Last week Larry Magid and I co-wrote a commentary that ran in the San Jose Mercury News Sunday. Hundreds of news outlets worldwide had picked up the story that MySpace has deleted the profiles of 29,000 registered sex offenders. The news may have been shocking to a lot of parents of teen social networkers, so we felt parents deserved some perspective on this. Here's a slightly condensed version of … [Read more...] about Sex offenders on MySpace: Some context
Risk & Safety
Online-safety hotline for Oz
The US has its CyberTipline.com, Canada its Cybertip.ca, and Britain its hotline at the Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre. "Within weeks" Australians too "will have access to a national online child protection hotline," as well a free filtering software, Australian IT reports. The Communications Ministry put the emphasis on the education part of the $99 million (US) program, saying … [Read more...] about Online-safety hotline for Oz
‘Mean streets’ of cyberspace
Most people online are "kind and supportive" and respectful community members, but there are some really nasty corners of the social Web, and Janet Kornblum zooms in on the why in a USATODAY article. She quotes Silicon Valley tech forecaster Paul Saffo as saying there are two ways to stand out among the online masses - to be really clever or really mean - and it's a lot easier, unfortunately, to … [Read more...] about ‘Mean streets’ of cyberspace
Professional & personal lives online
It's all getting kind of muddy online for grownups. For the pioneers of social networking - teenagers and 20-something just starting out their careers - it wasn't such a big deal. They didn't make the distinctions we make between "lives." They, especially teens, experimented with different persona, but that's just it. The persona were experimental, not established. Now that we adults are getting … [Read more...] about Professional & personal lives online
Rating teachers ok in Germany
Citing free-speech law, a German district court ruled that rating teachers on the Web is not illegal. The court overturned a temporary injunction that would have forced the operators of the site Spickmich [something like "your cheat sheet" in German] to prevent a female teacher from being graded by pupils online," Heise Online reports. Students had given her "an overall grade of 4.3" on a scale of … [Read more...] about Rating teachers ok in Germany