Friends Exchanged for Email

Take a look at this article in the New York Times about how easy it is to unwittingly give your friends' email addresses away when you “sign up” for a site. As I read the article I realized that the same thing had happened to me recently when I got an form letter email from MyLife.com from one of the dads from my son's soccer team, who I didn’t really think was suddenly interested in social networking. Thankfully I didn’t sign up, but the article details how in exchange for your email many of these sites are given permission in the fine print to scour your address book for emails to send offers to. As always, be careful what you sign up for, the friends you save may be your own.

Hacktivism

Ok, here is another new word for your technology vocabulary and let’s hope it doesn’t become popular – Hacktivism. Hacktivism refers to terrorists using cybernetworks to attack targets including US government computer systems and using Internet fraud to raise money for their causes. According to some intelligence officials, terrorist groups have stepped up their efforts to recruit members with sophisticated knowledge of computer engineering and hacking with an eye to aggressive attacks against vital U.S. security systems. So far most of the efforts of these bad guys have involved taking down or defacing web sites who espouse beliefs that differ from their own such as Shiite, Jewish or Christian sites, but it looks like some of these efforts may have just be trial runs for doing other dastardly deeds online.

Dealing with Technophobes

Perhaps no one else has this problem, but just in case, here is the link on the Apple site to send a friend, relative, spouse or whoever, who just got a new iPhone, has heard it is SO EASY to use, but doesn’t have a clue. We will overcome...

Watch What You Say Online Before You Head off on Summer Vacation

Remember to keep your vacation plans to yourself when it comes to your social networking pages because– as you probably have reminded your children – you never know who might be scoping them out. (Oh yeah, remind your kids as well.) While you may want to post pictures from the road while you are away, make sure you restrict who can see them and the GPS information could be attached to them. Again – no need to advertise you are away. You may also want to take down any pictures of your house while you are away so you don’t give would be thieves a road map of what is inside your house and where. For more cautions for traveling, see Thieves, cons and scammers may be watching you online on USA TODAY online.

Cable Show

You may want to Bookmark this slide show of cables to use the next time you buy or move the technology in your house. Here every cable is illustrated in a color picture and an explanation is given for where you would use such as thing and why. There is also a guide to what such a cable should cost and what the price differential buys you. Good to have because this is the kind of technology minutia that your kids can’t help you with.

Another Reason to Get an iPhone

If you have a Mobile Me account and an iPhone running iPhone OS 3.0 you have a great new weapon in the fight to keep the information on your cell phone private if the phone becomes lost or stolen, as well as a way to find your phone – at home or away. MobileMe members can now use Find My iPhone to help recover a lost iPhone or remotely wipe the personal data on it. With a few key strokes Mobile Me members can set the system so that if your iPhone goes missing you can log into me.com on any computer to access Find My iPhone (under Account) and display your iPhone's approximate location on a map, write a message to be displayed on its screen, and play a continuous sound for two minutes even if the iPhone is set to silent. Or if you fear the worst, you can initiate a remote wipe to permanently erase your personal data and restore the iPhone to its factory settings. Watch this video to see how it all works.

Cheating Goes HiTech

Common Sense Media has a new section in their Parent Advice section on Digital Cheating . There are some excellent hints there including the fact that you need to talk to your kids about this issue whether you think they will cheat or not. Personally I hold the schools responsible for much of what goes on as the enforcement of digital cheating and anti-plagiarism policies are very inconsistent. Teachers, at least those at my local school, very rarely cite where they get the resources they hand out in class and hardly ever give an explanation of what plagiarism is other than “don’t copy.” They use plagiarism detection services like turnitin.com strictly as a punishment, never using the opportunity to help students who “get caught” figure out what they did wrong always saying they should have known better. They also rarely ask students to cite sources used for posters or other more “minor” assignments. Interested in more on this topic? See the Parenting with Technology columns on this site including They Do Know Better and information for students on plagiarism in Computers and Homework.

Keeping up With Games and Game Ratings

Don’t be caught out this summer by letting your child talk you into buying a game and not knowing the ERSB maturity rating upfront. Sign up for ParentTools and stay on top of the latest games and their ratings. It’s free and it can save help save face for both parent and child.

The World Is Watching

Perhaps one of the most dramatic case studies of how information travels and the changes in journalism is the dramatic protests in Iran over the election. "The whole world is watching" was one of the loudest rallying cries of Vietnam protesters gathered in the streets of Chicago outside the Democratic convention in 1968 and it seems that sentiment is even more true today. With Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube all making their almost instantaneous contribution of the sights and sounds of what is going on half a world away, it makes the struggle of the Iranian people up close and personal. The downside, of course, is that with so much noise, it's hard to separate real, verifiable information from hearsay -- or even deliberate lies. Bloggers have some advice on that including things like setting your Twitter feed to local Tehran time to confuse militia hunting down dissidents. Now that’s problem solving with technology.

Mom Still Has To Pay for the Songs

Among the reasons this blog got started was to report on what was happening in the action against individuals by RIAA– especially kids – who used peer-to-peer networks to share music illegally. Ironically, now comes a new ruling against a mom in Minnesota - at 10 times the penalty imposed in her first trial and roughly 1,000 times the amount she might have initially paid to settle out of court - all at a time when the RIAA is no longer pursuing the hardball tactics that netted her in the first place. Jammie Thomas-Rasset has been found liable for damages of almost $2 million for sharing 24 songs through the Kazaa P2P network.

Will this embolden the RIAA to go after more individuals? Probably not. Now their strategy is to work with several Internet service providers to warn violators and then restrict their service. Still not the kind of folks you or your kids want to tangle with!