The Online Mom

Virtual Worlds for Kids – Club Penguin

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:02:00 PST

To a lot of parents, and an ever-increasing army of kids, it feels like Club Penguin has been around forever. But surprisingly, the virtual world of penguins and puffles has only been with us for four short years. Launched in 2005, when Facebook was only a year old and a Tweet was still the sound of a bird, Club Penguin was an immediate Internet phenomenon, spreading like wildfire across a pre-tween audience that wasn't even supposed to know what the Internet was! Just four years later, Club...

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Tip of the Week – Creating a YouTube playlist

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:35:00 PST

It's widely known that YouTube is not recommended for children under the age of 13. Alongside the latest Miley Cyrus video or that hilarious home-made sketch with the family dog, there are millions of videos with sexual or violent content that are highly inappropriate for tweens and even much older children. The open nature of the site makes it notoriously difficult to filter such content. Instead, YouTube relies heavily on its millions of users to flag inappropriate material, so it can be...

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Kids and the Internet: Less fear, more guidance

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:45:00 PST

In many ways, last week's third annual Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) conference in Washington, D.C. was a groundbreaking event. Except in this case, it was notable not for something it did but rather for something it didn't do. It didn't spread fear. When these kind of gatherings first took place just a couple of years ago, the Internet and the tech companies were on the defensive. All the discussion was about widespread pornography and the possibility of chance encounters with sexual...

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Technology and dating

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:59:00 PST

It's been an interesting week for anyone that observes tech trendsand the impact they have on our social interactions, particularly amongkids. First, on Tuesday there was an Op-Ed piecein the New York Times by David Brooks, a well-respected author andcolumnist, that suggested technology in general and texting inparticular were undercutting young people's attempts to form lasting,meaningful relationships. He even went as far as suggesting that therole technology plays in today's dating scene...

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Safeguarding our secrets

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:02:00 PST

How social networks are encouraging us to let our guard down You go on Facebook one day and you have a friend request from a complete stranger who claims to have attended the same high school as you. You check him out and sure enough he's from the area and he's also a member of the high school alumni group. Although nobody you know seems to have heard of him, you happily welcome him into the fold. Besides, he only has ten friends of his own and you feel kind of sorry for him! (You, on the...

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From chore to pleasure – capturing those memories

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:49:00 PST

One of my favorite events of the year is a family vacation we take with all our cousins in Acapulco, Mexico. My 10-year-old daughter spends seven straight days in a pack of ten kids in what effectively becomes a long sleepover – swimming, playing and generally having a fun-filled time. This year, before we left, I ran out to Best Buy to pick up a small video camera to capture the event while the kids are all still young and cute. I was fully expecting to choose the Flip UltraHD, because I've...

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There's an App for that…

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:41:00 PST

Yesterday, Apple announced that developers have now created over 100,000 apps for the App Store, its revolutionary online applications hub for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It took the Store less than 16 months to reach this milestone after it first opened in July 2008 with just 500 apps available for download. Since then, App Store users have downloaded well over two billion apps and continue to download at the rate of 10,000 a day. According to Apple's press release, iPhone and iPod Touch...

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Video Game of the Week – DJ Hero

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:17:00 PST

If you're a video gamer and a music fan but the idea of holding a fake guitar or banging on fake drums doesn't appeal to you, then DJ Hero from Activision might be just the game you're looking for! Instead of turning you into a rock star, DJ Hero puts you in the DJ booth, transforming you into Grandmaster Flash, DJ Shadow or another of the legendary masters of the turntable. However, the game comes at a steep price. The DJ Hero bundle, consisting of a game disc, a wireless turntable and a...

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"But everybody's got one…!"

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:35:00 PST

(When it comes to cell phones, they might just be right!) The average age at which kids start using and owning cell phones keeps getting younger. That's the news from Nielsen, a leading market research company. In 2008, the average age when kids started to borrow a cell phone was 8.6 years; in 2009, it was down to just 8 years old. When it comes to phone ownership, in 2008, a child was typically given a cell phone at age 10.1 years; by 2009, it was down to 9.7 years old. By age 10, roughly...

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Becoming a digital citizen

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:45:00 PST

Tomorrow, The Online Mom heads for Washington, D.C. for the third annual Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) Conference. The event, which is expected to draw attendees from 14 countries, is a gathering of Internet safety advocates from industry, non-profit groups, academia, and government. Speakers at the conference include Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), author of a bill that would increase federal funding for Internet safety; White House Technology Officer, Andrew McLaughlin; and Tanya Byron,...

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