What a concept! Instead of having some adult know-it-all design a Web site for teens about PC security, have a smart teenaged person design it! You would think this intuitive, but it's actually unprecedented. Just-launched SORTED is the only teen-designed and -built Web site of its kind. It represents the low-key brilliance of London-based Childnet International, a nonprofit online-safety … [Read more...] about Site for young PC-security fixers
Search Results for: Safety by design
Everywhere parental controls
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 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