Kids need to listen to *this*

Rapper Ben Johnson has joined a team of hearing loss specialists who talk to young music fans with earbuds about ear damage. He’s a very cool-looking 20-something musician who’s very effective at driving home the point that people need to be really careful about earbud volume levels and music listening time, reports National Public Radio. He does this for a very personal reason and because of some numbers. First, “his father Isaiah, who is looking on from the back of the cafeteria [of the middle school where the team is conducting a special assembly], is a classical musician - a conductor - who lost much of his hearing a few years ago.” Second, according to a Centers for Disease Control study NPR cites, nearly 13% of Americans ages 6-19 (more than 5 million) have suffered noise-induced hearing loss. Earbuds can cause that if they’re used for long periods (at 7+ volume on a scale of 10). The rule of thumb these experts give is to “limit earphone listening to an hour a day, at a setting no greater than six” on that scale of 10.” If other people can hear the music “leaking” from their phones, it’s too loud. If they hear ringing in their ears when they take the earbuds out, that’s “a sign of imminent ear damage.” If your children want to know why earbuds can be damaging and they don’t want to read the NPR piece, tell them it’s because they’re actually in the ear canal, very close to the “cochlea, the inner ear chamber where hearing happens.” See also this item about Apple’s free software for protecting iPod users’ ears and this about teens and hearing loss from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

Fresh videogame findings

Though eclipsed by the terrible news of violence in Virginia and Iraq last week, there has been some notable news in the videogame space of late, including findings from research on both sides of the Pond. Please find some highlights and links to them in this week's issue of my newsletter. In addition to these studies' findings, don't miss some insights from psychiatrist Dr. Jerald Block, who has worked with a lot of avid gamers, including "numerous players who have logged over 3,000 hours in a year on just one game [that's 57+ hours/week, 52 weeks/year]," and wrote a commentary in the Rocky Mountain News about some research he's done on the Columbine High shooters (I'm also linking you to an article of his about three cases of both therapeutic and pathological videogame use). Have a great weekend!

Predator in phone chat

This commentary by Fox News legal specialist Lis Wiehl shows how predation is not restricted to any particular technology, which parents need to know. A Georgia 14-year-old “joined Quest Personals, a phone chat service, after seeing it advertised on television,” Wiehl reports in FoxNews.com, adding that the site has a minimum age of 18 but has no security measures that enforce that minimum. So “Julie Doe” signed up and was approached by a number of men. She and a friend went to meet and had sex with one of them on two different nights. The mother found out from phone bills and finally answering the phone one night and hearing a man asking for “Julie.” She requested that Quest Personals delete her child’s voice-chat profile, and the company refused. The mother sued Quest Personals, and the lawsuit is still pending. Her daughter’s assailant was convicted of assault and is serving 20 years.

AIM's buddy tracker

It sounds ok, but law enforcement people are concerned about it, Channel 6 in Orlando reports. And to me, upon reading this article, it sounds more risky even than cellphone-based mobile social networking because it can pinpoint where an AIM user is on his or her home computer. AIM users, including kids, can download this feature but its creator, Skyhook, represented in a mobile social networking meeting I attended in Washington this morning, said there are some effective protections in place (local TV news isn’t known for in-depth research in tech reporting). I suggest that parents ask kids if they’ve downloaded this plug-in and, if not, go through the process together, talking about the pros and cons. How the technology works is, it finds the position of an AIM buddy by "using the continuous wireless pulses emitted by all Wi-Fi transmitters and Wi-Fi-enabled computers," according to Channel 6. The Associated Press explains further that, "when an AIM user installs [the service], the application gathers the identifying codes for all access points that are detected by the Wi-Fi card in the computer, then compares those with the database to identify the person's location. When connected via a non-Wi-Fi computer, a user can manually input a location." Here's the AIM Location page.

Moving to Vista...

…from Windows XP is not exactly plug-'n'-play, reports SafeKids'com's Larry Magid in the New York Times. "Buying a new computer is a lot like buying or renting a new home. First you have to pick it out and pay for it, and then you have to move your stuff." He recommends various kinds of software tools that can help you on "moving day" and suggests what you need to consider before you decide what tools you need. See also "Vista's parental controls."

