- DibDabDoo.com:
New kid-safe search tool
Well, the name "Google" doesn't say "search engine"
at first glance either! DibDabDoo.com (aka "Dib Dab Doo and Dilly too")
is the newest child-friendly Web directory. About three months old and
based in the UK, the resource already has about 1 million links in its
database, according to dad and Dib Dab Doo creator Irving Graham. Already,
pages in the site are viewed by visitors about 10,000 times a day (one
visitor often views multiple pages), and DibDabDoo does not advertise.
Graham added this to his other Web design and
software projects because of the unsavory content one of his four children
encountered while working with a search engine that was actually filtered,
he says, and he didn't want to limit his kids to the children's directories
already out there. "I have seen other [directory] sites like KidsClick!,
etc.," he told us. "They are excellent resources, but I think I can do
better, having been programming for five years ... [and] DibDabDoo fits
in with what I enjoy."
DDD is not just for kids. Some of the categories
- e.g., Science, History, Reference - are for researchers of all ages.
What's different is that all the links are ok for kids; they're "human-reviewed,"
Graham assures us, before they're added to the site's database of Web
addresses/URLs - vetted for porn, violence, hate, and anything else to
which parents don't want kids exposed.
Graham told us he used to rely on other human-reviewed
sites like Yahooligans and AwesomeLibrary.org
and the youth sections of directories such as LookSmart.com,
Yahoo.com, and the Open
Directory Project. He designed spider software to crawl just those
areas and sites to find links for his directory. But now, he told us,
he and friends are reviewing all new sites themselves to ensure they're
safe for children to view. What he uses his spider bot (software) for
now is continually to crawl/inspect the links in DibDabDoo's own database
to make sure they're as clean as when they were originally accepted (because
Web sites change and URLs change hands; in some cases porn purveyors take
over the addresses even of kids sites).
"I will always be looking for ways to improve
the site," Graham told us. "I intend to keep it ad-free, unlike Yahooligans,
etc. I also want to keep the site very, very simple. If you look at Yahooligans,
there is just too much going on. I want my users to come to the site and
find what they're looking for and leave. I do not want to blind my users
with eye candy...."
For the big picture, please see our full-blown
feature, "Child-friendly
Web searching." Here are some of DDD's peers (if you don't see your
favorite here, do tell us
about it:
Meanwhile, the search engine horse race continued this week, with frontrunners
Google and AlltheWeb.com vying for "largest index" bragging rights. First
AlltheWeb boasted a "newly extended index" of 3.2 billion Web pages, CNET
reports , then Google jumped in claiming 3.3 billion
pages indexed for the world's Web researchers. (Yahoo recently announced
it would acquire AlltheWeb.com's parent, Overture.)
- Driveway cinema!
Don't you think so too?... "There is something
very pleasant about viewing a movie outdoors on a warm summer evening,"
SafeKids.com's Larry Magid writes in a recent column.
"Now thanks to technology, those days are back, at least in my neighborhood.
On a warm August night, we invited all our neighbors and friends to 'Outdoor
Movie Night at the Magids,' where we enjoyed viewing 'Singin' in the Rain'
with Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, and Debbie Reynolds." This is something
really any family can do, if they have a flat driveway or patch of grass
and with a DVD player-equipped PC, a borrowed or rented video projector,
and a large bed sheet (it really works, though it turned out that Larry's
neighbor had a large movie screen that worked even better). The evening
was a real success, and Larry got a kick out of watching the reactions
of drivers and walkers passing by. His article has all the details.
- Teen suspected in Net worm case
An American 18-year-old is alleged to have been
one of the writers of the MSBlast worm that infected hundreds of thousands
of PCs around the world," the BBC
reports. "The youth is not believed to be the creator of the original
MSBlast worm, also known as Lovsan. Instead he is suspected of altering
the worm into a variant that did more damage than the original." The relatively
quick investigation on the FBI's part is a sign that, even as virus technology
is getting more virulent, law enforcement is becoming more sophisticated
in tracking its sources, a BBC source said. CNET's
report says the suspect, a resident of Hopkins, Minnesota, has been
arrested. Here's the Washington
Post's excellent roundup of media coverage on this.
