as early as next week. DOPA "would effectively require [in schools and libraries receiving federal funding] that 'chat rooms' and 'social networking sites' be rendered inaccessible to minors, an age group that includes some of the Internet's most ardent users. Adults can ask for permission to access the sites." The problem with the law, critics say, is the way it's worded. "Even though politicians apparently meant to restrict access to MySpace, the definition of off-limits Web sites is so broad the bill would probably sweep in thousands of commercial Web sites that allow people to post profiles, include personal information and allow 'communication among users.' Details will be left up to the Federal Communications Commission," according to CNET. A pending close race for reelection for the bill's sponsor, Mike Fitzpatrick (R) of Pennsylvania is one reason cited by CNET for the Republican leadership arranging the quick vote on DOPA. Here, in pdf format, is the version of the bill the House approved, and the more tongue-in-cheek version of what happened in a San Jose Mercury News blog.

Teen videogame tutors

Now, here's a twist on summer jobs or ways for teens to add some "spare change" to their college funds. Some experienced videogamers are making up to $60/hour tutoring newbie gamers, the Wall Street Journal reports (in a story picked up by the Contra Costa Times). "Class" happens right in the game. One tutor is 18-year-old Tom Taylor, runs "Web site called Gaming-lessons.com, where players can book lessons in two games - Microsoft's Halo 2 and Nintendo Co.'s Super Smash Brothers Melee." Tom employs 12 instructors, the youngest 8 years old, who gets $25/hour and has used some of his income to buy a hamster.

Kazaa legalizes

There was a time (about 2.5 years ago) when you could've called it the MySpace of file-sharing, when 60 million file-sharers and millions of downloads a week seemed like mind-numbing figures. Kazaa was the king of 2nd-generation file-sharing (after Napster of the 1st generation), then was overtaken by 3rd-gen BitTorrent. But enough background! The news is, the Sydney-based company registered in Vanuatu is paying the recording industry more than $100 million in damages and going legal, "following a series of high-profile legal battles," the BBC reports. According to the Associated Press, Kazaa "will redesign its … program to block customers who try to find and download copyrighted music and movies. It also will offer licensed entertainment for a price." Here's the Washington Post on Kazaa's out-of-court settlement with the London-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the New York Times's coverage.

Critical thinking needed!

The filter between everybody's ears is increasingly beating out tech filters in importance. "The fastest-growing computer-security problem isn't viruses or other traditional malicious programs, and it can't be entirely defeated by using security software or by buying a Mac. It's called 'social engineering,' and it consists of tactics that try to fool users into giving up sensitive financial data that criminals can use to steal their money and even their identities," writes the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg. He offers three tips to help people avoid social-engineering schemes including those of "phishers." Another version, which has less impact on computers and more impact on people, is social influencing – how people influence each other. It can be both positive and negative. A more negative version is manipulation, the darkest form of which is called by law enforcement people "grooming," what sexual predators do to gain their victims' confidence. Teaching our kids about social influencing and engineering is an increasingly important part of parenting. For more on these, see "How social influencing works" and "How to recognize grooming."

Law against deceptive sex sites

The US Congress passed a bill that makes it a felony to create porn sites with innocent Web addresses using words like "Barbie" or "Furby" to deceive children into clicking to them, Reuters reports. According to CNET, "the 163-page Child Protection and Safety Act represents the most extensive rewriting of federal laws relating to child pornography, sex offender registration and child exploitation in a decade." President Bush was expected to sign it Thursday. Penalties include up to 20 years' imprisonment and a fine. Among other provisions CNET lists, the bill also creates "a national sex offender registry to be run by the FBI."

Food ads & kids on the Web

Eighty-five percent of brands like Snickers, Lucky Charms, and Cheetos targeting kids on TV have a presence on the Web, according to a pioneering study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, "It's Child's Play: Advergaming and the Online Marketing of Food to Children." "More than 500 'advergames' such as Hershey's Syrup Squirt, LifeSavers Boardwalk Bowling and M&Ms Trivia Game were offered on 77 Web sites," USATODAY reports in its coverage of the study. These immersive "ads" – games, coloring pages, screensavers, etc. that kids can play and otherwise interact with can be much more compelling to children than 15- or 30-second TV ads, and kids often can't tell the difference between advertising and non-promotional content, researchers find. "Policymakers and health experts increasingly are concerned about the role food advertising plays in childhood obesity. About 25 million children, or one-third of children and teens in the USA, are either overweight or on the brink of becoming so," USATODAY adds. (For more on this, see "Advergames & 'the nag factor'" in my 2/11/05 issue.) Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that obesity presents a real dilemma to pediatricians, a reluctance to talk with obese patients and their parents (the Post looks at the reasons).

Videogame-related convictions

Three Florida men – one 29 and the other two 20 - accused of plotting to kill six people in a revenge killing partly involving an Xbox console were convicted this week, the Associated Press reports. "Prosecutors said [the older man] was angry with victim Erin Belanger, 22, who had him evicted when she found him living in her grandmother’s home in Deltona. She kept some of his belongings, including some clothing and the video game system." He reportedly recruited the other two men "for the baseball bat attacks against the six victims."

Educating parents about TV!