Facebook's 'Twitter' traits

Facebook users now have all the cellphone-Web "talking points" that the very hot mobile-social-networking service Twitter has, a Wired News blog reports. Users can not only update their profiles via cellphone, they can also have their Facebook friends' pokes and comments sent directly to their phones. Wired News says "the improvements are not simply a case of Facebook copying Twitter since the Status Updates feature has been available to Facebook users for nearly a year, still, with the addition of SMS support, the featureset is now nearly identical to that of Twitter."

5,000 calls to his cellphone

A young Massachusetts man with some time on his hands thought he'd give some of it to people seeking help. So he posted a video on YouTube.com showing his cellphone number on Friday and – apparently by Monday – had received 5,000 calls and text messages, the Associated Press reports. He said he "was inspired to act by a video of Juan Mann, whose 'Free Hugs' campaign became world famous after video clips of Mann hugging strangers appeared on YouTube," the Boston Globe reports. He may have to do some fund-raising to pay for all those minutes. He heard from people all over the US and Europe. "About 70% of the callers, he said, wanted to shoot the breeze for a few minutes about their plans for the day, and to inquire about his," the Globe adds (maybe they should get Twitter). For free help for established sites focusing on the subject, people might check out: Help.com, CarePlace.com, and SuicidePreventionLifeline.org (the last one helps with a lot more than suicidal tendencies – see "The social Web's 'Lifeline'").

Social sites surpassing Web porn?

X-rated Web content will probably always be on the Web, but it has some serious competition now, reportedly. "Web traffic attracted by social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook has begun to rival porn sites in recent months," the Toronto Star reports, citing research from traffic measurer Hitwise. But as a blogger at WebProNews suggests, that may not be the good news that it appears to be: "Does the fact that I have 15 social-networking accounts, mean that I represent 15 unique visitors?... Most social-networking sites have free membership. It’s also an ‘incentive’ to create tons of accounts, and only use one or two services. Does the report factor that some spam marketers are creating millions of MySpace and other accounts for spam purposes? Well, if it does, I wouldn’t be surprised that social networking is ‘overtaking’ porn sites!" The Economist suggests that porn has just shifted more to the file-sharing networks and reports that 30% of transactions on Second Life relate to sex or gambling.

Irresponsible sites: Web 2.0's other darkside

Worried parents may find some comfort in seeing the list of teen-safety improvements MySpace has made (see Business Week). But parents also must be aware that there are many social sites besides MySpace, some showing little to no corporate responsibility – if there are even corporations behind the latter type of site. Take for example EncyclopediaDramatica.com, a public wiki (mocking Wikipedia.org) where public and private individuals are being parodied and bullied. Nancy Willard of the Center for Safe & Responsible Internet Use emailed me and other child advocates this week about a person she'd heard from who'd been victimized in this site, which says in its disclaimer, "We take no responsibility for any of this." Not just the parody site it purports to be, it encourages trolling (inciting insults, flaming, bullying, defamation, etc.) and jokes about rape. Referring to this site and the page someone created about her, the person who emailed Nancy for help wrote, "There are hundreds of offensive and hurtful pages on there…. 99.9% of the information is obviously ridiculously false. What really kills me is the portrayal of my having been sexually assaulted as a big hilarious fabrication. That doesn't belong in my life…." For more on this, please see this week's issue of my newsletter.

YouTube winners' stories

Want to get a feel for the best of YouTube (to see what your kids see in this runaway Web phenomenon)? Meet the winners in the Best Comedy, Most Adorable, Most Inspirational, and Best Series categories of the first-annual YouTube Awards. Carol Montsinger at USATODAY got a bit of the backstory from the winners themselves. You might call this the best of the user-driven Web. Here's the Associated Press on the program. Meanwhile, the New York Times recently reported on a study that found YouTube is much more grassroots, more about videos like the above than about copyrighted video clips of movies and TV shows.