- Net 'red-light district' reconsidered
Web porn publishers are reconsidering the idea
of a dot-triple-x area on the Web, Wired
News reports. "In the past, the adult industry's largest trade group,
the Free Speech Coalition, has opposed the idea of an adult domain registry,
fearing that porn sites would be ceding ground [losing customers seeking
a dot-com URL] by voluntarily relegating themselves to a virtual red-light
zone," according to Wired News. But the PROTECT Act, passed last spring
(see our 5/2
and 5/23 issues)
is bringing new meaning to the old logic that if porn sites don't begin
regulating themselves, Congress will do it for them. The law "authorizes
criminal penalties for deceptive porn site operators," Wired News adds.
- Game sites where kids earn cash?
It's a new challenge for gambling regulators:
gaming sites that reward online "assassins" with cash. "In the past, gamers
had to play on public servers for nothing but bragging rights. Cash could
only be won at national tournaments hosted by gaming publications and
software companies. But now players can wager 24/7 at sites such as Ultimate
Arena and YouPlayGames.com," Salon.com
reports. Ethical implications aside, there's a downside for these
fantasy paid assassins: they lose money if they get "killed," the New
York Times reports. The stakes add excitement to the experience, customers
tell the Times. And there are more traditional ways for gamers to make
money: "Video-game tournaments with six- figure purses have sprung up
around the world," Wired
News reports. The cash comes from game
hardware companies promoting their products. Part 2 of the Wired News series
reports from inside the world of gamers following the tournament circuit. Meanwhile, the gaming
community is definitely diversifying. Reuters cites a new Entertainment
Software Association poll showing that more adult women are playing video games
than young boys. The study found that 26% of game players are women 18+, and 21%
are boys 6-17. And CyberAtlas says the percentage of gamers 50 and over is now
17%, up from 13% in 2000, and the average gamer age is now 29.
- World's students flock to MIT's courses
It's a huge, controversial global experiment just
out of beta-testing (controversial among MIT faculty as well as among
other universities charging for their online courses). Next month, Wired
magazine reports, MIT officially launches OpenCourseWare, giving anyone
anytime-access to - for starters - 500 of its courses, from video lectures
to course outlines to tests. Not toward a degree (which now costs $41,000/year),
just toward acquiring knowledge. It's a bold experiment. Its title could
be "MIT helps shrink the world." These Wired words basically say it all:
"Lam Vi Quoc, a fourth-year student at Vietnam's Natural Sciences University,
relied on 6.170 lectures to supplement a software lab he was taking, and
Evan Hoff, a software developer in Nashville, followed the course to improve
his coding skills. In Karachi, Pakistan, a group of 100 students and professionals
met weekly to study 6.170. In Kansas City, five members of the Greater
Kansas City Java Professionals Association gathered monthly to take the
course. In Mauritius, a tiny island nation in the Indian Ocean, Priya
Durshini Thaunoo used 6.170 to prepare for a master's degree program at
the University of Mauritius. Saman Zarandioon, an Iranian refugee living
in Vienna, studied it to continue an education that was stalled by the
Iranian government. And software developer Rahul Thadani in Birmingham,
Alabama, took it to sharpen his skills."
- Online suicide pacts in Japan
Japan has seen "an extraordinary string of Internet
suicides" in the past six months, the Washington Post reports. At least 32 people,
mostly in their teens and twenties, have killed themselves after making
suicide pacts with strangers online. In one case the Post cites, a young
man found two likeminded "friends" in one of many Japanese-language sites
about suicide, and arranged a time and place to meet them (promising to
supply materials called for in the Web site's suicide instructions). The
three died of carbon monoxide poisoning last May. "Many more young Japanese
have entered into online suicide pacts, but either failed in their attempts
or backed out at the last minute," the Post reports. The Net-related deaths
are part of a surge in the overall suicide rate, widely linked to Japan's
13-year-long economic troubles, the article adds.
