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Dear Subscribers:

Here's our lineup for this first week of September:

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Web News Briefs

  1. Desktop supercomputers?

    These personal computers won't be free anytime soon! Apple had some fun this week unveiling (should we say "showing off"?) it's latest product, the G4. Like the Barbie PC it's a very cool silver; unlike the Barbie PC it's quite a leap in technology. According to Wired News, Apple's interim CEO Steve Jobs says the G4 is three times faster than the Pentium III and can't be exported to China, Iraq, or North Korea because the US government classifies it as a weapon. Don't ya love it?! And even though it's far from free, the G4 is surprisingly affordable. Models start at $1,599 (the 400MHz version). What do you think? For those of you who long ago move from Macs to PCs or who've always owned PCs, does this news make you actually consider buying a Mac? Let us know - via feedback@netfamilynews.org.

  2. School "newspapers" online

    Here's an Internet project that brings people together and promotes mutual respect: putting school news online. While students learn journalism working on the school paper, they're teaching their journalism teachers technology, according to Wired News. The article brings out a number of benefits: Students' enthusiasm for the Web is pumping new life into school newspapers; students and teachers work in teams, appreciating each others' areas of expertise; and students learn to use professional software tools as well as journalism and possibly some programming skills. And two other journalistic outlets are mentioned in the article: Highwired.net, a site that publishes school newspapers for free (if schools don't want to go it alone), and Bolt, a kind of global school newspaper site that pays students $25 for any story that it publishes. As Wired puts it, "Bolt aims to be a voice for students and includes articles that some high school newspapers have censored." Do you have a child or students who work on the school paper? Are they putting the news online? We'd love to hear their story!

    BTW, the Bull Market Report certainly had some bullish figures about school connectivity this past week. It said the number of schools using the Internet has grown from 82% in 1998 to 89% in 1999, adding that research and database company Quality Education Data expects every school to have Net access by the end of the 1999-2000 school year. They didn't say every classroom, but 100% of schools is a pretty significant figure!! Tell us what you think the implications are for parents. (And if you'd like an example of a popular resource for teachers on the Web, go to Classroom Connect, with lesson plans and community, then check out the "A+ Links," what Classroom Connect calls their "hand-picked selection of the Internet's best education-related Web sites.")

  3. Beauty for sale

    From Allure, Vogue, and Mirabella to Beautyjungle.com, Gloss.com, and Eve.com. Selling makeup is the next big thing in e-commerce, says the New York Times. The sites just mentioned are e-shops plus editorial, having stolen beauty editors away from glossy print magazines. One, called Ibeauty.com, founded by a biotech entrepreneur, won't even bother with content; it's going for pure commerce. "Ibeauty plans to offer incentives to customers in exchange for in-depth demographic information, which it hopes will be an irresistible lure to manufacturers," the Times says. And there's the rub for all these sites: Their biggest challenge is getting to sell the big-name cosmetic brands, many of which have or soon will have their own e-commerce sites.

  4. Web email: the downside

    Web-based email has its pluses and minuses, we all learned this week. On the one hand, it's a wonderful tool, because no matter where you are - at home, on a business trip, or visiting Great-Aunt Marge in Bismarck - you can get your email (provided Great-Aunt Marge has an Internet connection or you have a laptop with you). On the other hand, other people can get your email, too. Well, only if they're hackers wanting to make a point. Otherwise, unless your email is business-related and contains information valuable to someone else, it's unlikely someone else is going to want to read it.

    A group of hackers (remember Jasper's definition last week?) found and publicized a Hotmail security that, according to Wired News, was likely to be "the most widespread security incident in the history of the Web." It was effort by the group, Hackers United, to "show the world how bad the security on Microsoft really is." News.com quotes security expert Ian Goldberg explaining that the hackers didn't need any special knowledge of Microsoft code to do the hack. BTW, a Sept. 1 Reuters story on Excite reports that Microsoft fixed the Hotmail security problem.

