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Dear Subscribers:

Warmest of New Year's greetings to all of you. It's great to be with you at this amazing point in human history. Here's our lineup for this week:

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Web News Briefs

  1. Turn o' the year: Wrapups, predictions

    Some great thinking (and thinkers) can often be found in turn-of-the-year media coverage. With the century and millennium turning, too, this year, media people seem to feel especially obligated to reflect on the state of everything. Here's a roundup of some of the best (or most fun) coverage we've found:

    In a lightly written way, Wired News predicts the even greater prominence of "lawyers vs. geeks" and the lessening importance of keyboards and wires. For educators, parents, and ed-tech watchers, the New York Times's Pamela Mendels peered into her rolodex and came up with "Predictions for the Top Tech Issues in Schools". She also looked back at 1999's key issues in ed-tech, '99 being the year when more than half the US's classrooms had Net access, when the growing commercialization of kids' Web sites was widely noted, when Jones International University became the first accredited "cyber university."

    And, as the Internet is increasingly on the minds of politicians, regulators, and litigators, here are some views on cyber-law. Times legal columnist Karl Kaplan got comments from law experts on the most important issues coming down the Infobahn. He also gathered expert comments for a look back on Net law in '99 that looks at Internet filtering, Microsoft, and the coming of age of cyber-crime. And, in a useful piece, Pamela Mendels shows the complexities of curbing Net-based child pornography, based on the latest court case.

    As for all those gloomy Y2K bug predictions, here's a Wired News report on one much-humbled doomsayer's confusion and contrition.

    If any of you have experienced Y2K troubles or simply saw New Year's as a non-event, we'd love to hear your stories and comments - via feedback@netfamilynews.org.

  2. Another banner year for e-shopping, but…

    …with some qualifications (including failure on the part of some e-tailers actually to deliver toys by December 25). E-commerce definitely grew this holiday season: $9 billion was spent online, according to the USIIA Bulletin (US Internet Industry Association). "The numbers, released by Shop.org and the Boston Consulting Group, indicate a 270% increase in orders and a 300% increase in revenues over last year. Wired News reports, however, that Ernst & Young revised its projection for holiday e-shopping downward from $12-15 billion to $10-13 billion. And here's a Wired report on "rosy results" just beginning to trickle in, with traditional stores apparently surprised at how well they did online this year. According to CompuServe.com, America Online (which now owns CompuServe) snagged more than 60% of what one market research firm (Forrester Research) projected for all online shopping Thanksgiving to Christmas.

  3. Uncle Sam's guide to e-drugstores

    Last July a US congressional committee identified 400 online pharmacies and criticized the US Food and Drug Administration for doing nothing to police their commercial activities. Now, reports Reuters (via Wired News), the FDA says it has 50 staff members monitoring drug-selling Web sites. The agency also has a Web site with tips for buying prescription drugs and medical products online. It includes a form and instructions for reporting illegal medical-product sales to the FDA.

  4. Online users everywhere

    Lots of little online-user demographic tidbits - for the US and many countries - have been trickling in over the past few weeks. Here's a sampler:

    • Half of US children are now using computers by the age of six, and 95% of six-year-olds who are in school are using computers, reports WebTrendsWatch.
    • The number of adults in the US who are online has surpassed the number of US adults who don't use a computer, according to a Zona Research survey cited in Computerworld. The survey estimates there are 90 million adult Net users in the US compared with 85.3 million adults not using a PC.
    • The number of Net users in China tripled in 1999, reports the New York Times in a thorough look at how parts of the PRC's fledgling Internet industry are beginning to look like Silicon Valley (see Sparkice.com, "the leading e-market for global e-commerce to, from, and within China").
    • More than 40% of Australians and 15% of Italians are online; 58% of Estonia's teenagers have Net access; and the majority of Net users in South Africa are under 25. Net-use demographic data, from surveys worldwide, are archived at Nua Internet Surveys.

  5. Cash-rich Net-surfing teens?

    While we're on demographics, here's a useful piece in Inc.com about Web publishers targeting teens. It says that there's "a new wave of startups" that are courting "an unprecedented swell of cash-rich teens." That's the industry perception, anyway, it seems. The article includes statistics on how teens spend their money and a fascinating look at specific trends, as well as a sidebar about what an art form it is to keep a brand, or product line, teen-relevant. Meanwhile, here's a twist: Research at a London university has found that US teens are "deserting the Web in droves," according to TechWeb.

  6. The perfect Net appliance?

    We keep hearing about the "information appliance," star of many news articles and the recent technology trade show/extravaganza (called Comdex) in Las Vegas. Sometimes it's called the "Internet appliance." Basically, it's a very cheap computer with a very small hard drive used mainly for Internet access and use. It barely exists yet. Here's some straight talk from journalist-cum-venture capitalist Stewart Alsop at Fortune on what needs to happen before this "concept computer" will really be useful to families everywhere.

  7. The movement to keep music free

    It looks like trading MP3 files is as common now as copying each other's cassette tapes was when we were college students - maybe more so. Following up on our Net music feature last month, here's a thorough, three-part Wired News story on what the recording industry and universities are up against in "Battling the Free Music Movement".

