toolbar
Search this site!
 


October 25, 2002

Dear Subscribers:

It's good to be back! Happy Halloween to everyone who gets into the fun and creepiness of it all - see below for links to top Halloween helpers. Here's our lineup for this fourth week of October:


~~~~~~~~~~Support the Newsletter!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Help support Net Family News and take a free, 7-day trial of eLibrary -
100s of newspapers, magazines, reference books, maps, transcripts...
a real reference library online, completely child-safe. Try a search now:

eLibrary Logo

Or make a tax-deductible donation to our free public service, via...
Network for Good's online fundraising system for nonprofit organizations
or NetFamilyNews.org's page at Amazon.com's Honor System.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Family Tech

  1. E-note-taking

    For students who'd really rather type than take notes by hand, there is now a relatively affordable product that makes more sense than taking a laptop to school, writes SafeKids.com's Larry Magid in his latest column for the San Jose Mercury News. Even if they have come down, most laptops still cost more than $1,000, and they're too easily lost or stolen. "But there is an alternative," Larry writes: AlphaSmart's "Dana." "This $399 [full-size] portable keyboard, which ... weighs two pounds, runs on the Palm operating system, which means it can handle any of thousands of Palm applications," he says. "But the device also comes with its own Word processing and spreadsheet programs that are compatible with Word and Excel. You transfer data between the Dana and a PC or Mac the same way you do with any Palm device, via Palm's Hot Sync program, but unlike handheld Palms, there is no need for a cradle. You just connect the Dana to the computer via a (supplied) USB cable." Along with word-processing and -formatting, the keyboard includes an address book, calculator, date book, spell-checker, and even email capability with an optional modem.

  2. AOL's new safety bot, MSN's Disney friends

    He could use a cuter name than AOLSafetyBot, we think, but - after all - he is just a bit of animated software code, and you can call him "SB" for short. SB is all over AOL's new SafetyClicks.com, unveiled with its latest version, 8.0 (see "Dueling unveilings" below for more). He can be added to a child's instant-messaging Buddy List (in AOL or AIM), but anyone can "talk" to SB with a click from the Safety Clicks home page, then by typing questions into the lower right-hand window and clicking "send." The conversation will appear in the upper right-hand window.

    It makes sense that SB is part of the online-safety scene now, with more than 40% of US teenagers using instant-messaging on a given day (Pew Internet & American Life figures cited by the Associated Press). Not that teenagers will rush to add SB to their Buddy List(!), but he's a fun way for parents and preteens, perhaps, to take a few moments to discuss the six tried 'n' true online-safety rules he promotes. "AOL said it created SafetyBot to bring safety resources to a medium with which kids are already familiar," AP reports. AOL's IM software has 150 million registered users.

    SB is very focused, like a proper bot. Though most IM bots are all about marketing, his is a more high-minded mission. If you get away from the online-safety topic, he wisely defaults to this response: "Hmm... You stumped me. Better check with your parents." But he did have a unique response to AP's question, "Why are you annoying?" He said, "Well, I am a bot."

    AP cites "some experts" as wondering "whether a scripted program can always be an appropriate guide in a complicated online world, given varying age groups and parental preferences." But we venture the view that parents are smarter than to rely entirely on a little bot to cover all their children's online-safety needs.

    Meanwhile, Mickey and Minnie joined Disney's Michael Eisner and Microsoft's Bill Gates on the stage this week. Disney was announcing "its" new Mickey-enhanced dial-up Internet service and MSN was unveiling its version 8.0. The Los Angeles Times called it "a low-risk partnership" that, according to CNET, helps MSN catch up with AOL in reaching out to families in a credible way. Children of MSN members get free memberships in Disney Blast and free subscriptions to Disney Adventure magazine.

* * * *

Halloween helpers on the Web

* * * *

Web News Briefs

  1. Bush focuses on kids' Net safety

    Parents have primary responsibility for their children's safety on the Internet just as much as at a park or playground, but they also must have support from government, President Bush said this week. In a follow-up to the White House's recent conference on missing and exploited children, the President this time zoomed in on their online safety. His comments indicated that the war on terrorism is not after all pulling resources at the FBI, US Customs, and other agencies away from efforts to fight child-exploitation crimes. For example, Bush said, "We will seek to almost double funding for the Internet crimes against children task forces, from $6.5 million in fiscal year 2002 to $12.5 million in fiscal 2003. These task forces help state and local authorities enforce laws against child pornography and exploitation." Reuters's coverage focused on Bush's call for additional funding. The President also called on the Senate for quick action on the revised virtual-child-pornography legislation which is pending and which has passed in the House of Representatives.

  2. Failed but serious Net attack

    This week the Internet withstood the biggest attack in its history. According to the Washington Post, nine of the 13 servers that manage all worldwide Net traffic were crippled by a denial-of-service attack. "The root servers, about 10 of which are located in the United States, serve as a sort of master directory for the Internet," the Post explains. Net users around the world were pretty much unaffected because of safeguards protecting the Net's architecture and the fact that the attack lasted only an hour, but "had the attack prevented access to the servers for eight to ten hours, the average computer user may have noticed slower response times," CNET reports, adding that even a complete outage of all 13 servers wouldn't bring the Internet to a halt unless the attack lasted for days. As of this writing, the source of the attack wasn't known, and the FBI was looking into it. But finding the perpetrator(s) won't be easy because "the distributed attack randomized the source information on each piece of data," CNET reports. A denial-of-service attack occurs when attackers flood servers (whether they're root servers as in this case, corporate networks, or servers that publish Web sites) with too much data to handle, so they stop functioning. The BBC's coverage does a great job of explaining why regular users like us were largely unaffected.