  5. On the other hand: Private Web email

    Whether or not you care about security on Microsoft products and services, this week's news makes a useful point about the best uses of any non-secure Web-based email (another such service is Snap's Email.com). If security is not a big issue, it represents sheer convenience. If security is an issue, there is now an alternative technology: secure Web-based email. Two such services are ZipLip.com and Hushmail.com, written up recently by Wired News. Here's how it works: Anyone, anywhere can send a private email from the service's Web site, where it's encrypted; when the email's sent, the service (say, ZipLip), notifies the receiver, who then clicks on a link to the site where s/he types in a password to read the email. The email never leaves the site's server.

  6. Levels of privacy: the feds, employers, individuals

    The FBI certainly doesn't like these security services. ABCNEWS.com has a thorough piece on the beginnings of a battle between the US government and privacy advocates over the privacy of email and other computer files. Do you think law enforcement should have access to your email? Email us your thoughts at feedback@netfamilynews.org.

    And there are other entities interested in reading people's email: employers. Concerned about productivity and other work habits, more and more corporations are monitoring employees' online activities. Back in July, the New York Times ran a useful piece listing and describing software available to people who want to keep on eye on every move surfers make on their computers. Some are designed for institutions (companies, schools, or Internet service providers), some can be used on a single computer.

    Home-use monitoring products include Prudence and Little Brother. Descriptions can be found in the GetNetWise online-safety resource (SafeKids and Net Family News are on the GetNetWise Advisory Board). There's a search engine in the site where you can find a specific monitoring or filtering tool. To editorialize a bit: If parents choose to install this type of software to monitor kids' online activities as a deterrent, we recommend that they talk with their kids first. It's an excellent opportunity for a family discussion about constructive use of the Internet. If any of you use monitoring software at home, tell us how it's working for your family.

  7. Border wars in cyberspace

    Speaking of Net communications, you may have caught wind of the instant-messaging (IM) "wars" between Microsoft and America Online. There's been a lot of coverage about it in the Internet trade media, and it's only significant to those of us who are avid IM users or who have children who are. Basically, it's about IM users having free access to each other across all boundaries (such as the firewalls separating IM users who subscribe to AOL from those who subscribe to MSN). All the publicity is ultimately good for the "little guy" because it's pushing the "open source" question - speeding up the collapse of those IM firewalls. Larry Magid sheds some clear light on the complicated subject in his column.

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Networked homes and the rest of us

You may have heard the tales of futuristic homes with fridge, phones, PCs, and everything else electronic connected together and all wired to the Internet - clocks keeping each other synchronized, refrigerators telling us when we're low on milk, and the security system turned on via a traveling laptop. At the bottom of a piece Larry Magid wrote about the "Digital Living Room" conference in California this past summer, Larry has a fun description of what it's really like in the very-cool, oh-so-high-tech $10 million home of an Internet magnate in the Silicon Valley area.

Anyway, all that may be fine for Bill Gates or Martha Stewart (provided the wiring's done *elegantly*), but what about the rest of us? The bottom line for most connected families is being able to go online from two or more computers at the same time. According to the Yankee Group, 17 million US households (about 37% of PC-owning households) are interesting in home networking. Of the more than 2,000 PC households that responded to their survey, 68% said they have more than one family member who uses the Net. That kind of says it all. Just like the old days, when parents gave up and got a second phone line so that they could actually use the phone, now they're having to take turns with Instant Messaging or chatting children just to download their own email or visit their favorite news site.

To most of us, home networks mean being able to keep the number of phone lines to a minimum - or not having to run out and buy another printer for that new PC we bought "strictly for schoolwork." The third reason is sharing music or video files between a connected PC and a stereo or VCR, and the fourth is multi-player games (playing against a computer is passe now; people want real-live opponents).

Sounds great, but a story at News.com about where the phone and cable companies are with home networking shows a fairly high degree of cluelessness: They know the demand will be there, but they're not ready to help us yet. And the New York Times has a detailed piece both about us customers' interests and about the costs, pros, and cons of various home-networking products available to us right now. His two favorites are Intel's Anypoint and Farallon's Homeline ("for the several million households where PCs and Macs co-exist"). These products, too, aren't really ready for prime time yet. In other words, they're harder to program than VCRs! Part of the problem is there aren't yet any standards for how the machines that these products are connecting will be connected - via phone lines, radio waves, infrared signals, power lines, special wiring?