Teen social networkers' safety practices

Good news about teen safety practices on the social Web this week – surprisingly good to adults persuaded by the very negative hype about social networking in the news media this past year. A just-released study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that "the majority of teens actively manage their online profiles to keep the information they believe is most sensitive away from the unwanted gaze of strangers" and other adults, including parents, of course. "Less than 10% of teens say they're actually presenting … their first name and their last name on their profile," Amanda Lenhart, the study's lead author, told Larry Magid in an interview for CBS News. "Add on to that their city or town and the name of their school and the number drops even lower. So it's a very, very, very small number of teens who are actually posting info that can really allow them to be identified online." Other key findings in the 55-page report: "Some 55% of online teens have profiles…. Of those … 66% say their profile is not visible to all Internet users." Of those who do have public profiles, "nearly half (46%) say they give at least some false information. Teens post fake information to protect themselves and also to be playful or silly." The study also reports that 32% of teens receive some kind of online communications from strangers, but not necessarily on a social-networking site. Amanda pointed out that "stranger" can mean a variety of things, from bands to unknown friends of friends to people with bad intentions. Sixty-five percent of respondents said they ignored or deleted those contacts; 21% "responded so they could find out more about the person"; 8% responded to say "leave me alone"; and 3% reported the contact to a trusted adult. There were dozens of news stories covering this around the world by the end of its release day. Here's the Associated Press in the Sydney Morning Herald.

A social networker's good thinking

In ICWales.co.uk, a young commentator tells of a social Web-enhanced "schoolgirl error" gone very wrong – "the case of 17-year-old Rachael [name deleted for her privacy]… who claims that her MySpace account was hacked and that her innocent advert posted for 60 of her friends was doctored to invite the world and his dog to her house party…. And we all know what happened next, hundreds of young people descended on her parents' house to do all sorts of nasty things to it while no doubt necking rather cheap booze. There is a lesson for all of us there." It's refreshing to hear a younger person advise against too much self-exposure on the social Web for a change, but this is also some of the first coverage I've seen about the risks of indiscriminately sending out bulletins to large numbers of fellow social networkers. Another pitfall for them to be aware of: making their calendars public (with dates and locations of places they'll be) – we write about this in MySpace Unraveled (shameless plug).

How social sites can help kids

These might look like a couple of those rare boy-bites-dog stories, but I think the news media are beginning to pick up on a story that was always there. First, the Safe School Ambassadors Program uses social-networking techniques to combat bullying. It IDs social influencers in San Francisco schools, meets with them, and tells them that with influence comes responsibility. The premise is that if a school's top student influencers say bullying is not cool, a large number of other students "will change their behavior because they will have to conform to a new norm," a program spokesperson told San Francisco's CBS 5. More than 450 schools have used the Safe Schools Ambassadors program since 2000, CBS 5 adds. The other article from McClatchy Newspapers, points out that there is a lot to be learned about our kids from their profiles and blogs if we have access to them (which usually requires open parent-child communication lines), and social-networking profiles can present "very public warning signs from troubled kids" to parents, mental-health-care professionals, educators, and researchers.

2 great child-protection updates

A mom and New York Times writer recently got herself up to speed on online child protection and wrote a meaty but refreshing account. "I found out, for example, that most of the Internet search engines, like Google, AOL and Yahoo, have a simple process allowing you to set strict, moderate or no filter on your search engine to weed out explicit sexual content," she writes, pointing to a free, very basic and easy safeguard any parent can employ (here are simple instructions at GetNetWise). She found some other great sources of advice, including about helping our kids develop the filter between their ears, but she also looks at all the control some parents want to have over their kids' online experience and how their kids feel about it. The Christian Science Monitor recently did a thorough update too, linking to some of the best software tools now available but also finding that "the best parental control is still a parent." CNET also recently ran a huge multi-piece update on kids' Net safety.

