bruceb news

MySpace.com is the largest community of teens and twenty-somethings in history. There’s roughly sixty million registered users. Its growth rate is mind boggling. It’s one of the most popular destinations on the Internet and it’s far and away the most popular site online for social networking. It’s an increasingly powerful force in the music industry, as known and unknown bands use it to communicate with fans and spread music outside of the normal channels. Here’s an article from Business Week about the “MySpace Generation” and how advertisers are reacting to the site.

The growth of MySpace.com has been accompanied by online sexual predators, criminal probes, attempts by schools to block access to the site, and especially by a tidal wave of articles about the horror of it all. […] continued

Microsoft Student 2006 is on the shelves now for under a hundred dollars. Parents of middle-school and high school students should take a long look. Here are some notes to understand what it is and how to work with it.

• The heart of Microsoft Student is the premium version of Microsoft’s wonderful encyclopedia, Encarta 2006. Student includes all of the content from the encyclopedia disks, plus one year of access to Encarta’s online content. Encarta has always had help for students, but this product brings that help to the front and adds other rich features for education and homework.
• One important feature isn’t highlighted.

[…] continued

Microsoft will release a new product later this month, Microsoft Student 2006. Here’s an article about the new software.

It’s a big package, and a relatively pricey one – retail price is a hundred bucks. At its heart is a set of tutorials, toolbars and templates that integrate with Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint for reports, projects, presentations, and foreign language assignments.

There’s online help with math homework, links to Encarta added to online search results, an atlas, and more. It looks interesting for parents of 12-18 year olds.

Microsoft Office 2003 is required to take full advantage of this product. […] continued

Remember how stupid those documentaries were that painstakingly explained that “maryjane” and “weed” were slang terms referring to (gasp!) marijuana!

Well, Microsoft has put together a web page that explains some online jargon and it’s . . . (redfaced, shuffling feet) . . . actually kind of useful. Hey, d00d, what can I say? I’m a n00b, and this l33t stuff threw me off. w00t!

I installed NetNanny software on the kids’ computer to control their access to inappropriate web sites and to be able to shut off services if necessary – for example, to turn off instant messaging or file sharing. It works fine but it’s a bit complex to set up.

Linksys has announced an interesting new service that parents might want to look at – a “Parental Control Service” that controls Internet access at the router, rather than by software running on each computer. If you buy a particular model of 802.11g wireless router, then you can subscribe to this service – roughly $40/year. […] continued

PC Magazine just ran a short review of parental-control software that can block Internet sites with inappropriate content when kids are surfing. The magazine liked Cybersitter 2002, which stops web pages from appearing, as well as filtering POP3 and web-based e-mail, instant messaging, file sharing, and newsgroups. It looks appealing, but this is strictly for what it’s worth – I don’t have any personal experience with any of the programs.

Video games are surging (even the PC games sector is rebounding a bit), but other categories of high-tech toys are slumping. Intel put out some cool toys, but is now exiting the market. (Did you ever look at Intel’s microscope that would hook up to a PC? Very hip.) Here’s an article that talks about the sorry state of an industry that ought to be flourishing. It mentions something that ought to be obvious to every parent – kids’ software is hideous. Almost nothing creative or interesting has been done for kids on computers in years. The best-selling titles last year were Living Books and Carmen Sandiego, which are ridiculously dated. […] continued

If you’re giving a gift to a child between 5 and 12 years old, check to see if they’ve got a copy of The Giggler Treatment by Roddy Doyle. When it turned up last year, it instantly earned a spot as one of the all-time best and funniest kids’ books – a guaranteed charmer. Doyle is a well-regarded author – he wrote The Commitments, later turned into the wonderful movie, and last year won awards for his novel about Ireland at the time of the republican revolution, A Star Called Henry. The Giggler Treatment is a gloriously funny lark. […] continued

The current selection of kids’ software is pretty uninspiring. The interest in getting computers and Internet connections into classrooms arose from the belief that there would be rich content that would engage kids and trigger their creativity and desire to learn. For the most part, I don’t see it happening. And since the entire computer game industry is in the doldrums, it shouldn’t be surprising that kids’ games are mostly uninspired retreads as well.

Lego Software has released several games that are just magnificent, though. Not educational, but great fun. The best of the bunch is LEGO Racers, which can be picked up at Costco right now for $7.99, or ordered from Amazon for $9.99. […] continued