Apparently to fend off increased regulation, all three sources of TV programming - broadcast, cable, and satellite – are getting together to teach parents how to control TV viewing at home, the Washington Post reports. "The government's recent tenfold increase in fines for broadcast indecency combined with the public's nearly nonexistent use of blocking technology, such as the V-chip, has motivated the three rivals to join forces in contributing airtime for a series of public service announcements," according to the Post. Starting this week, they're airing 15- and 30-second public-service announcements produced by the Ad Council. The ads will be seen on "local broadcast stations and the top 100 cable channels, as seen on cable and satellite systems," the Post reports. See the article for details on regulatory potential.

Competition for iPod?

Maybe, just maybe, kids will be putting a music player of a different name on their holiday wish lists this year. It'll be interesting to see if Microsoft's just-announced "Zune" will give iPod some competition. The BBC cites experts as saying Microsoft won't have it easy "The iPod accounts for more than 50% of digital music players sold, while iTunes, Apple's digital music store, has a 70% share of its market." But the Zune name will represent more than just an MP3 player – a whole "family of hardware and software products," including a music store, Microsoft told the BBC – and the player will be able to connect to the Net, which I foresee to be a significant plus for the youth market (I wonder if it'll come with parental controls). Microsoft intends to combine technology and community in Zune, it told the BBC. But will it have iPod's cachet? Here's coverage from Internet News, linking to blogs commenting on Zune, including two Microsoft staffers' personal blogs, where crumbs of insights are being tossed out to the ravenous gadget info hordes. For female gadget heads, see this ZDNET pictorial about what's on offer, including "Miss Army Knife" and headband headphones from the fashion police.

Parents' tour of social networks

Wall Street Journal writer Julia Angwin doesn't turn up anything very surprising on her brief tour of MySpace, Xanga, Facebook, Hi5, Bebo, Tagged, and Imbee, but it's great for parents to see that teens do have choices. They do and they don't, actually. It's good that a prominent news outlet shows the breadth and diversity of the social networks, especially with the help of a sidebar linking to nearly two dozen of them (Wikipedia links to many more here ). But – as with instant messaging – kids go where their friends are. That's where they don't *really* have a choice, even if your teenager is a major influencer and can move his or her entire peer group to another site. That group then wouldn't be "with" everyone else in their high school, receiving bulletins and group emails in, for example, MySpace about important stuff going on at or involving their school. Check out Julia's conclusion – I think she's right on the mark with it. Meanwhile, reporter Robin Cowie Nalepa at The State, a Columbia, S.C., paper, took her own week-long tour just of MySpace, with the help of her MySpace "guru" Elizabeth (16).

Marketing to teens, by teens

As our kids get increasingly blasé about TV and other conventional ad media, ever wonder how marketers are reaching them?CNNMoney looks at how Hollywood and other media industries are wooing "the MySpace generation." For example, it describes how marketing agency Streetwise appears to have helped "Little Man," "the new comedy by the Wayans brothers that was almost universally panned by critics," become No. 2 at the box office recently. Streetwise "organizes groups of [some 70,000 registered] teens and young adults to promote films, music and video games through a variety of means" – such as by posting comments or bulletins at social-networking sites or just via "old-fashioned street marketing, putting up posters or handing out hats, T-shirts, DVDs and CDs."

Verifying online kids' ages: Key Q for parents

"State attorneys general have called for [online] communities, particularly MySpace, to improve age and identity checks," the Associated Press reports in an article picked up by hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations, and news sites nationwide. What parents need to know is that the attorneys general are not just calling for tech safeguards. If they want verification of minors' ages, they're also calling for publicly available information on children, something that, up to this point, local, state, and federal US governments have worked hard at not allowing in order to protect kids' privacy, ID verification experts tell me.

No technology is going to protect online kids all by itself, including the age-verification kind. In this case, the simple reason is that technology is only part of the equation – it needs information in public records to check against. Info that authenticates people (proves they are who they say they are) is only available on adults - credit information, driver's licenses, voting records, property records, etc. There is no public information on minors available at the national level, and at the state level only a little more than half of the states make drivers' info publicly available. At a local level, schools keep records on kids under 16, but that information is kept private, and parents have to sign permission slips for student contact info to go into school directories. The $64k question is: How many parents want birth and residence records on their children in a national database? For examples of child ID verification in use now, please this week's issue of my newsletter.

RIAA suit against a mom dropped

This was not widely reported but was the most eye-opening item in a group of recent file-sharing stories. A US federal court in Oklahoma City dismissed a recording industry lawsuit against the parent of a file-sharer "with prejudice," the "Recording Industry vs The People" blog reports. "Faced with the mother's motion for leave to file a summary judgment motion dismissing the case against her, and awarding her attorneys fees, the RIAA made its own motion for permission to withdraw its case" (the blog links to the lawsuit itself). Cases like this are usually settled out of court, with the parent paying the RIAA a fine. Meanwhile, "a Dutch appeals court has thwarted attempts by the Dutch anti-piracy organisation BREIN to get the identities of file-sharers from five ISPs," The Register reports. "The court found that the manner in which IP addresses [of file-sharers] were collected and processed by US company MediaSentry had no lawful basis under European privacy laws." And file-sharing groups in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway are forming a pro-piracy alliance and lobby, according to The Register in a separate report.

