In light of the recent Lori Drew verdict and 19-year-old Abraham Biggs's tragic suicide, it might be helpful to read the story about how the Internet was responsible for a suicide not happening. In a commentary on National Public Radio, Ayelet Waldman, who, as Mr. Biggs did, suffers from bipolar disorder, explains how her Internet community saved her - after writing a blog post while "in the … [Read more...] about The Net & suicide: Another view
Risk & Safety
‘Child-proofing’ for Firefox browser
This is an interesting development for families with elementary-school-age kids: Kidzui built right into the Firefox browser - built-in parental control in a new form. "Once installed and activated by a parent, [the Kidzui browser extension] locks the child (or anyone else for that matter) out of accessing non-Kidzui approved sites, or other areas of the computer, by taking up the entire screen," … [Read more...] about ‘Child-proofing’ for Firefox browser
New Net Nanny
Net Nanny, parental-control software for family computers, has released its latest version (not long after issuing Net Nanny for Macs), and PC Magazine gave the product 4.5 stars and its Editor's Choice Award. "Net Nanny does everything a parental-control utility should do. It also offers unique features like secure Web-traffic filtering and ESRB-based game control. Balancing privacy and security, … [Read more...] about New Net Nanny
YouTube’s crackdown on suggestive content
"It's a bad week for Internet porn,"a Wired blogger reports. Indeed. Given the news from Ning and now with YouTube "cracking down on sexually suggestive content," as VentureBeat reports. Here's some of what YouTube's crackdown looks like: "Videos that are 'sexually suggestive' (but not prohibited) will now be age-restricted to viewers 18 or older [if younger ones are truthful about their ages when … [Read more...] about YouTube’s crackdown on suggestive content
Ning to delete all adult content
Ning, a site where anyone can create his or her very own social-networking site (see "Mini-MySpaces") and where people are doing so at a rate of "around 2,000 new networks a day, announced the end of its "red-light district" this week . It's a relatively small red-light district - Ning told me less than 1% of its more than 600,000 social networks - but apparently legal adult content was becoming a … [Read more...] about Ning to delete all adult content