But take heart. If…

  1. your phone company's still "studying the technology,"
  2. there's a line at the connected computer at your house,
  3. you haven't yet had that family discussion to schedule everybody's time online,
  4. PC do-it-yourself projects make you break out in a cold sweat, and
  5. you need to access your email sometime this month…
…smart companies seeking to capitalize on phone company bureaucracy will soon be able to help. For example, "Radio Shack technicians will come to customers' homes, install their DSL and cable service, and connect PCs, audio-visual equipment, and other appliances," News.com says, adding that other companies in retail electronics plan to follow suit. What do you think? Have several people in your house been wanting to surf simultaneously? Tell us what - if anything - you're considering doing about it.

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The Internet's birthday

For school debates or reports about the Internet's history, USAToday ran an article, "Who Really Invented the Net?", that will give students a great start. The answer depends on the perspective of s/he who answers! But for the record, fail-safe communications during a nuclear war was not the reason why ARPANET, the Internet's predecessor, was designed. That's a very widespread myth.

But despite the murkiness about the Net's actual birthdate (when a computer first "talked" to another computer or when a computer first talked to a switch, or router), there seems to be little argument that the Internet is 30 years old this year. Reuters, via SiliconValley.com, has a story about a conference held this week at UCLA celebrating the Net's birthday. UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock is on of its founding fathers.

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Big spenders on campus

College students represent a reported $100 billion in discretionary income a year. Marketers know this. And because college students were among the first of all demographic groups to go online, marketers of all shapes and sizes are aggressively going after college-age consumers, according to Nando Times. If they want food delivered to their dorm rooms, Food.com is there for them. If they don't want to bother walking to the campus bookstore there are half-a-dozen e-booksellers at their fingertips, and VivaSmart will help them comparison-shop for the lowest book price. Just a couple of examples among many in the article.

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Subscribers write

Last week we ran an item about North Carolina leading the charge in requiring minimum tech-literacy skills of its public-school graduates. We asked readers: Does this basic-skills test put the focus in the wrong place, as come critics say, or is it a good start? Two subscribers sent us their thoughts:

From Susie in Missouri:

"Hi Guys.
"I think the test requirement is probably an excellent idea to expect basic computer literacy by graduation. Even the fast-foods places have the help use a screen and type in the sales. Expecting students to be comfortable in front of a screen is just fundamental to today's market needs. Almost any job involves word processing as a basic skill, and shouldn't we be fitting kids for jobs?

"This reminds me of the atavistic problem with the labor unions' approach to jobs today. When an industry dies out for economic reasons, you cannot legislate it back into existence and DEMAND jobs in that field. Their constituencies would be better served if they used the available resources on the Web to search out the most economical retraining for their members, getting them access to the best paying jobs in other fields rather than clinging to jobs no longer in demand. Perhaps this might put the union leadership out of a job, but I don't think teaching students basic computer literacy will put any teachers out of a job."

From Nate in Illinois:

"As a computer company, we see the use of computer systems either taking over tasks, or becoming essential tools for employees in more and more facets of today's businesses. Computers are as much a tool in the office, on the truck, in the service shop, and at the store, as the calculator or the cash register became over past years. As an employer, if I can hire an employee who has keyboarding skills, is comfortable getting around in a PC, and has some familiarity with word processing and spread sheets, I'm ahead of the game - I do not have to spend as much training time to bring them up to speed. I believe schools should provide students with the tools they need to survive/succeed in the society in which they live. Students need math, language, writing.

"Everything is changing so fast, no one can keep up with it all. But, we can at least equip students to adapt to change, to know where the resources are, to help them understand how to learn, and to develop the ability to work as part of a team of people. We can also bring them into contact with the tools they will be required to use after they leave school."

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

Sincerely,

Net Family News


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