Parents' FAQ on social networking

Stefanie Olsen, the writer of CNET's ongoing series on "Digital Kids," interviewed my BlogSafety.com co-director Larry Magid about safe social networking. The result, basically, is a FAQ ("frequently asked questions") and possibly a handy base for parents who are wisely beginning to ask their teens questions like, "Is there anybody you don't know in person (besides a favorite band) on your Friends list?" or "Who are the people who put comments in your blog most?" Parents of younger teens might consider establishing their own accounts in the services their kids use, and establishing a few rules like 1) they're on their kids' Friends lists, 2) only people your dad or I knows is on your Friends list or can comment in your profile or blog, 3) no responding to comments from people you don't know in person, and 4) no arrangements to meet offline with anyone you know only online (unless one of your parents goes with you).

A look at sex-offender bans

This isn't about technology per se, but sex-offender registries on the Web have had an impact on bans and residence-restriction laws considered in this in-depth article in the Boston Globe. The piece suggests that – though "the race to enact restrictions is gaining steam" – offender-free zones may have unintended consequences. The Globe cites a new law in Iowa - which has "some of the toughest sex offender laws in the country" – that banned sex offenders whose victims are minors from living within 2,000 feet of a school or licensed day-care provider. "The Des Moines Register reported that the number of sex offenders who had not registered with the state doubled from 142 to 298 between June 2005 and January. An informal group of prosecutors and police now opposes the law." The Globe cites a psychologist as saying that "the vast majority [of offenders] either know or are related to their victims" and they're unlikely to reoffend in their own neighborhood. A police chief told the Globe that, "while he supports tougher penalties for and better monitoring of sex offenders, he opposes residency requirements. For one thing, he said, they're "extremely difficult to enforce." Finally, the Globe cites a study by the city of Marlborough, Mass., finding that a bans on offenders within 2,500 feet of a school or day-care center would make "95% of the city off-limits to sex offenders," ostensibly sending offenders to nearby towns or states with fewer restrictions.

Web's young 'storytellers'

Not mid-career pithy political pundits, but young digital natives dominate the blogosphere, the latest Pew Internet & American Life study has found. "They're young. They're addicted to instant messaging and social networks. And they're more apt to dish about the drama at last night's party than the president's latest faux pas," says the Washington Post in its coverage of the study, "Bloggers: A Portrait of the Internet's New Storytellers." More than half of bloggers (54%) are under 30, and they're a diverse group – "less likely to be white than the general Internet population," Pew says. Other findings: 55% blog under a pseudonym, 46% under their own name; 84% "describe their blog as either a 'hobby' or just 'something I do'; 52% blog "mostly for themselves," 32% "mostly for their audience; the main reasons for blogging are "creative expression" and "sharing personal experiences." Here's further coverage in the
New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, the Miami Herald, and CNET.

Why so much porn online?

Porn affiliates is a big part of the answer, the Wall Street Journal reports. They're easy-to-set-up small businesses that don't produce or sell pornography but rather operate multiple Web sites that display free porn images which link to porn retail sites in exchange for a percentage of the subscription sales they drive. More than porn retailers, these are also the kind of porn sites kids are mostly likely to stumble upon. "The lure of big bucks has saturated the Internet with affiliate sites - and, by extension, free porn," according to the Journal. "Now, there are so many free images and video clips that affiliate companies say it has grown more challenging to get users to sign up with pay sites." The Journal adds that "the fierce competition has led to something of a no-holds-barred atmosphere among some affiliates," resulting in huge porn-spam campaigns that have led to Federal Trade Commission lawsuits under the CAN-SPAM Act and other automated-distribution tactics. The number of affiliates is hard to come by, the Journal said, but they're all over the world, and the pay sites work hard to keep them happy, plying them with bonuses and gifts, such as the TAG Heuer watch just sent to an 18-year-old in Russia "who runs a handful of affiliate Web sites."

Child-porn study: US biggest source

More than 50% of the child porn images reported to the UK's Internet Watch Foundation can be traced to the US, the BBC reports. The rest of the "Top 7" countries were Russia, Japan, Spain, Thailand, South Korea, and the UK. IWF investigations "found nearly 2,500 US sites containing illegal images. The IWF study also said that some sites that contain the illegal content remain accessible for up to five years despite being reported to relevant authorities." Top US Internet service providers are working with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children combating this problem (see "ISPs join child-porn fight"). Meanwhile, a change in British law will allow financial credit card companies there to cancel the accounts associated with cards used to buy child porn, CNET reports.

Malware over MySpace

This is Internet logic: Within a week of HitWise's announcement that MySpace is the US's highest-traffic site we hear of a worm and a hijacked ad affecting millions of MySpacers' computers. The worm – the second one to hit MySpace, reportedly - won't hurt the family PC, but it's an annoyance and you'll probably impress MySpace users at your house if you know about it. The "Spaceflash" worm compromises the "About me" part of their profiles and infects visitors to their pages, CNET reports. "When a logged-in MySpace user goes to another member's 'About me' page affected by the ACTS.Spaceflash worm, they are quietly redirected to a URL that holds a malicious Macromedia Flash file," according to CNET. The file replaces the visitor's own 'About me' content. The solution is to delete a line of code from your "About me" box. Symantec says what that code is on this page. The second major annoyance was a banner ad for DeckOutYourDeck.com on MySpace and other sites that "used a Windows security flaw to infect more than a million users with spyware when people merely browsed the sites with unpatched versions of Windows Internet Explorer," the Washington Post's security blog reported. Users that keep their PCs patched and already had a security patch Microsoft sent out last January were unaffected.

