One sign of "media convergence" – the Web on phones, game consoles and handhelds, etc. – is proliferating parental controls. TiVo and Microsoft's Windows operating system are joining PlayStation Portable, Xbox Live, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS (soon), and cellphones (soon) with "KidZone" software and "Family Safety Settings," respectively. TiVo's parental controls "will be made available without … [Read more...] about Everywhere parental controls
Search Results for: Safety by design
Search engine update
When Dogpile.com announced this week that it had added MSN Search to its collection, it also announced something any Web researcher should know: The top search engines turn up very different results. Dogpile cited the results of a University of Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania State University study "showing a surprising lack of duplication in the top results of the major search engines," Internet News … [Read more...] about Search engine update
Disney’s family phone plan
Disney is out to capture the family cellphone market with its very own wireless service, Disney Mobile, the Wall Street Journal reports (as well as sports fans with ESPN Wireless). This is not a kids' *phone* like the Firefly (see the San Jose Mercury News), but a kid-targeted phone service. Yes, Verizon, Sprint, etc. have family phone-add-on plans, but Disney (using Sprint's network) plans the … [Read more...] about Disney’s family phone plan
Candid teen-protection campaign
Many parents have heard that one in five children received a sexual solicitation online in 1998 and '99. It's a figure from a study done for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (and right now being updated) by the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center. Meanwhile, the number of US kids online has grown to 87% (or 21 million, according to the Pew … [Read more...] about Candid teen-protection campaign
Porn on phone screens
You might want to think twice before giving your child a cell phone with Web access. "Half of all wireless data content" - meaning Web content made accessible to those little cell phone screens - "is of an adult nature," Reuters reports. This is Web content specially designed for viewing on mobile phones, but it doesn't require super-sophisticated phones; it's available to just about any phone … [Read more...] about Porn on phone screens