  3. AOL & MSN: Dueling unveilings (and parental controls)

    As leaves fall in autumn, so do America Online and Microsoft Network release new versions of their software - but this year's release is different. "This year the hype machine went into hyperdrive," reports the New York Times, to the tune of $300 million in ad spending for MSN and $100 million on AOL's part. Comparing 8.0s is a little like the proverbial apples/oranges test, because the services are quite different (MSN was until recently little more than an ISP and AOL "began life as, and continues to offer, a huge collection of proprietary members-only "areas" and services"), but both now have the mission of simplifying the Internet for users. Basically, the Times prefers AOL's 8.0, partly because it's more user-friendly and has eliminated pop-up ads.

    However, MSN shines in the parental-controls area, the Times suggests. "The parent can shield a child's account from certain sites, searches, downloads and even people. You even get a weekly 'report card' that shows what your children have been doing online, right down to the sites they tried to visit, the people they contacted and the amount of time they spent online (a feature that AOL says it will match in December)." The controls "follow the child even to other computers," CNET adds. For its upgrade, AOL took the opposite tack and chose to streamline its controls for parents. Here's other coverage of the 8.0 duel from AtNewYork.com.

  4. SeniorNet's tech literacy campaign

    Although older adults are among the fastest-growing group to go online, the San Jose Mercury News reports, recent figures show that only 22% of Americans 65 or older are regular Internet users. SeniorNet, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that promotes senior tech literacy, wants to help increase that percentage, and has just launched a $5 million ad campaign to that end. SeniorNet believes that connectivity is good for older people for a number of reasons, including the access it gives to family and other people (reducing social isolation) and to health information. SeniorNet supports more than 200 learning centers throughout the US.

  5. Ever-better police coordination

    This week some 85 police and criminologists from 34 countries met for three days in Thun, Switzerland, to talk about how to fight crimes against children, especially pornography on the Internet. According to Reuters, the talks followed a series of raids across Europe netting thousands of suspected pedophiles or customers of online child pornography sites. The experts represented Interpol, the international policing organization that links experts from Asia, the US, Europe, and Africa and works to keep up with rapid technological advances. "Makers of child porn on the Web leave few traces, making it difficult to identify and prosecute them," Reuters reports, adding that "Interpol has gathered some 150,000 images of child abuse from all over the world." (We're sorry we can't provide a link - this report was not on the Web, but emailed to us by our friends at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.)

  6. Pedophiles in child-related jobs

    Since US authorities passed along more than 7,000 names of UK subscribers to a US-based child-porn Web site, as many as 90 have been found to be police officers. According to The Observer, they're among "hundreds of child welfare professionals" who have been identified as "extremely high-risk" pedophiles in an investigation into Net-based porn. "Investigators knew pedophiles targeted jobs which brought them into contact with children, but were shocked by how many British suspects had been undetected by the usual checks. The discovery that many were working in jobs of the highest sensitivity will send shock waves through the child protection world and lead to calls for even more stringent safeguards."

  7. iVillage to be an ISP too

    The popular women's Web network has just announced it's going into the Internet service business, with IVillageAccess, CNET reports. At $17.95 a month, the dialup service will cost less than AOL or MSN and plans to make it easy for its users to make the switch. The network of iVillage sites, such as Women.com and ParentSoup.com, get about 20 million visitors a month. Meanwhile, the "little guys" still thrive in the face of such numbers, MSNBC reports. The some 5,000 "mom 'n' pop" ISPs in the US are "holding their own" among giants like AOL, AT&T, and EarthLink.

  8. Kids more at home with Web than books

    Sixty percent of 7-to-16-year-olds surveyed know what a home page is, vs. 9% who know what a preface is, a recent survey found. Similarly, the study - by NOP and cited by Europemedia - found that while 38% said they know "hardback" refers to books, 57% said they know a "hard drive" is part of a computer. Here are a few more interesting findings:

    • About 75% use the Net to get information for school projects, though half think the information directly improved their grades.
    • 25% said the Web was the first place they looked for homework help, with numbers looking in the library declining.
    • 61% said they'd helped an adult use the Net, with more than 33% helping parents and 20% helping a teacher.

  9. Hollywood's after student 'pirates'

    Trade associations for the music and film industries are pressuring universities to crack down on students using their high-speed networks to swap digital tunes and movies. "In a letter sent to more than 2,000 university presidents, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and other copyright owner trade groups told university officials that large numbers of students were using college resources to violate federal law," CNET reports. The letter stopped short of threatening legal action. The Associated Press reports on what colleges are doing technologically to deal with movie and music file-sharing.

* * * *

Share with a Friend!! If you find the newsletter useful, won't you tell your friends and colleagues? We would much appreciate your referral. To subscribe, they can just click here.

We are always happy to hear from potential sponsors and distribution partners as well. If you'd like to make a tax-deductible contribution or become a sponsor, please email us or send a check payable to:

Net Family News, Inc.
P.O. Box 1283
Madison, CT 06443

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

Sincerely,

Anne Collier, Editor

Net Family News

 

HOME | newsletter | subscribe | links | supporters | about | feedback


Copyright 2002 Net Family News, Inc. | Our Privacy Policy | Kindly supported by the UK Domain Name Registration Centre.