AOL's PC security for the home

It won't hurt the family PC, but it's an annoyance for MySpace users, and you'll probably earn points with your kids if you know about it as soon as they do. The "Spaceflash" worm compromises the "About me" part of their profiles and infects visitors to their pages, CNET reports. "When a logged-in MySpace user goes to another member's 'About me' page affected by the ACTS.Spaceflash worm, they are quietly redirected to a URL that holds a malicious Macromedia Flash file," according to CNET. "That file, in turn, will replace the visitor's own 'About me' page [presumably the code in it] with one that is compromised." The solution is to delete a line of code from your "About me" box (click on "Edit Profile" in your Hello box and look for the offending code in the About Me text box). Symantec specifies what that code is on this page. This is MySpace's second reported worm so far.

Email: So 20th-century!

The 14-year-olds we know don't do email. It's "so last millennium," the Associated Press reports - except maybe for the kind used on the social networks, the kind that works only with fellow MySpacers or Facebook users. Kids will establish email accounts so they can communicate with adults, but they probably don't check them often. They prefer IM-ing, texting, and communicating via Web sites that reflect their interests, whether it's skateboarding or music or communicating within a circle of friends. "For many young people, it's about choosing the best communication tool for the situation," according to the Post, including the time that's available for the communicating and whether they're just hanging out or have a specific objective like arranging the time and location of the next get-together.

Popular young YouTubers

If you're curious about what the hottest young Web video producers are like, go to USATODAY, and meet Brooke Brodack, 20, of Woburn, Mass. (416,000+ YouTube views); Lital Mizel, 21, of Ramle, Israel (7.1 million+ views); and Justin Mazorlig, 20, of Alhambra, Calif. (2.8 million+ views). USATODAY writer Janet Kornblum briefly describes them and their work. As for the talent "pipeline" itself, YouTube, here's the main article. Meanwhile, all kinds of videos are hitting the Web – in much more narrow-interest sites than YouTube. For example, wedding videos are hosted by sites like WebcastMyWedding.net, VowCast.com, and Yourwebcast.com – see a different USATODAY piece on that niche.

Dating (or not) so publicly

It's hard to break up quietly when you're a social networker. Suddenly all the world can see someone's no longer in one's Top 8! The Greensboro [N.C.] News & Record went in-depth this week on how social networking is changing social behavior. For example, social networkers now "categorize their romantic status via a drop-down menu. In addition to standards such as 'single' or 'in a relationship,' Facebook added an 'it's complicated' option a few months ago, and MySpace users can choose 'swinger.' Think you're in a committed relationship? Check Facebook to be sure. Changing your status from 'single' to 'in a relationship' is such a big deal that the process has spawned its own term - Facebook Official." The romantic status so many aspire to! As for the backdrop to all this – the impact of Web 2.0, the public record it basically provides on all of us, and its impact on US society – check out "Price of virtual living: Patience, privacy," a special report at CNN.

Teen-Webcam-biz sentencing

One of the adults who aided Justin Berry's child pornography business was sentenced to 150 years n prison, the New York Times reports. "The man, Gregory J. Mitchel, 39, pleaded guilty in January to charges involving the sexual exploitation of boys and the operation of illegal Web sites. Mr. Mitchel was an administrator on several of the sites and admitted in his plea to producing and distributing child pornography." He was implicated by now 19-year-old Berry last September. The New York Times broke the story of Berry's Webcam business, started when he was 13, last December. As a result of the story, Berry testified about his experience before the US House of Representatives Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee last April. [See "Kids & Webcams," "Results from Webcam kid going public," and "Webcams' darkside."]

Candy + Coke = hot Web video

Well, Diet Coke, anyway. This is a perfect example of the kind of subject that drives the people's Web these days, and you don't have to be an Einstein to conduct and record this scientific experiment. In other words, you can try this at home (tho' maybe not indoors): add Mentos mints to a bottle of Diet Coke and film the resulting geyser (e.g., in this video). Online law expert Michael Geist tells of a Diet Coke/Mentos success story in the Toronto Star, in which a more "sophisticated" such video involving "101 two-litre bottles of Diet Coke [and] 523 mentos," which – after "less than two months after it was first posted … has attracted millions of Internet hits and … nearly $30,000 in advertising revenue" for its two creators because of host site Revver.com's ad-revenue-share policy (Mentos now sponsors the video; Coke doesn't). Meanwhile, more than 100 million videos a day are being viewed on YouTube.com, Reuters reports. Except there's just one problem: These video-sharing sites – e.g., VideoEgg, Video Bomb, Blinkx.TV, Blip.TV, Guba, Grouper, Frozen Hippo, Blennus, Eefoof and more than 200 others (according to Knowledge at Wharton) - are still trying to figure out how to make their own proportionate amount of money (see that POV at a San Jose Mercury News blog and the Los Angeles Times. Being No. 1 brings its own burdens: YouTube is being sued by a Los Angeles news service "for allowing its users to upload copyrighted video footage," The Hollywood Reporter, Esq. reports.

Hollywood + videogames

Videogames with movie names is a win-win formula for film companies and gamemakers, and their "love affair … has blossomed again this summer with tie-ins to Cars, The DaVinci Code, and other movies," Reuters reports. "Licensing movie titles to game makers offers Hollywood another way to help cover the sometimes $200 million-plus cost of blockbusters like action flick Superman Returns," and game companies don't mind the "millions of dollars" Hollywood spends to promote movies that share their products' names. Meanwhile, game makers are asking a federal judge to block a new kind of legal challenge to their business – one represented in a Minnesota law due to go into effect August 1, the Associated Press reports. What's different about this one, compared to other state laws that have been successfully challenged in courts, is that it fines minor ($25) if they're caught buying games rated M (Mature) or AO (Adults Only).