  8. Downloadable sheet music

    Meanwhile, for musicians out there who don't mind paying for music - sheet music, that is - there will soon be a great site for downloading just the piece you want. Wired News reports that the soon-to-launch Net4music.com, which intends to be a portal for musicians, will sell 40,000 titles initially, adding 10,000 a month (Wired doesn't say when that'll stop). All genres will be available: jazz, pop, country, classical, educational, gospel, and more.

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New Net safety tool

Filtering - whether to use it and what tools to use - is an individual family decision, but we always let you know when we hear about a tool we think is worth your consideration. Last fall we told you about a new breed of tool that really interested us: a "hybrid" one that blends technologies and human judgment in a way that makes the result more effective, easy to use, up-to-date, and customizable than filtering software that lives on a PC hard drive. PlanetGood was the product of this sort that we wrote up last fall. A new hybrid filtering product worth your consideration launches next week: myFilter.

What sets myFilter apart most is the fact that it's free. Starting Monday people can download it from the Web site of its maker, ClickChoice, after they've filled out a registration form. ClickChoice makes money by selling users' demographic and Web-surfing data to other companies (they assure us there is no abuse of users' privacy; data is sold only in aggregate - no personally identifiable information). PlanetGood, on the other hand, is sold to consumers through their Internet service providers for a small fee added to their monthly ISP bill.

The other differentiating feature is the way myFilter employs human judgment. Instead of actually employing its own people to rate Web sites, ClickChoice has teamed up with the Net Explorers Society, a "virtual community" of thousands of trained Web site raters throughout North America (and some other countries) founded and funded by a market research and consulting company called Net Shepherd, a strategic partner of ClickChoice. Net Shepherd explorer/raters receive "cash-redeemable points" for every set of ratings they submit. This feature alone is quite fascinating - a formula and business deal that could only work in the Internet Age.

The actual rating (of individual Web pages, not just home pages) is done by criteria quite similar to those used for movie and other public rating systems. Not much personal judgment is used; raters just look for pornography, profanity, pyrotechnics, hate, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, gambling, cult activity, and violence and rate pages accordingly. The home PC with myFilter installed blocks pages with ratings not appropriate to whatever version the individual is using, based on levels of maturity. MyFilter software offers passwords for each of four levels: adult+ (blocks nothing), adult (blocks pornography), teen, and child. ClickChoice's criteria for each category aren't disclosed in their Web site right now; we hope that'll change.

Though the rating system - including user levels and password - isn't particularly unique (see our PlanetGood review for another example), ClickChoice's partnership with the Net Explorer/raters community potentially gives it extraordinary coverage of the Web. ClickChoice says more than 100 million Web pages have been rated so far. By one fairly reliable measure that's nearly a third of publicly accessible Web pages (see our "How big is the Web?"). To increase that number, they have a "Rapid Response System" whereby whenever a user tries to access a site that hasn't been rated, its address is automatically forwarded to the Net Explorers community for review by at least three raters. ClickChoice says the response time is "a few minutes and usually less than an hour, 24 hours a day." The ever-growing database of rated pages is maintained on a server through which myFilter users are connected.

We think ClickChoice has been smart about its strategic partnering, which not only expands it human-review coverage of the ever-increasing number of Web pages out there, but also provides it with public awareness and product endorsement. Another strategic partner is the Safe America Foundation, whose site links to the myFilter download page.

If any of you try this product, we'd love to hear your comments on it.

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Net access alone not the answer

That's the message of Eugene Williams, a former teacher and principal in Washington, D.C., who is working on connecting students, classrooms, and schools in practical, meaningful, low-cost ways. He told ConnectforKids.org that schools don't always set up Net-connected computers in places where students can really use them, and teachers sometimes lack the knowledge or tools that can help students really benefit from what the Web has to offer. Dr. Williams and his wife, Dr. Mary H. Johnson, represent to us one very effective way to tackle the digital divide: the more grassroots approach that helps students, parents, teachers, and administrators figure out how various aspects of the Internet (home-school email, Web research, etc.) can be useful to them at home and in school.

And for librarians and anyone else interested in libraries' experience with Net access: Our thanks to ConnectforKids.org again for pointing us to lessons learned and research done by the San Francisco Public Library about Internet access for children. The library's report includes strategies for promoting educational Net access for kids and descriptions of projects in which those strategies were used.

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Recommended sites

As a judge for the Cable and Wireless Childnet Awards, SafeKids.com's Larry Magid has recently been surfing through Web sites by individuals, schools, governments, and nonprofits that "benefit children and foster international cooperation." In an article for the Los Angeles Times, he links to half-a-dozen or so that represent two-way (at least), Internet-style public service (Web sites that serve or support both their subject and their visitors).

FamilyEducation.com suggests that whole families can "surf into the new year in style" visiting these "Ten Great, Amazing, Wonderful, & Totally Cool Web Sites". They include information and activities under topics like mummies, dinosaurs, comics, art, games, and city-planning from a child's perspective. There's also a librarians' links list for kids.

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That does it for this week. Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

Net Family News


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