Spring 1997 - An Introduction

Parents, we are here to help you.

We are SageNet, a group of online professionals with high-end, long-term experience in designing and managing online communities for Prodigy and Microsoft and developing strategies for Top 100 Web sites.

But more than that, we are computer- and Web-literate parents and grandparents who know that the 5 million kids online spend three times the hours logged on as do adults. Projections are still rampant in the online business, but General Electric already does $1 billion a year in sales online. Projections are that there will be 20 million kids (aged 2-17) online in two and a half years, according to Business Week (4/14/97).

Count on more and more material aimed at your kids and more and more material for you to sift through. Watch the ads you see on television and in print and note how they're geared to children. Companies targeting kids on the 'Net want lifetime users. The numbers are appealing to advertisers: In five years kids will be spending nearly $2 billion US dollars online, and once hooked they may buy/shop/game/talk online for many years to come.

SageNet's twice-monthly newsletter will tell you, the parents, the frankly curious, and the highly informed the latest issues, trends, tips, and sites so that you can best manage your child's online experience and get the most out of your family's online time. Each newsletter will review new sites for kids and parents, industry, and government and our SageNet Special Feature.

We want to hear from you and invite you to subscribe.

Being interactive is the essence of being online, and we are here to answer your questions, dispel some fears, and ask questions of industry executives and advertisers on your behalf.

Let's get going with the first of our tips...

Industry Update: FTC Complaints and Action Groups against child pornography on the 'Net
Major attention is being paid to sites on the 'Net that contain child pornography. The Federal Trade Commission is taking complaints at http://www.ftc.gov and holding hearings, and parents interested in learning what organizations online will want to see Oklahomans for Children and Families, a concerned-citizens group originally called Oklahomans Against Pornography and formed in 1984. OCAF got Erols Internet Services, an Internet service provider in the Washington, DC, area to remove several dozen obscene sites from their server.

Insurance for Online Transactions:
AT&T Universal Card Services offers coverage for online purchases made with an AT&T card. Now United States Fidelity and Guarantee plans to underwrite coverage of transactions handled with digital identification technology from VeriSign Inc. Initial plans include up to $25,000 of insurance coverage for $19.95 a year or $9.95 a year for simple verification of a user's password-protected e-mail address when ordering.

SageNet Special Feature: Planning Camp for the Summer?
Instead of packing the children off to camp on their own, how about going with them. Space Camp - in Florida, California, and Alabama - could be the ticket for just such a shared experience.

"So, you might've launched a rocket with your child. But could you explain exactly what made it fly?" goes the copy in spacecamp.com. "Parent/Child Camp is designed to give both of you an overview of space exploration while experiencing very real space simulations - like the 1/6th Gravity Chair, which gives you the sensation of walking on the moon. Or the 5 Degrees of Freedom trainer, which simulates movements in microgravity. You'll even go on missions, taking positions together as a part of the Shuttle crew and mission control - teaching you how to work together to accomplish your goals.

"Both you and your child will share important time together as you explore new things about space. You'll learn together, eat together, and work on missions together. And who knows? After three days, you might just get to know each other better."

For more information:
U.S. SPACE CAMP® / U.S. Space & Rocket Center
One Tranquility Base
Huntsville, AL 35805
Toll Free: 1-800-63SPACE
Email: resv1@spacecamp.com

If Space Camp is not right for you this summer, there are pages of listings for summer camps through the search engines. Lycos produced 470 relevant pages at first pass. Refining the search to "1997 Summer Camps" yielded 59 listings on Infoseek and 35 on AltaVista. Each turned up some listings that other searches did not reveal. Interestingly, using this search, the Space Camp site that is our special feature did not appear.

Web sites cover the gamut, from ads for specific camps (school, church, and commercial), regional organizations, and directory services. Most camps are in the US, but some European and Australian camps also appeared. The Irish Language Summer School of Australia has closed for the year, since that camp convened from January 11 through 18 during the southern hemisphere's summer.

Here are some camp sites for you and your children to check out. For those not yet ready for camp, perhaps this would be a fun family research project for finding a camp for next year:

• www.campsearch.com - bills itself as "the search engine for camps" and lists 2,000 currently. Camps pay a fee to be listed.
• www.kidscamps.com - a free directory service with information provided by the advertisers and not independently confirmed. Billed as "the Internet's most comprehensive directory of camps and summer experiences."
• www.petersons.com - Peterson's, the publisher of information about educational institutions, offers a site that gives brief overviews of camps and the reference to their publication in which more details can be found. The site includes a "bookstore."
• And for this year, how 'bout virtual camp? Have a look at www.kidswebcamp.com. There are "counselors" and technical aides to help kids learn how to make Web sites, upload them to a Web server, "stay safe on the Web," and use the Web for research and virtual field trips. Sponsored by Microsoft's Site Builder Network (so kids are taught with Microsoft tools - smart marketing to present and future customers!).

As yet the Web will probably not replace your network of fellow parents and local organizations for information about the best summer camp for your children. It will be an interesting indication of the growth of the Internet to run this search in 12 months' time and assess the growth. Have you found summer camp sites that we missed? E-mail us what you've discovered, and by all means let us know how we can help you as parents of online kids! Also, do subscribe to this newsletter, which will publish more and more of your valuable parents' feedback as we go along.

Look for our next edition, a report from San Francisco of highlights and trends from Jupiter Communications' Digital Kids conference in June.