House passes Net-gambling bill

This week's vote in the US House of Representatives was 317 for legislation aimed at restraining online gambling and 93 against, the Washington Post reports. The bill's supporters reportedly say it might help dampen a booming, mostly off-shore business that "provides a front for money laundering, some of it by drug sellers and terrorist groups, while preying on children and gambling addicts. Americans bet an estimated $6 billion per year online, accounting for half the worldwide market," the Post reports, citing Congressional Research Service data. Critics say it "overreaches" and would be tough to enforce. Its two key provisions, according to the Post: "to update the 1961 Wire Act, which bars gambling entities from using wire-based communications for transmitting bets, to include the Internet," and to slow the flow of money from players to sites by barring electronic payments like credit card transactions.

Web 2.0 safety campaign

News Corp, parent of MySpace and Fox TV, has launched a multi-million-dollar Internet safety awareness campaign with the help of the National Parent-Teacher Association and Common Sense Media. "Central to News Corp.'s campaign … is a [20-second ad] featuring Kiefer Sutherland, who plays Jack Bauer on the Fox action drama '24'," the Associated Press reports. The ads send parents to Common Sense Media's new site, CommonSense.com. They'll air "on Fox cable stations, including FX, Fox Movie Channel and the National Geographic channel. Online video and banner ads will appear on MySpace.com, FoxSports.com, IGN.com, AmericanIdol.com and other Fox Interactive Media sites."

Employers finding 'digital dirt'

This isn't about our kids, but our kids will grow up and become job seekers, and this issue isn't going away. In its recent survey of 100 executive recruiters, ExecuNet found that 35% of them had dropped a job candidate "because of information uncovered online," a San Jose Mercury News blog reports. Not much different from similar recent reports (see "Teen reputations, jobs at risk" and "Protecting teen reputations on Web 2.0"). The ExecuNet press release - "Growing Number Of Job Searches Disrupted By Digital Dirt" - offers some advice that isn't just for "suits". And of course, all this works both ways. Employees and prospectives are digging up "digital dirt" too. Social networks "are launching features that make it easier for job seekers to connect with the employees of prospective hirers," according to a Wall Street Journal piece picked up by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Latest Windows patches

This week saw July's "Patch Tuesday," when Microsoft released "seven security updates to address 18 separate flaws in its Windows operating systems and Office software," the Washington Post reports. Thirteen of the security flaws are critical, which the Post says means they can be used to hijack PCs without their owners doing anything (like opening an email or IM attachment). See the Post for details (they're in its PC security blog). Here, too, is ZDNET's coverage. For Microsoft info and help, check out the Windows Update page or Windows Live OneCare. Meanwhile, only a day after July's patches were released, cyberattackers were exploiting a new PowerPoint flaw that's unpatched, ZDNET reported. Microsoft said it's "investigating the issue," but it's not high-risk because for a successful attack, "users must open a malicious PowerPoint file provided to them, for example via email."

Capitol Hill: Views on social networks aired

CNET's coverage of Tuesday's hearing on Capitol Hill about the proposed Delete Online Predators Act (DOPA) suggested that a crackdown might be coming. In the US House of Representatives subcommittee hearing, "politicians accused MySpace.com and other social-networking sites of failing to protect minors from sexual predators and other malign influences and said a legislative crackdown may be necessary." They were arguing over whether to require schools and libraries receiving FCC universal-service funds for Internet access to ban students' and young library patrons' access to the social networks or "requiring some form of an Internet ID that would prove a person's age, or doing nothing at the moment," according to CNET. All hearing participants appeared to agree that the intentions of the bill – to protect online kids from sexual predation – are noble, but a number of testifiers argued against the law, especially its wording and timing. Both First Amendment specialists and social-networking companies have said it's too vaguely written to enforce, and a representative of the Young Adult Library Services Association said "the bill uses the term 'social networking sites' to describe almost all interactive Web applications in which users converse or otherwise interact with each other," NewsFactor reports, and so would ban whole swaths of the Internet in schools and libraries. Rep. Paul Gillmor (R) of Ohio, a member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications & the Internet, testified that "a delicate balance must be struck." He said: "Although I agree with the concepts promoted by H.R. 5319 [DOPA], I believe today's discussion is simply the beginning of an in-depth dialogue between policy makers and industry leaders because social-networking and chat technologies are not inherently bad and offer many benefits – yet we must ensure the safety of our children."

For an in-depth discussion on DOPA and the social networks, see an interview with Henry Jenkins at MIT and Danah Boyd at University of California-Berkeley at the Digital Divide Network.

China's kids can gripe online

Could this be a) a step toward greater democracy for China, b) the proverbial genie out of the bottle, or c) a chance for kids to rant about their parents and nothing more. I'm sure Young Pioneers, the youth wing of the Chinese Communist Party sponsoring ChinaKids would say the answer is "c." But the Wall Street Journal reports that in April a group of the site's young social networkers "posted a list of 10 'outrageous and intolerable crimes'," referring to "spanking, putting too much pressure on children, and playing too much mahjong" on the part of their parents. The Journal adds that another "ChinaKid," a blogger from Shanghai, wrote about how terrible it feels "to be censored by somebody else." The site has "800,000 registered preteen bloggers," most of whom "have no interest in sensitive political issues. But the Chinakids community does explicitly teach kids to speak out, sometimes against authority." The article includes a chart showing that China's biggest age group of Internet users is 18-to-24-year-olds (35.1%), followed by 25-to-30-year-olds (19.3%), and then this group, under-18s (16.6%). Meanwhile, "Hao Wu, a Chinese independent filmmaker and blogger arrested by Beijing police in February, was released from detention yesterday [Tuesday, 7/11]," the Journal reports in a separate article, citing a post on his sister's blog.

