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Dear Subscribers:

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

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Web News Briefs

  1. Ratings summit wrapup

    We promised a follow up on the Internet ratings summit that happened in Munich, Germany, late last week. Well, according to Wired News, the picture drawn was a fairly futuristic one: that we're still in the early days of the Web; that, in no time at all, there will be "billions and billions" of Web sites; and that the Web is therefore still so small that it can be shaped. In other words, a ratings system supposedly is not too late in getting started! Also, Wired reports that summiteers seemed to agree that Net users will consider rating-and-filtering systems a natural part of their Internet experience. It's not whether ratings and filtering will be used, but "when and how they will work." (What do you think - will filtering be second-nature in households at some point? Do email us your thoughts.)

    But there is disagreement on whether or not they should exist. Wired News quotes Parry Aftab, executive director of CyberAngels, saying that what parents need and want is not censorship but options for their own families. Deirdre Mulligan of the Center for Democracy and Technology, on the other hand, is very concerned that ratings promote censorship. She is quoted as saying the plan put forward by Prof. Jack Balkin of Yale Law School (and adapted into the proposal of the summit's sponsor, the Bertelsmann Foundation is "terrifying" in terms of potential government censorship. Part 3 of the Wired News piece goes into what the impact of ratings might actually be on, for example, news publishers like Wired itself - or new, entrepreneurial ones like the Drudge Report, made famous during the Clinton impeachment hearings. Tell us if you like the idea of rating Web sites, the way movies are rated.

  2. How big is the Web?!: Clear snapshot

    If a ratings system is to work, certainly, it's a very large number Web sites that will have to comply. Wildly divergent numbers have been reported - from the 800,000 Web sites cited by BrowseSafe CEO Mark Smith in our interview last week to a figure of 1.2 billion reported by one of his competitors. It's time to get a little more definitive! We were delighted to find some fresh, reliable numbers published this month by the Online Computer Library Center, a research organization that aims to "further [the public's] access to the world's information and reduce information costs." In a Web measuring project they're doing with the World Wide Consortium (W3C), the OCLC found that there are 2.2 million Web sites that are publicly accessible. These sites contain about 300 million Web pages (the average site has about 129 pages, but some have tens of thousands!). Interestingly, the 25,000 biggest sites represent about 50% of the 300 million pages. We spoke with Ed O'Neill, a consulting research scientist at OCLC, who said these figures are conservative.

    The OCLC says that in addition to the 2.2 million public sites there are also about 400,000 private ones that require either a fee or "prior authorization" and about 1 million "provisional" sites. Here's what they mean by that: Provisional sites are "either in a transitory or unfinished state (e.g., the ubiquitous "Under Construction" site) or have only content that, from a general perspective, is meaningless or trivial." As for sex on the Web: The good news is that its proportion is much smaller than recently reported in a number of places. The OCLC/W3C data showed that about 2% of publicly accessible Web sites (42,000 of the 2.2 million) contain sexually explicit material.

  3. So that's the story (cheap-PC update)

    We'd been hearing stories about Internet computer retailers being customer-service-challenged. This week the New York Times offers a more complete picture of one such company's struggles: Microworkz's problems with high demand for its $299 Webzter, Jr. The company's management was so new to the business that it didn't know about a Federal Trade Commission rule requiring companies to deliver orders within 30 days. And "Earthlink Networks, the Internet service that was a key component of the Webzter Jr. deal, terminated its agreement this summer and filed a lawsuit accusing Microworkz of breach of contract," the Times wrote. But maybe Microworkz, which says it's staying the course, will deliver on all promises for the $199 iToaster Internet Device, now on the market.

  4. Cyber-stalking: A report

    In a report it just released this week, the US Justice Department says laws at both the state and national levels should do better job of tackling online stalking, according to the Associated Press via USAToday. The report, requested by Vice President Al Gore, found that "two-thirds of states have no laws on the books that explicitly cover stalking on the Internet or through other electronic communications means." "Cyberstalking" is defined at GetNetWise.org as "harassing online through e-mail, chat, etc." - the online equivalent of stalking in physical space (SafeKids.com and Net Family News are on the Advisory Board of GetNetWise.org).

  5. The Web vs. paper

    Though worldwide consumption of paper will continue to increase, the Web is a friend to trees, according to the Boston Consulting Group via Nua Internet Surveys. The consulting firm says the Internet is "expected to cost the paper industry a 1 million-ton loss in envelopes. In addition, the demand for forms and fine papers is expected to drop." Production of newspapers, books, magazines, and catalogs is expected to slow over the next four years (especially newspapers, the survey said), but by 2003 consumption of "pre-cut office paper" is expected to double over that of 1996. Boston Consulting Group surveyed paper consumption in the US, Britain, France, Germany, and Japan, countries which it says together account for over half of the world's paper market.

  6. More e-commerce for women

    A lot of e-retailers are banking on women shoppers this fall. In "Sports bras hit the Web", MSNBC reports on a women-only sports apparel site called Lucy.com that hopes to do for e-commerce what World Cup soccer star Brandi Chastain did for sports bras. The site, scheduled to debut on the Web in November, will be trying to capture a big piece of the $17 billion women's athletic apparel market (sporting goods overall represent $40 billion), MSNBC says. Other Web sporting-goods stores are Fogdog.com and REI.

    We did the beauty e-tailer story a couple weeks ago, but ZDNet adds a fun element this week with reader feedback on its coverage. Go to "I am woman, hear me … click" and scroll down to the bottom of the page. We like ZDNet's idea of having comments attached directly to an article, rather than in a separate forum section of the site.

