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Dear Subscribers:

The newsletter will be on vacation the week of the Democratic National Convention (8/14-18), so - to be as fair and balanced as we can be - we're focusing on a subject of interest to all parties this very political week in the United States: youth! Here's our lineup for this issue:


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Politics on the Net: Young voices, activists

  1. By kids, for adults

    What we've always found exciting about the Children's Express (CE) international news service is that it gives children and teens a voice in the grownup news media - not in kids' publications and programming. It brings the much-needed perspective of kids (8-18) to issues concerning everybody and, while doing that, the program is working on the other part of its mission: giving young people leadership and journalistic training.

    You see and hear CE reporters on National Public Radio, the BBC, CNN, all the US broadcast networks, on the New York Times news service, and many other media outlets - and they are and will be reporting at both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions this month. CE has bureaus in New York, Washington, Marquette (MI), London, Newcastle, Birmingham, Sheffield, and Tokyo, with plans for bureaus in 10 other US cities and 13 other countries by 2010. Here is an index (with links) to all of CE's election and conventions coverage.

  2. By 'kids,' for everybody

    To present the public with a different picture than the "biased and superficial reporting of politics by the mainstream media," a group of college students and recent grads are creating a Web-based, "non-linear" documentary about Americans and their politics this election year. According to Wired News, the 11 site producers will take their "American Story Project" on the road (on a Web server-stocked bus), making 32 stops across the US. The group hopes to have more than 100 interviews on the Web site by the November elections. The project was spawned in a Web-design class at Simon's Rock College in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

  3. By adults & kids, for kids

    Citizen Phoebe, 15, ran unsuccessfully against candidates Clinton and Dole in the '96 US presidential election and she's stumping for teens all over again in this election. Phoebe's fictional, but she's a "lightning rod for kids' issues," say her creators at URLjam Media, drawing as she does a sizable crowd of similarly political peers to her Web site. In it, future voters/current activists will find the views of Phoebe's friends, including David's cogent thoughts on conventions and shadow conventions and meaty links to political organizations' Web sites. URLjam.com also publishes the popular, non-political teen site, Getting Real.

  4. By adults on kids' behalf

    Youth-E-Vote is an exciting campaign on the Web and in US schools to "make future voters of today's students." It's also the first test of online voting - risk-free because the "voters" are kids. It's by a coalition of educators, youth groups, and technology specialists across the US. Registration was done in participating schools (each student got his/her own voter registration number), and voting - for President, US House (for the congressional district of the school), US Senate (if any in that state), and governor (if any in that state) - takes place between 8 a.m. EST, Oct. 23, 2000, and 8 p.m. EST, Nov. 2, 2000. The results will be reported Thursday night, November 2, five days before Election Day, November 7, 2000.

    Our thanks to ConnectforKids.org for linking us to the work of another national coalition, YouthVote2000. The non-partisan coalition is working for kids on two fronts: getting them involved in political debates and getting youth issues onto the dockets of the presidential debates. A nice service they provide is schedules of all youth events at the three conventions - Republican, Reform Party (in Long Beach, CA, Aug. 10-13), and Democratic. The schedules can be downloaded here - click on "Download the schedule of all youth events and other info!"

  5. Youth-oriented political coverage

    For teens who might enjoy a very hip source of serious political coverage, there's Pseudo.com (nearly three-quarters of the site's users are between 16 and 34). Pseudo was at the Republican National Convention this week with a 360-degree Web cam shooting the proceedings.

  6. Misc.: The Net in the election

    We're not going to report on the convention coverage per se, but we can't help but comment on one thing - how remarkable it is to see purely Net-based media outlets so prominent in the media mix this presidential election. TheStandard.com noted that - as far as presidential elections go - Philadelphia saw its second "first" this week. The last time a party convention came to that city - 1948 - "television played a major role in conventions for the first time." This year at both conventions, TheStandard.com points out, "it's the Internet's turn to change the political landscape." And in "Who Needs Dan Rather, Anyway?", referring to the CBS network anchorman, TheStandard.com reports that online media are filling the void left by network coverage cutbacks. Meanwhile, the Associated Press offers evidence (links!), in case we didn't already know, that convention coverage is all over the Web (via CompuServe).