- New career for kids to consider: 'Extreme coder'
Wired
magazine calls them "the new X-Men," these supercoders who actually
enjoy their jobs. They still hydrate chiefly with Mountain Dew, but they're
no longer isolated lone wolves. But the "new approach" reportedly revolutionizing
the software industry is as old as the hills. With extreme coding, programmers
write code in tandem, in "a method of software development that emphasizes
constant feedback. Traditional coding devotes a huge amount of time to
up-front planning, then demands rigid adherence to that plan," Wired reports.
With this approach, "programmers spend relatively little time planning
and instead dive into the writing, making course corrections as needed
and allowing better ideas to emerge after snippets of code are tested
and assessed. The result is a speedy loop: plan, code, test, release,
plan, code, test." The trick is to find the right partner. Sound familiar?
- Americans' Net habits geography-driven
The US's Net users are a diverse group, the Pew
Internet & American Life project has found in its latest study, "Internet
Use by Region in the United States". Email is popular throughout the
country, of course. However, Netizens in the "Industrial Midwest" are
online slightly less time than the national average, though they spend
a lot of that time in touch with friends. "In New England, 55% of users
had bought something online, compared to just 37% in the Midwest," reports
MSNBC in its
coverage of the study. "In the South, about half of Internet users expected
to log on daily, compared to 57% nationally. On the other hand, users
everywhere flocked to the same types of Web sites: big portals like Yahoo,
MSN and AOL, auction site eBay and search engine Google." In other findings,
the Northwest has the highest percentage of Net users (at 68% of its population),
followed by New England (66%), California (65%), and National Capitol
(Va., Md., and D.C.) and (Rocky) Mountain States tied for 4th (at 64%);
the South came in last at 48%.
- Info-management tool for students
Microsoft announced it will sell a discounted
version of its OneNotes software for students ($49 as opposed to the usual
$199), CNET reports.
"OneNote is designed for taking notes and organizing them with information
from other sources, such as Web pages. The program automatically saves
notes as they're input and offers several options for organizing and browsing
notes, which can later be incorporated into final Word documents." The
discount is good business, it appears. After Microsoft Microsoft introduced
a student version of Office last year, the program "quickly became the
most popular consumer version of Office."
- For girl gearheads
Not all geeks are guys, the Denver
Post reports this week. "As microchip technology becomes a casual,
can't-do-without-it part of our daily lives - from personal computers,
pagers, the Internet, wireless phones, PDAs and digital cameras - a sea
change is happening." Just look at the numbers, the Post suggests: Women's
spending will represent about $55 billion of this year's projected $100
billion US consumer electronics market. "When even Barbie can't step out
the dollhouse door without a cell phone and a laptop, you know the gizmo
gap between the genders is closing." The Post goes on to report on electronics
both sexes are interested in these days.
- RIAA's focus on universities
The Washington Post tops the ominous news with a fun lead, saying
19-year-old American University student (and "avowed music pirate") Steve
Morris "spent part of his summer teaching his grandmother how to use the
popular file-sharing program Kazaa." He spent the other part of his summer
warning incoming freshmen about the legal risks of file-sharing. The Recording
Industry Association of American is using both prevention and punishment
tactics in its war on music piracy. Last year it "formed a joint committee
with university representatives to brainstorm ways of approaching the
problem," the Post reports. "Since many of the most enthusiastic offenders
are freshmen, the committee focused much of its energy on the late-summer
orientation programs meant to acclimate 18-year-olds to college life."
On the punishment side, the RIAA served more than 800 subpoenas in July
to individual users - "admittedly in hopes of terrifying cash- strapped
college students." A separate Post piece reports A now-very-high-tech RIAA discloses some
of its methods for finding large-scale file-sharers. Meanwhile, the BBC
reports that the RIAA has, in court documents, disclosed some of its
high-tech methods for finding copyright violators.