R-rated media & teens: FTC study

Ads for R-rated films may not be appearing around TV shows targeting youth, but they're definitely appearing in Web sites that do. Then there's the proliferation of unrated DVDs on video store shelves. "Despite industry controls, buyers from the ages of 13 to 16, unaccompanied by adults, were able to purchase tickets to R-rated films in 39% of their attempts, and successfully bought unrated or R-rated DVDs 71% of the time," the New York Times reports. These developments are contributing to what a new Federal Trade Commission study found to be an erosion of "the entertainment industry’s promise not to entice youth with violent fare," according to the Times. The FTC says “general compliance with existing voluntary standards" is pretty good, but the entertainment industry is giving enough attention to applying them to "evolving marketing trends.”

Net communications at Va. Tech

Administrators used email and students used Facebook as, in many cases, their only means of sending and receiving information fast in the aftermath of the worst mass shooting in modern US history, ABC News reports. The death toll was 33 by late Monday night, the Associated Press reported. With phone and other communication systems jammed, "many people turned to social networking sites to try to connect with friends, family and loved ones." ABC cites a MySpace user sending out a bulletin asking if they knew about six people she listed (presumably at Virginia Tech) and a Facebook user who "suggested that all others [on Facebook at Virginia Tech] update their profiles to say 'I'm OK'.... For the most part, the comments posted online were from people sharing their prayers and sympathies." Along those lines, see also Canada.com and the Los Angeles Times. Reuters and CBS analyst (and BlogSafety.com co-director) Larry Magid zoomed in on Facebook's role in helping Virginia Tech students (here's Larry's audio interview with Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief security officer).

Older students help littler ones

This makes enormous sense: Middle and high school students teaching elementary level ones about online safety – simply because kids look up to teenagers so much. Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Steven Del Negro told Channel 9 News that there was growing demand from grade schools to present to students about online safety and there just weren't enough officer-trainers to go around, so he found an alternative that was just as cool. "Del Negro said for the new program he had student teachers - a freshmen honors English class from Drury High School - work with him, prepping the presentation. It includes interactive activities on how to deal with online predators." I bet soon these trainers will be folding in the wisdom that comes from first-hand experience with that other key online-safety topic: cyberbullying (see "Predators & cyberbullies: Reality check").

Highly mobile child porn

Child pornography images are being stored on increasingly portable devices and so are getting harder to find in investigations – from flash drives to cellphones, law enforcement officials say. Still, it is being uncovered. "Of the nearly 125 child porn cases annually investigated by Bergen County prosecutor's detectives, the majority now involve some sort of digital storage media," NorthJersey.com reports. It adds that "they've confiscated digital storage as mundane as burned CDs and as crafty as a ballpoint pen that unscrews to reveal a flash drive." Flash drives (those little digital storage devices people carry on their keychains) are most popular, a few months ago, investigators from the Texas Attorney General's Office raided a home and "found an iPod containing videos of child pornography." Meanwhile, the US Congress has been much less effective than law enforcement in combating this horrific crime. "Two recent legal cases [involving the Child Online Protection Act and the PROTECT Act] illustrate overreach and ineffectiveness by Congress in a worthy fight," according to a Los Angeles Times editorial. In related news, the UK's Internet Watch Foundation found in its annual review that online child porn "is becoming more brutal and graphic, and the number of images depicting violent abuse has risen fourfold since 2003," the Associated Press reports.

Facebook's facelift

Second-largest social-networking service Facebook just unveiled its biggest overhaul in 18 months, Technology Review reports. “Besides adopting a new look, Facebook is introducing tools that will enable its users to learn more about their social networks and more easily conduct electronic conversations among multiple people simultaneously.” The article adds that the service tested its new look and features on more than 100,000 members. And, although it’s famous as a service for college students that got its start at Harvard, “less than half its users are currently in college,” Technology Review reports. The rest are in Facebook’s networks for businesses, geographic regions, and high school students.