    Meanwhile, the latest in this genre is a plan by Procter & Gamble (Cover Girl, Max Factor, Oil of Olay brands) to launch its own personalized beauty Web site - separate from its other Web presences. Showing how important e-commerce is becoming to corporate giants, P&G is combining forces with a Silicon Valley venture group to invest $50 million in the site-to-be, Reflect.com, which will have its own CEO and will be located in California (not corporate headquarters Cincinnati, Ohio). We saw this in Upside magazine's "Fat-free News". Wired News has a beefier story, in case anyone's interested in the cosmetics e-biz.

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Smart research with search engines

School being back in session, we have a strong suspicion there is more Web research going at your house, school, or library. So it might be useful to you to know about this great resource: Search Engine Watch. In it, you'll find Web searching tips for more efficient research; a full list of search engines, including kid-safe ones; rankings of search engines in terms of popularity with users; and - if you or someone you know and love has a Web site - lots of information for Webmasters on how to make their sites easier for search engines to find. To see what computer magazines think of various search engines, go to the site's Reviews Chart for 1st-through-3rd-place rankings of the top 16 search engines at a glance. The Media Metrix and Nielsen/NetRatings pages show these rival traffic-measuring companies' ratings of search engines by popularity (though, citing April '99 figures, they're beginning to look a little dated); these are like TV-show ratings.

To us, one of the best pages in Search Engine Watch briefly describes each of the "Major Search Engines", so you can find out what works best on each.

For example, go to AltaVista to find obscure titles, phrases, or people; go to Google to find the most popular Web sites in the subject area of your search; go to LookSmart or Yahoo! for very navigable directories of information compiled by humans; go to Ask Jeeves if you want to ask a regular questions ("What is the Milky Way?" or "Where can I buy flowers online?").

If you have a favorite search engine or great tips for using these tools, do share them with us!

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E-help for garage bands?

For the music aficionados among us, the next step in the evolution of Net-based music was unveiled this week. At least, if the new site garageband.com takes off, it will be a vehicle for new bands to be "discovered," for fans to hear the latest material, and for record companies to get a measure of musicians' grassroots popularity. In any case, it may improve one music producer's odds "for releasing commercially successful CDs," says the New York Times, reporting that only about 600 of the 30,000 CDs published each year are profitable.

Garageband.com is backed by music producer and former Talking Heads musician Jerry Harrison and two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. The site, which says it's "by musicians, for musicians," aims to aggregate both musicians *and* listeners in a "space" (cyberspace) where they still have a hard time finding each other. By offering the incentive of "frequent reviewer" reward points (toward prizes like DAT players, concert tickets, and backstage passes), the site gets listeners to review music clips. Musicians supposedly get "quality feedback" from listeners and the opportunity to win a "six-figure record deal" (garageband.com says that, starting in November, there will be a winning band each month).

It'll be fun to see if this creative idea really takes off. We'll check in next winter to find out. Meanwhile, Wired News follows the Web music scene closely with a frequently updated page dedicated to MP3. It's great for both MP3 heads and students (often the same thing) who might want to research the Internet music phenomenon. And it's quite the phenomenon!

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From grandkids to Grandma

eBiz4Teens cites a Gallup poll finding that nearly 70% of high school students surveyed want to start their own businesses but say they aren't knowledgeable about entrepreneurship. Well, eBiz4Teens offers just that knowledge, as well as solidarity - and it's published by peers. It's one of the some 1,000 collaboratively built resource sites in the ThinkQuest archive. Each year this philanthropic educational project holds a contest that challenges teams of students and teachers "to create high quality, innovative and content-rich educational Web sites that are made available to others around the world via the Web". eBiz4Teens is just one example.

The "Knowledge" page of eBiz4Teens alone is a meaty resource for anyone interested in e-commerce, whether s/he's launching a Net startup or just researching the subject. There are links to great Web site design resources (HTML and PERL code-writing, banner-ad and general graphic design), the first teen-entrepreneurs network, Entrepreneur magazine, Forbes magazine's stories of revolutionary entrepreneurs, and inspiration/self-improvement links. And check out this ThinkQuest press release with links to teen-created sites about investing.

According to Wired News, this year's ThinkQuest entries are in, and the winners will be announced this Nov. 20-22 in Los Angeles. Individual members of winning teams can win up to $25,000 in college scholarships.

Long-time Net Family News subscribers know we're big fans of ThinkQuest - it's been seen in this space before! If anyone in your family or school has been or is a participant in a ThinkQuest project, student or teacher/mentor, we'd love to hear of his or her experience - via feedback@netfamilynews.org.

Grandma's own domain

Our thanks to the New York Times's "Seniority" column for pointing out GrandmaBetty.com. Its producer is Betty Fox, who started the site because 1) she found retirement boring, and 2) she didn't like what her first Web search turned up after her son Marty installed WebTV on her television set. It's a story and a site worth checking out.

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From our subscribers

Subscriber Sheila in Florida had this response to our item two weeks ago on networked homes (do you have similar challenges at your house?):

"Hi, guys! Tell Radio Shack technicians, we're ready! Let the phone company snooze. We need a company up to the challenge. Our household is full of PC users, and everyone wants Internet time at the same time. Mom has to wait till late night or get up at 5 am. We're ready for the talking computers of Star Trek. Every household should have a computer to turn the lights, alarm system, and coffeepot on and off. Sign us up Scotty!" Subscriber Janet in Japan ditto'd the porn-spam concerns we published last week from an AOL subscriber (we emailed her ISP, but haven't heard back yet):

"Thanks for the great newsletter, as usual. I, too, am fed up with the amount of pornography spam. What do non-AOL users do? ….We've never figured out how to get rid of junk snail mail, (I still get it here [in Japan]!). So why are we dreaming about not having junk e-mail???"

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

Sincerely,

Net Family News


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