Week of November 27, 2005

With holiday shopping on every parent's mind, that's certainly the top tech-news story this week….

1. Safety first: If you're thinking about shopping online, StaySafeOnline.org and the National Consumers League have "Twelve Tips to Protect Yourself From Cyber Grinches, Scams and Schemes".

2. What's on the wish lists: You may not be surprised to hear the iPod and the Xbox 360 are Nos. 1 and 3 on this year's "top 10 list of desired gifts compiled by the Consumer Electronics Association," the New York Times reports. Though that doesn't surprise parents, in fact, game consoles were in 9th place last year, and portable music players didn't even make the list. The Cincinnati Enquirer attempts to explain the iPod phenomenon.

3. Top shopper helpers. As for product information on the Web, there are some great helpers for parents perusing wish lists. For the content on all those game consoles they want, check out FamilyFun.com's kid-tested, parent-approved "Video Game of the Year" winners for kids 6-9 and 10-12 and USATODAY's videogame gift guide in four categories: Kids, Preteens, Teens, and Adults . BTW, the best advice any parent could have about videogames, whether online, on handhelds, or on consoles, is to check their ratings, either on their packaging or at ESRB.org (the Entertainment Software Rating Board), where you can type the title of the desired game into a search box and find out its rating (e.g., "E" for "Everyone," "E10+," "T" for Teen/13+, or "M" for Mature/17+).

The Washington Post's shopping guide categorizes too, but creatively zooms in on recipients as much as products. For example, it took 4th-grader Aneya months to start playing with the Nintendo DS her dad got her last Christmas, the but now she's finally using it to play games like "Lizzie McGuire: On the Go" (have things like that happened with kid-tech at your house too)? Then there's Nicholas the teenage gamer; a "road warrior"; a cool grandmother (who's "on her 5th or 6th computer"); and a 30-something "multimedia junkie" whose daughter Gemma isn't that much bigger than his iPod.

4. Tech toys preferred. The Associated Press and Wall Street Journal both look at this widespread parental challenge of 8- and 9-year-olds preferring tech to toys. [If any of you have dealt with bad guesses on tech gifts for kids and figured out what to do when that happens, other parents would love to hear about it - "Talkback" to us! [Editors, pls link to the Talkback/Letters to the Editor page here.] We'd love to hear your stories and solutions - for the benefit of other visitors to this site.

In Other News

  • Game-console parental controls. Sony made it unanimous. This week it promised there will be parental controls on its forthcoming PlayStation 3, joining the just-released Xbox 360 and the Revolution that Nintendo already announced will have controls when released next year, the Associated Press reports (Sony's handheld, the PlayStation Portable, has parental controls on it - see "Porn's new platforms").
  • IM worms multiplying like rabbits. The number of worms attacking instant-messaging were up 226% this month over October, hitting a new record, CNET reports, citing IM security firm Akonix figures. These worms are more flexible (or "interoperable") than the services themselves, since more than a third of the attacks hit two IM services and 14% hit all four major ones - AIM, MSN and Yahoo Messengers, and ICQ. Also this month, 14 worm attacks hit file-sharing networks such as Kazaa and eDonkey, Akonix found. Tell your kids to be very careful about what they download or click on in IMs - even if they look like they're coming from a buddy (the buddy's PC could be infected and sending out automated IMs).
  • Wish-list risk for kids. A new online-safety risk (especially for kids with unusual names in small towns) has come up concerning Amazon.com's Wish List feature - because of the shipping address registered users provide and the way it can be associated with a child. "Site visitors can search wish lists by name," Internet News reports, so "it's relatively easy for a stranger to find a kid simply by searching for a common first name, then scrolling through the list to find those who have listed last names, cities and states." Other wish lists do a better job of protecting kids, according to Internet News, pointing to Google's Froogle, which allows wish-list searching only by email address - so only people who already communicate with the person can find his or her wish list.
  • Family blogging. Teen blogs can actually be good for parent-child understanding, some parents and kids told the Wall Street Journal this week. One 19-year-old experienced blogger said he doesn't mind his parents read his blog - he said it may even be parents' duty. Another teenager's mom said reading her 17-year-old's blog has helped her understand what he's dealing with and opened up communications for them. A dad in a third family has his own blog, knows his son reads it, and hopes the latter will see in it the respect his dad has for him. It's the familial twist on the blogging phenomenon. The Journal calls it "intra-family blog-tracking." The New York Times looked at teens' "enthusiastic self-revelation" in a shorter piece focusing on all the tools at their fingertips.
  • Digital music's amazing growth. "More than 251 million digital tracks have been sold" this year, "compared to 96 million last year, a 160% increase," and "digital album sales have jumped to 11 million from 3.4 million, a whopping 226% spike," the Chicago Tribune reports. Then there's Warner Music's new all-digital label, Cordless Recordings, and CDBaby.com for independent musicians, adding "35,000 new releases annually." Derek Sivers, the founder of CDBaby and a musician himself, estimates that at least 100,000 new digital albums are produced each year.
  • 2006 to be "Year of Mac Attacks"? Washington Post security writer Brian Krebs thinks the answer might be yes: "2006 may turn out to be the year we start seeing a significant growth in the Mac user base, and with it, if not Mac viruses or worms, then at least some automated tools for attacking various Mac vulnerabilities."

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