Proposed US site-labeling law

The bill’s sponsors say it would “clean up the Internet for children,” CNET reports. Sens. Max Baucus of Montana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas introduced legislation today that says operators of Web sites content that’s “harmful to minors” must label their sites as such and register in a national directory or be fined, according CNET. It’s not the first legislation of its kind. “The current Democratic proposal - like the one that a Republican-dominated Senate committee approved last summer - is strikingly similar to the one floated over a decade ago.” CNET says one difference, though, is that the law proposed in ’96 referred to “indecent” material. This one uses the phrase “harmful to minors,” which it defines as “any type of material that appeals to the prurient interest by depicting or describing an actual or simulated sex act - and lacks serious scientific, literary, artistic or political values for minors.” But last month a federal judge ruled that even sex ed sites could be deemed “harmful to minors,” which could make restrictions on them unconstitutional. It appears we have yet another proposed Net-safety law on constitutionally slippery ground. It would also fail to have much impact on all those X-rated (or sex-education) sites based in other countries.

Growing interest in tween sites

Is it that news media instinctively know that tweens need social-networking options of their own? That there’s a reason MySpace and other social-networking sites target users 14+? I’m seeing more and more reports around the country about a growing number of options for elementary- and middle-school-age children. For example, the Baltimore Sun zoomed in on Webkinz, where kids can create a virtual pet (maybe from a favorite real or stuffed furry friend), outfit and re-outfit, and create a virtual home for it. I just hope it isn’t encouraging consumerism too much – the Sun points out that the site “points out that ‘Everyone enjoys a little retail therapy’." The Contra Costa Times profiles British Columbia-based ClubPenguin, where one California mom’s kids “aren't allowed to become buddies with anyone they don't know.” Here’s how this site and the family’s rule is good “training wheels” for social-networking sites: This mom’s kids “were mystified by the rule ... [and] fretted they might hurt someone's feelings by saying ‘no’.” Whatever the rule or negotiation a family has, it prompts an important conversation about how people can try to manipulate others (see “How social influencing works”).

Kids' virtual-world takeaways

Some good, some not so good, but kids are learning things from virtual worlds targeting them, comments Organic's Chad Stoller in ClickZ.com. Pointing to Disney’s Toon Town, Club Penguin, WebKinz, Nicktropolis, and There.com, he says they learn how to handle (virtual) money, including saving vs. spending (“kids are now discussing the eBay prices of a [Webkinz] Dalmation in classrooms”); “what it means to get something in return for their time” via the “leveling up” experience in games; how to customize their spaces and differentiate them; and how to protect their computer from errant code and other hacks.

Call for better Net manners

Maybe what’s happening in the blogosphere will spill over onto the social Web at large. If it just gets social networkers thinking and agitating for civility and integrity in the social sphere as well as in blogging, it’s a good thing. Just look at the sheer size of the blogosphere: At last count, there were 70 million blogs, “with more than 1.4 million entries being added daily, according to Technorati, a blog-indexing company,” the New York Times reports. “For the last decade, these Web journals have offered writers a way to amplify their voices and engage with friends and readers. But the same factors that make those unfiltered conversations so compelling, and impossible to replicate in the offline world, also allow them to spin out of control.” And that happened recently (see “Call to stop cyberbullying”). Now Tim O’Reilly, crediting with coining the term “Web 2.0” and Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales have joined the chorus, putting forth a blogging code of conduct. They’re great, particularly: “Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t say in person” and - for any parent-child discussion on the subject – would suggest adding the universal ethic of reciprocity to the mix.

Principal sues over student profiles

A Pennsylvania principal has sued four former students for defaming him in three MySpace profiles. “Each of the disputed sites, which went online during the course of one week in December 2005, was removed within days of its appearance after school officials contacted MySpace.com, CNET reports. In the complaint he filed, the administrator said they were imposter profiles that “falsely portrayed him as a pot smoker, beer guzzler and pornography lover and sullied his reputation.” One of the students and his parents earlier sued the principal and the school for what they called excessive action that violated the student’s First Amendment rights. CNET reports that the school suspended the 3.3 GPA student and placed him “in an alternative education program that allegedly prevented him from progressing with his normal coursework.” Meanwhile, in Indiana, the state’s appeals court ordered a lower court to set aside its penalty against a student who criticized her school principal in a MySpace profile, the Associated Press reports. The appeals court said the earlier decision violated the student’s free-speech rights.

