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Dear Subscribers:

Next week the newsletter will be on Thanksgiving holiday, so your next issue will arrive December 1. Speaking of thanksgiving, we thank every one of you - in all 50+ countries where you live - for subscribing to the SafeKids/NetFamilyNewsletter and being part of the growing worldwide community of grownups looking out for online kids. Here's our lineup for this second week of November:


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Family Tech

  1. Thanksgiving & the Web

    Anyone who follows tech news is right now getting more information than s/he'd ever want on how e-commerce is doing this holiday season. But "holidays and the Web aren't just about buying things," SafeKids.com's Larry Magid points out. In his Family Tech column at the San Jose Mercury News, Larry writes that the Web offers families plenty of free resources, including clip art for creating your own holiday projects, recipes, greeting cards, stories, and songs. In his own WiredFamilies.com, he's set up a page just for Thanksgiving resources, linking to Web sites for projects as well as background information on the history, culture, and religious freedom. And leftover turkey recipes will certainly be welcome in a couple of weeks! The Web can definitely enhance family togetherness. Tell us if you agree and how your family is putting the Web to work for you - via feedback@netfamilynews.org.

  2. A very local LAN

    In "LANs Help Households Stay Connect", Larry spells out everything you need to connect multiple PCs together (to share files, a printer, etc.) and to get them to share your home's connection to the Internet.

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The new SesameStreet.com

"Click here, click here!" Elmo tells kids, right on the home page. In the version of SesameStreet.com just relaunched this week, Elmo, his friends, and the Street itself are more interactive than ever, with sound, movement, and new small surfer activities all over this comfortably familiar "e-playground."

For preschoolers, new multimedia features include the Mail Room, for (with a parent's help) learning email basics by corresponding with one's Muppet of choice, and the Muppet Piano (compose a tune by moving the cursor over each Muppet "piano key," or click on a Muppet and go to its/his/her own Web page). Kids who'd rather just listen can go to Sesame Radio, click on "Play" on the "boom box" and have Sesame tunes playing in the background while they're playing anywhere in the site. Tried-and-true features for older kids include Sticker World, where kids 6-12 collect and display e-stickers (see our review at its launch, "New world in the CTW Web universe") and Noggin, "the 24-hour-per-day thinking channel" produced jointly by the Workshop and Nickelodeon.

There are some new features for parents, too, in their own section. There you'll find "Talking Out Loud," a lively new column by Sonia Manzano, Sesame Street's "Maria," about parenting. In her introductory column, Sonia talks to us like an old friend (which she probably is, actually, for many parents of preschoolers), kind of in coffee klatsch-style. Parents of babies will find age-customized advice and activities in Baby Workshop.

Probably because our readers are all over the world, what stood out to us most is how international the Workshop's efforts are. This is the part that we think teachers will find most interesting. The new design links users directly to Sesame Workshop's award-winning, multilingual Passport Kids, a "worldwide kids club" where children can create their own Web profiles, using customized music and art. The child-created profiles can be viewed in any of 10 different languages. Another program we weren't previously aware of is Sesame English, a TV program starring Muppets and humans (both actors and local kids and parents) that teaches children in China and Taiwan conversational English.

If any of you - parents and teachers - visit this site with your children, do tell us what you, and especially your kids, think. We love to hear how children react to Web resources designed for them.

For more on the new SesameStreet.com, here's USAToday.

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Subscribers write

  1. PlayStation 2

    Referring to last week's item, "E-toys for small digerati", Laura in Illinois emailed us:

    "Hi, just finished reading the article and thought I would let you know that we have been on the hunt for the Sony 2 game since its release date. Yes, I stood in line for a half hour. I was not able to get the system. Later that day I went to eBay.com and I am horrified at the ridiculous markup and ripoff people are trying to sell these at. This is just crazy. I have spent a few minutes each week since checking to see who has the system, to no avail. Our family has been through enough systems and hot Christmas items to be patient and wait, because eventually everyone can have one. My children's ages are 13, 10, 9, and 5. I did all that waiting and scalping for Power Ranger toys nine years ago, and I refuse to do it again. We are convinced after researching that we will get the Sony PlayStation 2 by Christmas, or at least before the New Year, without paying more than the purchase price. Thanks again for all the good news."

  2. The Web in school: Parental monitoring

    Referring to our item last week, "Parent to access school Net records", Will in Iowa wrote us:

    "Thanks for all of the interesting information you send in your emails. I can see James Knight being allowed to see what his own children are accessing (which can easily be done by using logins), but being allowed to see what anyone and everyone else is looking at seems to be overkill for him. If other parents want to see what their children are viewing, I say all power to them (within reason, of course, which seems to be missing here). Thanks for bringing this issue forward. I'll try to understand later. ;) "

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Web users worldwide

There was a lot of news this week about Web surfers worldwide, and we found pulling it together for you fascinating. There were snapshots of Internet use in individual countries as well as whole regions, and there was a lot of discussion this week about allowing for a "non-English Internet." That discussion, mentioned at the bottom of this string, was in preparation for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers's (ICANN's) board meeting in Marina del Rey, Calif. Here's a summary with links to the details:

If any of you subscribers outside North America would like to tell us about the experience and cost of accessing the Internet where you live, we'd love to hear from you. Do email us.