    Also, we think you'll enjoy ZDNet editorial director Jesse Berst's "Online Antidote to Campaign Propaganda", including his Top 10 sites for voters' research.

If you and your kids have a favorite Web resource for education about and participation in the democratic process, do share it with us (and fellow subscribers!) - via feedback@netfamilynews.org.

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Subscribers write: A great directory for kids; Response from JWIAF

  1. Our thanks to subscriber and librarian Mindy in Michigan for writing us about an excellent, child-safe directory for kids, parents, and educators:

    "As a librarian, I must mention a Web directory that is completely safe for children. In your most recent newsletter you mentioned AJKids, Go.com, and Lycos.… Although KidsClick! is not a search engine, but a directory, it is still an excellent source for Web sites for kids. The site was created by a group of librarians at the Ramapo Catskill Library System and is now hosted on a server at University of California, Berkeley. The site grew so much, that the director of the site has asked youth librarians from around the country (world, maybe?) to evaluate and submit sites. It has become a rich source for quality sites for kids. Please have a look at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/KidsClick!/.

    "One other thing that's interesting about KidsClick! is a link found at the bottom of the main page. If you click on it, you can see the page through a librarian's eyes, i.e. the subject headings change to Dewey decimal numbers. It's kind of neat. Thanks for providing such an informative newsletter. As a youth librarian working extensively with the Internet and its resources, I appreciate the articles and information you provide."

  2. A helpful response from JWIAF on Google

    Last week we ran a subscriber's comment about Web directory JWIAF.com's use of the Google.com search engine. She said a "child-safe" directory shouldn't link to an "unsafe" search engine on its pages. JWIAF.com's Webmaster sent us an informative response. We were glad to know about Google's parental-controls feature, and we think you'll want to know how it works too. See below the quoted message for instructions and a caveat. Here's the Webmaster's comment:

    "I saw the question about Search engines in the newsletter. I must admit that we had long discussions about whether to have search boxes on our site. We finally decided that, to be a useful site, search boxes would be needed. We emphasize Google because you can select a safe-search option. Please note that individual users must set this feature.

    "Parents should monitor Internet activity just like parents should care about what their children watch or read in any other media. I wish it were not necessary. But wishing it does not change the way it is. The Internet is a dangerous place. We started our site to help, but no site is a replacement for parent involvement. We also recommend that parents use filtering software…. We examine all the sites we link to but are not able to follow the web of links that those sites link to. In other words, we link to safe sites, but eventually following other sites links may bring up questionable material. Thank you."

[From the editor: To turn on "Parental Controls" in Google, go to the home page, click on "Language, Display, & Filtering Options," scroll down to "SafeSearch Filtering," and click on the dot next to "Use SafeSearch to filter my search results." That will stay on for every visit you make to Google in the browser software (e.g., Netscape) you used to get there - until you or someone else using your browser unclicks it. Now the caveat: We tested the filter by typing "sex" into the search box. Most of the results were fairly educational references to sex (but check them out - an example: "Sex, ETC - a Web site by teens, for teens"). One of the results on the first screen, however, was "Yahoo! Business and Economy > Shopping and Services > Sex." This page in the Yahoo! directory did not lead to even mildly educational Web sites on the subject.]

Send in your favorite resource(s) for children's research on the Web! We love to share your recommendations with this whole community of online-kids' caregivers.

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The file-sharing revolution (& Napster update)

The coverage keeps on rolling, and justifiably, seeing as how the Napster story is really more about the Internet phenomenon and its impact on all of us than about one company and its legal troubles. In fact, says Knowledge@Wharton of Wharton Business School, "the technology itself isn't revolutionary…. Napster wouldn't have existed without millions of individuals who were willing to open their computers to the world, welcoming anyone to search and take whatever they can find." This voluntary, not-for-profit sharing among complete strangers is what the Internet is all about, and that's a huge threat to commerce, copyright holders, and everybody else whose software, music, goods, and services are being shared instead of sold. "All owners of digitizable content will have to rethink their raison d'etre if they wish to survive," says Knowledge@Wharton, which - for one thing - explains why the recording industry is spending so much money on lawyers these days. Anyway, here's the latest on the subject….

