Xbox Live-like game chat has gone mainstream, it seems. The Washington Post says a 31-year-old mom and clinical social worker who has plenty of "real world" friends but sometimes catches up with them in a "Scrabble-like" cellphone game called Words with Friends is a good example of social gamers. Words with Friends is her favorite among all features and apps on her iPhone, and she taps into it … [Read more...] about How social gaming works & who likes it
Archives for August 2010
All things video: Key feature of online life
Video-making, -sharing, and -viewing are huge and growing online and on-phone activities, so much so that they're now just part of our media landscape. ComScore just released its mind-boggling July figures, with the Top 5 video-viewing and -sharing destinations being Google sites (YouTube, basically) at 143.2 million viewers last month); Yahoo! sites at 55.4 million; Facebook at 46.6 million; … [Read more...] about All things video: Key feature of online life
Monitoring apps for kids’ cellphones
Parental control apps for cellphones – either downloadable ones or the controls provided by the carriers themselves – aren't new, but their numbers are growing. The toughest nut to crack in this category, according to the Wall Street Journal, has been monitoring kids' texts and calls, but that's changing too. "Due to privacy concerns ... carriers can't monitor the content of text messages and … [Read more...] about Monitoring apps for kids’ cellphones
How 10-year-olds text without a phone
It's a workaround for a kid with an iPod Touch who doesn't yet have a cellphone: Textfree. Writes CNET's Michelle Meyers of her 10-year-old daughter, the app "assigns her a real phone number, and lets her send and receive texts for free." Is there a catch? Not really – unless texting is the reason why you didn't get the kid a cellphone in the first place (at least s/he can't text while driving … [Read more...] about How 10-year-olds text without a phone
Moms’ tech concerns & countermeasures: Survey
To me, the most interesting slide in the BlogHer/Parenting magazine national survey of moms is the one about the difference between their fears vs. their kids' experience of what they fear: Mothers' biggest concern, quite naturally, is inappropriate communications with an adult online (62% share this concern), but only 1% of moms surveyed said their kids had experienced such communication. Next … [Read more...] about Moms’ tech concerns & countermeasures: Survey