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Web News Briefs

  1. Beyond 'dot-com'

    This week the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) launched the Internet's biggest structural change since the late '80s. According to Reuters, ICANN, a nonprofit created by the Clinton administration in 1998 to oversee Internet addresses, approved seven new domains, slated to join ".com," ".gov," etc., sometime next spring. They are .biz, .info (both for general use), .name (for personal Web sites), .pro (for professionals), .museum, .aero (for airline groups) and .coop (for business cooperatives). ICANN rejected .xxx or .sex (which would create, in effect, a "red light district" in cyberspace) and .kids (a sort of safe e-playground for children). The Washington Post looks at why ICANN was not interested in a ".xxx" or a ".kids," and, in another piece, gets ICANN chairman Esther Dyson's reasoning on the subject (Internet co-founder Vint Cerf this week succeeded Dyson as ICANN chairman). ZDNet's editorial director explains "Why I Can't Care About ICANN" (because, he says, no consumer will ever remember a Web address that ends in anything but ".com" or possibly ".org"). And here's a New York Times backgrounder on all that led up to Thursday's announcement.

  2. Election confusion: Web to the rescue

    The Web was certainly being its old grassroots self this week, as US voters vented their post-election frustration on it. According to CNET, a professor put his statistical analysis of "voting irregularities" in Palm Beach, Fla., on the Web; a college student launched SavethePresidency.com; Yahoo's message boards attracted some 373,000 postings on the electoral results; and the US presidency was even being auctioned off at eBay.com for a brief time this week. (There was a whole story on that last item at.) But though this strange election had interesting impact on the Web, the opposite wasn't true. According to TheStandard.com, "the Internet did not fundamentally change presidential campaigns the way television did in the 1960 race." It only caused Vice President Gore to withdraw his concession early that Wednesday morning after the vote. TheStandard.com also this week took a stab at what this confusing election means for the Net economy.

  3. Access to filtering lists

    The argument over whether filtering software users should be able to see what sites their software blocks is getting increasingly relevant. Why? Because schools and libraries may soon have to install filters on all their federally funded, Net-connected computers. In "Lifting the Curtain on Web Filter Strategies," the New York Times looks at both the arguments and the players involved in this debate.

  4. MyMP3.com's rebirth

    It's back (well, at month's end), but it'll cost ya, reports Wired News. Remember MP3.com's personalized music service that allowed users to store music and play it back using any Net-connected device, anywhere? It was shut down in May after a US district court ruled that the service's database of 80,000 albums violated copyright law. On its return, consumers will "pay" for MyMP3 in one of two ways: by looking at ads in a free but restricted version of the service (restricted in terms of the amount of music one can load), or by subscribing for an as yet unannounced price. According to ZDNet, this development means Napster and Bertelsmann really need to get moving on their new collaboration. Meanwhile, after wrapping up settlements with the record labels that sued the company, MP3.com this week got slapped with yet another lawsuit, Bloomberg reports (via USAToday).

  5. E-Christmas: Public virtue/private consumerism

    Here's a fun, first-person New York Times piece about how the Web and e-tail allow one a public face of opposition to consumerism while shopping one's head off in private, at home, on the Web! There is even journalistically virtuous reference to the history and tradition of holiday consumerism, as well as to the numbers: 55 million people (supposedly American ones) will shop online this year, 14 million more than last year. The article's long (three pages!), but informative (about shopping on the Web and where to go for what).

  6. Racing to wire your house

    Es su casa Microsoft's casa or AOL's? asks ZDNet. Some would say neither, but the two companies (AOL in concert with Gateway and other partners) are vying to be the ones to get your home totally wired. The race may be a yawn for non-early adopters, but it's a bit of a tech milestone, because the competition between the AOL-Gateway "Connected Touch Pad" (that allows family members to use email, "calendaring," and instant messaging inside and outside the home) and the "Microsoft Home" announced days later will make it much easier for interested consumers to get the home-networking job done. Gateway/AOL's product was CNET and ZDNet's pick for "Best of Comdex" in the consumer product category <> (Comdex is the giant annual tech industry trade show held in Las Vegas this past week). Here's Internet Product Watch's review of the Touch Pad. Reuters has the consumer reaction story, "Shoppers Flustered by Latest Wave of Internet Gizmos".

  7. Online degrees & employment

    It's not terrifically surprising, but it is worth noting: Degrees earned from Web-only institutions are not as attractive to employers as those earned from schools that actually have campuses. At least, that's what a recent survey cited in the New York Times found. The survey found that 77% of human resources officers or hiring believe an online degree from an accredited institution, such as Stanford University, is more credible than one from a school that exists only on the Internet. That's not to say that a degree earned online from, say, Stanford, is less prestigious than a degree earned on campus, but that, too, is something students will want to check out.

  8. Internet (no) service providers

    They're out there, and they're putting "Internet service" charges on some people's local phone bills - people who never signed up for the service. According to CNET, the US Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit against one such company, Philadelphia-based Mercury Marketing of Delaware. The FTC says the company added unauthorized, monthly, Net-related charges of $24.95 to $29.95 to the phone bills of people who had either declined Mercury's service or only asked for additional information when Mercury called them. "Consumers often don't realize that their phone numbers are another way for a non-phone company to collect a fee," CNET reports, adding: "Behind the scenes of the online world, inserting fees into local phone bills has grown into a small industry."

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That does it for this week. Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

Anne Collier, Editor

Net Family News

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