Anne

Michelle Slatalla is just fun to read, partly because she's a fellow parent, I guess, plus she's very down-to-earth and a great writer. In her Online Shopper column this week (in the New York Times), she's shopping for colleges for her daughter - early. "It started with one of those sinking feelings of parental panic. Mine occurred at a cocktail party, where the conversations made it clear that … [Read more...] about A parent’s college-shopping

The Pew Internet & American Life project first chronicled teens breaking off relationships via IM back in 2001 (when the US had a mere 17 million Net users aged 12-17, and 17% of them had used IMs to ask someone out, 13% to break up with someone - see my 6/29/01 issue). Now there's advice for teens who've been rejected online (harder, they say, than a real-life rejection) and a rejection service, … [Read more...] about Teens breaking up online

Your kids may come to you starry-eyed about FreeiPods.com. Don't worry - according to Wired News, it's not a scam, but rather a "customer acquisition" program. As Wired puts it, advertisers have discovered "it's more effective to spend $50 million on gifts than to blow the cash on TV ads." In this case, people get free iPod minis for choosing and participating in one of 10 different free trials … [Read more...] about Free iPods?!

Since Microsoft's releasing SP2, its major PC security patch for Windows XP, today, many families might wonder, "Should we download it?" (Of course some of your PCs are set to download MS updates automatically, so you'll suddenly have it at some point.) The simplest answer seems to be yes, but there aren't really any simple answers in the world of computers. The Washington Post's tech columnist … [Read more...] about Microsoft’s big patch & family PCs

The amount of porn-touting spam in our in-boxes has risen 350% since June, The Register reports. That number's from email security company Clearswift. Porn spam requires special vigilance because - besides kids' exposure to inappropriate content - porn email is also "a popular carrier for malicious code." Just another reminder to kids and parents not to click on any links in these emails or … [Read more...] about Summer spam: More porn