Pop-ups with your Web videos

Lovely. Free videos just may not be that free anymore. Tell your kids! Now an unsuspecting Web video fan can click on a title like "Friends Play a Hilarious Practical Joke" and get a bunch of pop-up ads on their screens. That's just one of the annoying, buggy clips working its way through the Web social networks, ASPnews reports. They come with "adware Bellevue, Wash.-based Zango," which, APSnews explains, "makes money by partnering with webmasters who post videos on their sites." What happens is, you click on a title and get a pop-up box of "fine print explaining the end user license agreement." When you click on that, you download "a 'Zango Search Assistant,' which, according to tiny text in the pop-up, 'will show you a limited number of ads that pop up on your screen in a separate browser'."

MySpace No. 1 in traffic

MySpace just beat out Yahoo and Google to become the US's most high-traffic site, Reuters reports. According to HitWise traffic tracking, MySpace "accounted for 4.46% of all US Internet visits for the week ending July 8, pushing it past Yahoo Mail for the first time and outpacing the home pages for Yahoo, Google and Microsoft's MSN Hotmail." In the social-networking category, MySpace "captured nearly 80% of visits to such sites, up from 76% in April. A distant second was Facebook at 7.6%."

NZ dad: 'Wake up, parents'

This is the first teen social-networking story I've seen out of New Zealand. A very candid dad in Christchurch contacted The Weekend Press there to warn other parents, saying "he had been forced to place his daughter under 'house arrest' after she invited a stranger home for sex after meeting him on Bebo.com," Stuff.co.nz reports. He and his wife had arrived home one night to find their daughter with the boy she had invited. He told the paper all he and his wife had been aware of about social networking was that "it was like making a Web site." He told the Press he'd banned his daughter from the Internet and a cellphone, taken her page down, and gotten her counseling and a medical check-up. "Australian research showed that 40% of teens would potentially meet in person someone they had met online, and only 12% would ask their parents' permission to do so," the Press added.

Web video: Parents' concerns

One mom told the Associated Press her family, including three teens, often looks at funny online videos together. When they run into racy stuff, she uses it as talking point with them. Another mom, the AP reports, cringed when she saw her 14- and 10-year-old "encounter homemade videos online that included nudity and animal cruelty." These accounts are in the AP's "Online video boom raises risks, concerns," about how "Popular Web sites such as MySpace, YouTube, Yahoo, Google and soon also Microsoft's MSN are featuring user-generated videos that quickly have become a phenomenal form of entertainment" as well as a source of concern. The various services have different policies and practices for screening the video that gets uploaded. MySpace says it reviews every video before it appears in the uploader's profile (the AP doesn't mention this). YouTube relies on member policing, and told the AP that the really objectionable ones get flagged quickly and usually get pulled down within 15 minutes, Yahoo Video has a safe search tool parents can turn on (Google Video's considering it) and told the AP that, though it doesn't prescreen all videos, "any clips that get onto its featured pages must first pass the muster of the company's human editors." Meanwhile, these sites' success is kicking in, with the help of Hollywood – see the San Jose Mercury News on deals some of them are striking to distribute not-so-homemade video (movies and TV shows) too.

'Smart phones' & kids

Very soon our kids will be badgering us for smart phones, not just camera phones – if they aren't already. "Experts say smart-phones - mobile devices that can handle phone calls, email, calendaring and Web surfing, among other tasks - are starting to go mainstream as prices come down and the devices become easier to use," the San Jose Mercury News reports. Only 2.2% of US cellphone users use smart phones right now, the Mercury News cites research from Telephia as finding, but the phonemakers "drool at the thought of putting smart-phones into the hands of the estimated 200 million US cell phone users." They're also drooling over the youth market, the New York Times reports, pointing out that almost half of US 13-to-16-year-olds now own cellphones. The industry loves people like Nik Lulla, a 17-year-old in the Philadelphia area who leads the Times piece. Nik "swaps out his cellphones on a whim. He carries a Motorola Razr, an ultrathin metal phone that is so popular he considers it almost passé, and a T-Mobile Sidekick 2, a minicomputer with instant messaging and email features. Sometimes he throws a Motorola V551 and a Nokia 3120 into the mix. [He] uses the Razr because his mother bought it for him — and because it was cool a few months ago — while the Sidekick is 'just for show'." Now Nik probably really wants the just-unveiled Sidekick 3, "aimed at Generation Cool," according to 19-year-old tech reviewer and New York Times intern blogger Bart Stein.

