News for the Week of December 3, 2006
The kid-tech-news spotlight was back on the social Web this week, with some new developments at MySpace.com, the 800-pound gorilla of social networking...
Fighting predators & worms
Popularity definitely has its downside, as MySpace well knows. Its 130 million+ profiles tend to attract the attention of all sorts of nasties too, including malicious hackers and pedophiles. If the latter are registered sex offenders, though, operating on MySpace will soon get harder. "MySpace is partnering with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. to build a database containing names, physical descriptions and other identifiable details on sex offenders in the United States," the Associated Press reports, very probably beating the establishment of the national database mandated by the Adam Walsh Child Protection & Safety Act that was signed into law last July (see Wikipedia on the law). MySpace will develop technology to check profiles - names, photos, personal descriptions, etc. - against that database.
Tricky video
The site's popularity also makes it the target of malicious hacks. The latest is a worm in the form of a malicious video that "changes people's profiles when played, embedding itself [in the page] and adding links to fraudulent Web sites" that try to trick people into giving up personal info," CNET reports. Tell your kids to check the html code associated with all links on their pages and to be really careful about clicking on links in other people's pages. CNET says infected pages include a blue navigation bar that isn't on real MySpace pages.
Recognizing activists
On the positive side, MySpace has established an Impact Awards program, recognizing individuals and organizations on the site who are making "a positive impact on our culture" in the areas of poverty, environmentalism, health & safety, international development, social justice, and community building. One example is the Rock for Darfur profile, started by young person concerned about the genocide in western Sudan (see "Powerful change agents?" and "Virtual community, real engagement").
In other news...
- 'Cell-veillance'. USATODAY tech reporter Janet Kornblum calls it "cell-veillance" in "the age of citizen journalism," referring to the way comedian Michael Richards's "racist rant" could be seen nationwide within minutes because of a little videocam someone in the nightclub made a quick decision to use. She also refers to on-the-spot footage of police using a taser gun on a student in a library and teachers yelling in classrooms. Law professor Michael Geist tells in the Toronto Star of two 13-year-old students in the Ottawa area posting on YouTube.com "classroom video taken with a cellphone of their teacher yelling at a fellow student." On the one hand, transparency can be good - we're all more accountable. On the other hand, it can be badly abused. For certain, we all will be increasingly on guard knowing someone might be around wielding a digital camera of some sort.
- Net-boosted literacy. Now here's a boy-bites-dog story: "How the Internet Saved Literacy" at Forbes. The Internet isn't making reading go away; rather, it's turning it from a solitary experience to a collective one - not just interactive (as in person interacting with Web page), mind you, but collaborative (as in digital class participation). An example Forbes gives is a literature class's collective interpretation of "Jenny," "a poem by the 19th century British poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti," whereby students assume the roles of characters in the poem using a software program the professor helped develop. "Students are free to change their characters' actions, add stanzas and delete others. As long as they provide substantive justification - historical and psychological - all changes to the text are justified and encouraged." Picture students creating MySpace literarily correct profiles for the characters of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Could be serious fun! Forbes reports that, though "a number of studies have been released that suggested a negative correlation between Internet use and reading . [they] are now considered to have been unduly alarmist."
- Models or exploited kids? Are so-called child modeling sites legitimate businesses or child porn? Some are, some aren't, but the law is very unclear, indicates an in-depth CNET article on the subject. The FBI and the US Postal Inspection Service investigation are currently conducting an investigation "of so-called child modeling sites, which have been the subject of a series of critical congressional hearings and news reports in the last few years." CNET looks at a range of examples and perspectives, as well as the cases that helped establish the less-than-definitive definition of "child pornography" currently being used by law enforcement.