Social Web ads: Widgets

Where we used to we used to watch ads (what a concept!), our children are playing with widgets. Widgets, the Washington Post reports, allows people to do everything from design their own sneakers to create a ringtone to check out Hong Kong traffic or the surf at Australian beaches. Yahoo now has 4,300 widgets in its gallery, “blog publisher TypePad offers ‘blidgets’; home-page creator PageFlakes lets people incorporate ‘snippets’ into their personalized pages; Netvibes, Snipperoo and YourMinis host widget galleries,” according to the Post. Car maker Mini Cooper has a Web site that lets you design your own Mini Cooper credit card (which provides a bit of credit toward your Mini purchase to each transaction). The founder of Searchles social-bookmarking site told the Post that widgets are the “glue” between users and the product or content they want. This is pretty immersive “advertising” – just as much so for adults as for kids playing “Lucky Charms” games in Neopets.com. Teens and adults are wise to it, but it should be clearly labeled as advertising where kids are concerned, and this is great fuel for family discussions about critical thinking. [See also “Widgets: Huge on the social Web."]

Social networking meets virtual worlds

If anyone's wondering if virtual worlds are the next social frontier for teens, they might want to look at the evidence. At least, the evidence of how much one virtual world – Second Life – has infiltrated the "real world" and vice versa:

Calvin Klein launched its virtual perfume in Second Life, VNUNET reports.

US T-shirt maker and retailer American Apparel has a virtual store in Second Life.

Reuters and The Street.com have news bureaus in the virtual world.

UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow held a rally against the Darfur conflict in January in Second Life, TheStreet.com reports from its bureau there.

A New York art gallery has staged an exhibition of portraits of Second Life's "13 most beautiful" people (a.k.a. avatars), and Australia's Four Corners news show aired a documentary shot mostly within Second Life, Australia's The Age reports.

Cisco, Dell, and IBM have set up shop in the world, "making it the first destination for real-world companies looking to extend their brand into the virtual realm," TheStreet.com reports.

And while Second Life passes the 5 million-resident mark, long-time members with something of a "we were here first" attitude are getting annoyed about the commercialization and all these new avatars walking and flying around, the Los Angeles Times reports - though their message is more about wanting more say in the virtual world's fate. So now there's a "Second Life Liberation Army" blowing up storefronts and saying that "80% of long-term residents support their cause." For more on all this, including the teen part of the equation, pls click to this week's issue of my newsletter.

Kid phone fashionistas

Having a cellphone is something of a fashion statement or status symbol for US 8-to-12-year-olds. For many of their parents, it's something of a security blanket, the New York Times reports, in a thoughtful trend piece. Of course, what's fashionable changes pretty fast in that age group, since the children, the tech, and the coolness factor are all changing at once. Here are some numbers: Nearly a third of this age group had cellphones by the end of last year (about 6.6 million out of 20 million), the Times cites Yankee Group figures as showing. It projects that'll be 10.5 million preteen phone owners by 2010. For eight-year-olds, the number more than doubled over the past four years and for 9-year-olds it went from 501,000 to 1.25 million in that time period.

UK's cyberbullied teachers

In British classrooms, it's the teachers who are getting bullied (well, in North America too, actually see "We're all on Candid Camera"). In its usual irreverent style, The Register reports on its investigation into what was really being said in RateMyTeachers.com about "front-line educator" Andy Brown when he spoke about his and other educators' experiences at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers conference (yes, there were some meanies, but there were also some nice ones about how "witty, intelligent, inspiring, encouraging, kind and creative" Mr. Brown is). It's an entertaining article that might be pointing to the lessons of the social Web: We're all going to be increasingly "out there" (more public), so, as they are for our teen social networkers, our options are: a) be glad if the balance sheet of Web public opinion is more positive than negative, and b) develop a thicker skin and be who we are, or c) just be nice all the time (which of course is also no guarantee of an all-positive balance sheet). See also "The social Web's digital divide" between self-exposing teens and their privacy prone elders.