New option for safe Web browsing

If you have intrepid young Web explorers, file-sharers, and gamers at your house, you might consider a more proactive approach to PC security reviewed by the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg this week: GreenBorder. It's an innovative piece of software that puts a security wall around your Internet Explorer browser, "the most popular but least secure major Web browser" (you'd have to get your kids to use Explorer again if they've switched to Firefox). The browser is a key conduit for malware (viruses, Trojans, etc.) to the rest of your PC. By isolating browsing from the rest of your computer use, GreenBorder keeps any yucky stuff downloaded away from, say, the computer's registry, which sends instructions to all your other applications (malware changes to the registry can really mess things up). Walt explains in detail how it works. "GreenBorder costs $50 a year, but is free for one year to the first 10,000 to download it," he writes. For an extra $14.95/year, parents of avid online communicators and socializers might be interested in getting an additional feature called SafeFiles, which puts "a fence around files from sources other than your browser, including email attachments and files you copied onto your PC."

Microsoft's own MP3 player

…is coming this year. "The world's largest software maker has been briefing record companies on the proposed device, which would play digital music and video files and carry wireless technology enabling users to download music without linking to a computer," the Associated Press reports. Parents in particular may be interested in that 2nd feature with which Microsoft wants to one-up the iPod. If this music player can be used to download music directly from the Web, it'll quite possibly have a Web browser. That would mean a lot of other stuff could be downloaded, which begs the question: Will it also have parental controls? A lot of the coverage so far is speculative, because Microsoft has not made a public announcement about these plans. Stay tuned. (Here's USATODAY's coverage.)

What's happened to music?

Actually, the question is, what's happened to hit songs and albums and box-office blockbusters? Mass-audience hits turned into hits, then "pageviews" and "unique visitors" on (now uploads to) user-aggregating Web sites in zillions of niche interest communities. Consumers are aggregated by interest not geography, and the offerings are a la carte and all about exploration and sampling and – to the media companies – so very random. That's the picture painted by Wired magazine in "The Rise and Fall of the Hit," excerpted from a new book by Chris Anderson. "We are abandoning the tyranny of the top and becoming a niche nation again…. [We're watching our teen social networkers and Web videographers lead the way as] we're increasingly forming our own tribes…. The mass market is yielding to a million minimarkets… [and] credibility now rises from below." This, in an odd way, is both scary (change is scary, the masses are "in control") and comforting (power is more dispersed). "It will take decades for our entertainment industries to internalize the lessons of this shift," the excerpt concludes, and we are watching the messy sorting out involving copyright law, intellectual property, and personal ethics. Meanwhile, the BBC reports, ownership of digital-music players has reached an all-time high. "One in five Americans over the age of 12 now owns a portable digital music device," and 1 in 20 of those has more than one. one in 20 of those quizzed said they possessed more than one, a survey by market research Ipsos found.

Online gambling debate: Update

The two main take-aways on this week's New York Times look at the debate in Congress on Net gambling were: 1) "the odds of a bill's becoming law this year appear long, and 2) "nearly everyone agrees that online betting may be unstoppable because of the reach of the Internet and the difficulty in regulating its activity." Online gambling is legal in some 80 countries, the Times adds. One of them, the UK, is hosting an international symposium this fall on taxing and regulating gambling on the Internet. [For some data and other info on youth gambling, see "Poker's rise: Fresh numbers," "No. of young gamblers on the rise," and "Understanding Games & Gaming."]

New video site pays users

You'll probably be hearing this from young videocam wielders you know before you read it here: Just-launched eefoof.com plans to give YouTube.com a run for its money by "offering videographers a share of the advertising dollars that their movies generate," CNET reports. "Video sharing on the Internet is one of the hottest sensations in media. Every day, people from all over the world are posting homemade movies at one of more than 150 sites. Sometimes those clips attract big audiences. At places such as YouTube, Yahoo Video and eBaumsworld, the creators of popular clips aren't compensated." Of course, eefoof won't pay people uploading someone else's copyrighted video. The service was created, CNET adds, by three guys in their early 20s who'd met online playing videogames – they'd never seen each other. YouTube's doing ok, too. USATODAY says it's now the 39th most popular site on the Web (75th two months ago), 50,000 videos get uploaded to it daily, and Hollywood wants to promote its movies on the site. "The success of YouTube, which a half-year after its launch is streaming more than 50 million video clips a day, has spawned 180 video sites in the past three months alone. In a sidebar, USATODAY zooms in on four of them, except that one on this list, BitTorrent, is a well-established, globally used file-sharing technology, not a site.

The life of an ID thief

Ever wonder how people's identities get stolen? A New York Times profile of 22-year-old convicted identity thief Shiva Brent Sharma explains a lot – especially about how it happens through phishing sites (more than lost credit cards and riffled-through garbage cans). The people most vulnerable to phishing-related ID theft are new to the Web. They're victimized by "social engineering" more than anything else. In other words, they're tricked. They believe an email when it looks like it's from their bank or an online retailer and says (as one of Sharma's did), "We regret to inform you, but due to a recent system flush, the billing information for your account was deleted." They're told to "click here" and got to a Web page that also looks like their bank's where they can fix the problem. They "fix" it by typing in name, address, credit card number, mother's maiden name, social security number, etc. The Times says about 100 owners of the some 100,000 email addresses Sharma acquired in one exploit fell for it. A prosecutor told the Times these methods are being used all the time, Sharma was just one of the first caught using them (caught three times). Sharma told the Times this is an addiction and he worries that, when he's served his 2-4-year sentence, he'll "relapse." If anyone in your circles is new to the Web, tell them to read this story – it's an interesting human story that'll also give them some cyberstreet smarts in one sitting. For a more academic take, see CNET's "The secret of phishers' success." And a US Justice Department study released in April actually adjusted earlier ID theft victim figures from the government downward, the Associated Press reported.

