Thanks to a partnership between Rock the Vote and Microsoft, registration in Xbox Live started this week, the BBC reports. Having also worked with MySpace to grow the number of youth voting, Rock the Vote aims to register 2 million voters via the Xbox gaming community by this fall. The BBC adds that Xbox Live had 12 million subscribers in 26 countries by last May (the latest figure available). … [Read more...] about Register to vote on Xbox Live?!
Risk & Safety
Public humiliation or Net-safety ed?
It appears that student online-safety education took a harsher tone in Windsor, Colo., recently. The principal of Windsor High School apologized that "some of the ways" John Gay, a Cheyenne, Wyo., police officer, approached his presentation about Internet dangers "offended, embarrassed and are hurting some of our kids," Windsor Now reports. Two accounts of what happened in an all-school assembly - … [Read more...] about Public humiliation or Net-safety ed?
How to protect from defamation?
That's an unanswered question where the social Web's concerned. Social sites seem to have more protection from US law than their users have right now. A little-known section of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) is what protects - rightfully, I think - Internet service providers and social-networking sites from liability for what's posted by users of their services, reports … [Read more...] about How to protect from defamation?
Tinker Bell on a phone near you
For socializers too young to drive, mobile phones are lifelines, and Disney has fresh plans to capitalize on that fact. Reporting on this, Forbes cites Multimedia Intelligence figures showing that "the US had more than 16 million teen mobile subscribers in 2007, up 12% from 2006." Forbes adds that Walt Disney Internet Group estimates that more than half of US 10-year-olds own phones, and Disney … [Read more...] about Tinker Bell on a phone near you
The latest technopanic
No comparative study has been done, but - having recently traveled around the world for 10 months and talked with people involved with children's online safety in a number of countries - I can tell you more than impressionistically that no country has experienced an extended technopanic about predators on the social Web quite the way the US has. The facts about online predation have been … [Read more...] about The latest technopanic