Social mapping, Google-style

Google brings new meaning to the term "social mapping" with My Maps. We knew about Google Maps and we knew about social-mapping on cellphones with GPS tech in services like loopt.com and Google's Dodgeball. But this blogger in Australia (and others) has picked up on the social element of personalized mapping on the Web. "Google Maps is certain to attract much more attention as it becomes a place for locals to share their wealth of knowledge about their neighborhood and surrounding community." Because My Maps allows you to add photos and video, people can create photo and video records of their trips and "share them with the ‘My Maps’ community." Here's Google's users' guide for My Maps.

Phones: Life's 'remote controls'?

That’s what a CBS executive told the New York Times cellphones are becoming to us (or maybe our kids): a kind of “digital remote control." “In Japan, McDonald’s customers can already point their cellphones at the wrapping on their hamburgers and get nutrition information on their screens. Users there can also point their phones at magazine ads to receive insurance quotes, and board airplanes using their phones rather than paper tickets.” Pretty soon, using the Web won’t be something you head to the office or find a wi-fi hotspot to do, it’ll simply happen on a whim, or whenever anybody needs a little more info, a reservation, an address, or a map. “Links” won’t just be on Web pages. A researcher at Hewlett-Packard in the UK calls them “physical hyperlinks” – bits of information that everything in the real world is associated with. Phones will be the way to connect objects with their info – like the nutritional info for a bottle of juice that will no longer have to be on the packaging. We’ll also no longer need to go to an ATM for money; our phones will be our teller machines.

MPAA's college black list

The film industry’s trade association has announced its Top 25 movie piracy schools, as well as its support for the Curb Illegal Downloading on College Campuses Act of 2007, ArsTechnica.com reports. “This is a page straight out of the RIAA’s playbook,” according to ArsTechnica (see the RIAA’s latest anti-student-file-sharer news here). Columbia, Penn, B.U., UCLA, and Purdue top the MPAA’s “dishonor roll.”

Phone for tweens

Heard of Kajeet? You may from your kids soon. It’s a new cellphone, a rare one specifically aimed at 8-to-16-year-olds (but probably more appealing to, say, 8-to-11-year-olds). It has a “mature look and simple pricing,” the Washington Post reports. “Parents can set monthly allowances” for minutes, ring tones, games, and text messaging on the $99 phone’s “pay-as-you-go cellphone service” on the Sprint Nextel network. No contracts or cancellation fees. And there’s a “wallets” option, so that calls to family members are covered by Mom, for example, but ring tones come out of the kid’s wallet. Kajeet has three phone styles available, the Post says, at Best Buy, Limited Too, and – on the West Coast – Longs Drug Stores. As for kid phones, The Olympian describes popular brands like Wherify, Disney Phone, Firefly, and Tic Talk.

.xxx: Final nix

Well, final except that ICM - the would-be dot-xxx registrar that has been working on the establishment of a Web “red-light district” for seven years - says a lawsuit against ICANN is “likely,” the International Herald Tribune reports. ICANN, which manages the Web’s domain names, first rejected the dot-xxx domain in 2000, and ICM resubmitted its proposal in 2004. Key to ICANN’s final decision this time was the Canadian government’s warning this past week that “a decision to approve dot-xxx, could put the agency, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, in the tricky business of content regulation, having to decide which sites are pornographic and which are not.” The final decision was 9-5 against in “an open board meeting, with each of the voting members explaining their reasoning.” In his commentary, BlogSafety.com’s co-director Larry Magid writes, “Despite years of advocacy on the part of its sponsors, I remain unconvinced that that the .XXX top level domain would have furthered the causes of child protection or free speech. It might have been effective had it been mandatory for all porn sites, but that would have brought up enormous free speech issues that many of us would not fathom. Because it would have been voluntary, there would continue to be porn sites with .com TLDs, possibly giving parents a false sense of security by believing that all porn was walled off.”