Help for parents of the college-bound

Searching for the right college or university is not just daunting for teens, of course. In "2,200 Colleges, So Little Time (and Money) to Visit," New York Times "online shopper" Michelle Slatalla recalls how her daughter hated college No. 1 and then writes, "Last week, as Zoe and I made plans to visit more colleges, I looked back on our previous trip and wondered if there was a better way. Although we had been lucky in the Midwest — she liked two of the three schools we saw — there are about 2,200 four-year colleges and universities to visit nationwide, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. We needed to eliminate the duds without wasting travel money." Michelle then links to what she's found to be the best sites providing virtual tours of schools – a very helpful screening tool.

Social networking for the greater good

I bet this is going to be a trend: the social networks getting smart and combating all the bad p.r. they've gotten by doing something really positive as well as putting out fires on the negative side. MySpace "is trying to galvanize its [now 90 million+] user base to get involved in public service," the Washington Post reports. "It is doing so by sponsoring a contest, which begins today [7/5], requesting submissions of 15- to 30-second video public-service announcements encouraging social activism. The winner will be featured in Seventeen magazine, which is co-sponsoring the contest." Entries will be reviewed by a panel of judges from both MySpace and Seventeen, and the winners will be announced the week August 21, the Post adds. It cites a recent survey by Teenage Research Unlimited in Illinois showing that "63% of teens said they care about others and want to make the world a better place … but only 25% were involved in a volunteer activity." And here's an example from Reuters of game designers with a similar goal.

Risky reinforcement online

It may not seem like it as you read it, but the Washington Post's "Invitation to Harm" is very good news. It exposes parents and other caregivers to worlds we really need to know about – and helps us better understand behavior that's crying out for our help. As does any and all news coverage of online communities like "Groups" in MySpace and other social networks. Two samples: "On a self-mutilation group called 'Razorblade Kisses' - which had nearly 200 members as of last week - a message displays a 'Cutting Warning Label' that warns, 'before you make that first cut remember. You will enjoy this. You will find the blood and pain release addictive.' And 'be prepared to withdraw from others and live in a constant state of shame … you will find yourself lying to the people you love. You will jerk back from your friends when they touch you as if their hands were dipped in poison'," and the Post tells of a 14-year-old New Jersey boy who belongs to MySpace groups that teach him about drug use (his parents don't know about his MySpace page). The social networks give us unprecedented access to teens' inner lives, as disturbing as that can be, presenting a tremendous opportunity both for parental understanding and in-depth research – as well as for better care and treatment of troubled teens. For more on this, see "Net good & bad for teens: Study" and "Wrong kind of support." And here's an example shared at BlogCritics.org of how online activity helps a 15-year-old diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

'Try to keep a cool head'

I don't know if he's a parent, but teacher and commentator Scott Granneman makes some useful observations for parents and everybody involved with teens using Web 2.0 in "MySpace, a place without MyParents" at SecurityFocus.com. After running through (and linking to news stories about) a bunch the latest exploits by teens and victimizing teens on social networks I've linked you to too, he tells this anecdote: "When I was a high school English teacher many years ago, I had a 9th grade student who confided a terrible story to me one day. When she was in the 8th grade, she started prank calling people on weekends to break up her boredom. One Saturday night the guy on the other end of the phone didn't hang up like all the others. Instead, he talked to her. The phone talks continued, and soon they met. You can guess the rest…. So since that sicko used the telephone to meet his victim, we should ban phones? Or at least tightly control how kids use them, with age restrictions and credit card verifications? Of course not. The fact is, every new technology has been used by people to perform, or enable, illicit and illegal acts. MySpace, and the Internet in general, simply expands the ability of people to communicate easily over distance more than any other tool that humanity has created…. Any time you allow humans to come into contact with each other, there's the potential for exploitation. That doesn't mean disaster is guaranteed, however. It just means that we need to try to keep a cool head and not allow blind emotion and fear to cloud our better judgments." Or our ability to talk with our kids about their social lives, offline and online. Don't miss his account of a parent-teacher conference with the parents of one of his smarter but less engaged 9th-grade students on p. 2 of the article. [Granneman's commentary was picked up by The Register in the UK.]

UK inquiry into social networks

Social networking is big news in Britain this week. Some 61% of UK 13-to-17-year-olds have pages on social-networking sites, and the British government-backed Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre (CEOP) has launched an inquiry into activity on the social networks, citing parents' and educators' concerns, The Guardian reports. According to The Guardian, 1 in 12 of the UK's 8 million children with Net access have met offline with someone they originally encountered online. That statistic includes online venues other than the social networks, but CEOP's reportedly zooming in on social-networking because of its sudden extreme popularity with teens. "A minority of children, some as young as 13, have begun showing pictures of themselves in sexual poses, semi-naked or wearing lingerie," The Guardian reports. "One headteacher has called in police after discovering more than 700 of her students had signed up with bebo, and that some were displaying images she considered to be indecent. Linda Wybar, headteacher of Tunbridge Wells girls' grammar, also banned the site from her school and wrote to every parent about her concerns." Besides its inquiry, CEOP will also hold safe-social-networking workshops for parents, teens, and educators, the BBC reports. Across the pond, the FTC has just testified on Capitol Hill about its concerns, basically calling for greater self-regulation on the social networks' part, ConsumerAffairs.com reports.