Your comments on any and all of this are most welcome - especially if there are well-loved Napster users in your family who'd like to share their experiences as well as their MP3 files!

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Web News Briefs

  1. School filtering law: thumbs down

    Educators and legislators are at odds about the US Congress's latest effort to put filtering on computers in schools and libraries. According to the New York Times, educators say the legislation, expected to pass soon, "only complicates an issue that is already being addressed at the local level." Lawmakers in the Senate and House of Representatives are close to reaching a compromise measure based on parts of separate House and Senate filtering plans, the Times reports. The White House is opposed the measure but is unlike to veto it because it's attached to an appropriations bill providing funds for the Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services Departments.

    We'd love to hear what the teachers and librarians among us think about a law requiring filtering on computers students use. Is Uncle Sam meddling in something already taken care of in your district or library system? Do email us.

  2. No free lunch (with Net service)

    The bottom line is, watch out for offers of free Internet service - there may be hassles! That's according to a CNET report about a "largely anecdotal" study, by International Data Corp., of free ISPs. IDC's message is "you get what you pay for," but some analysts are just describing the current state of the business as a shakeout. Two such companies, WorldSpy and Freewwweb, have folded. An analyst from Gartner group had some useful advice for competitors that survive, according to CNET: "Free Internet service providers must discard the notion that the quality of their service can be lower than the levels provided by ISPs that charge customers." Here, here!

  3. 'Streaming' the Olympics: Not yet

    It was sad news for anyone who was hoping to watch the Sydney summer Olympics on the Web. We'll have to rely on good ol' TV. According to Wired News, the International Olympic Committee confirmed this week that cybercasting "will be prohibited because the normal national boundaries that cover broadcast rights do not apply in cyberspace." Giving out Internet rights would impinge on the coverage rights already given to the TV networks. The Committee is open to ideas on how to deal with the national-border issue. In fact, a summit to discuss just this subject for future Olympic games is planned for early December, Wired News reports.

  4. Media-hungry online kids

    There is now an entire generation of Americans growing up that "never knew life before the Internet," Cyberatlas points out, citing fresh data on online kids from the Simmons Market Research Bureau. The 5,000 online kids surveyed (ages 6-11), Simmons found, are bigger consumers of all media - books, TV, movies, magazines, as well as the Internet - than kids who aren't online. Interestingly, the survey also found that online kids play sports more than their non-online counterparts.

    Another recent study might interest parents of much bigger kids: The Best Buy Digital Decade Survey (cited on the Web page linked to above), 24% of college freshmen this year will be taking laptops, 11% will have PDAs, and 85% say they use the Internet for research. Seventeen percent of current college freshmen registered for classes on their school's Web site or via e-mail, compared to just 4% in 1990.

  5. Getting a fix on Web growth

    Since 1985, when the first Internet domain name - symbolics.com - was registered, almost 18 million more domain names have joined it, according to David Goldstein of the Austrian domain name authority. And all this is according to Nua Internet Surveys. Goldstein also says there are now nearly 10 million live Web sites. That's conservative, compared to some other recent research (which Nua also cites in its editorial), but far from conservative compared to the OCLC's Web characterization project, which puts the number of Web sites at closer to half that figure. Final numbers for the 2000 Online Computer Library Center's study come out in September - we'll keep you posted. Last year's OCLC research put the number of publicly accessible Web sites at 2.2 million (see our report "How big is the Web?").

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For the 'dog days'

Are you seeing/hearing signs of boredom among the summer-vacationing children in your house? Our thanks to the Family Education Network for pointing us to Family.com's "365 Outdoor Activities", based on the work of Steve and Ruth Bennett, authors of "365 TV-Free Activities You Can Do with Your Child."

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Net Family News, Inc.
P.O. Box 1283
Madison, CT 06443

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

Sincerely,

Net Family News

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