News for the Week of April 29, 2007
The most important kid-tech news story this past week was about protecting ears, particularly those of young music fans...
Volume + listening time
Rapper Ben Johnson has joined a team of hearing loss specialists who talk to young earbud users about ear damage. He's a very cool-looking 20-something musician who's very effective at driving home the point that people need to be really careful about earbud volume levels and music listening time, National Public Radio reports
Preventive measures
The rule of thumb these experts give is to "limit earphone listening to an hour a day, at a setting no greater than six" on that scale of 10." If other people can hear the music "leaking" from their phones, it's too loud. If they hear ringing in their ears when they take the earbuds out, that's "a sign of imminent ear damage." If your children want to know why earbuds can be damaging and they don't want to read the NPR piece, tell them it's because the earbud is actually in the ear canal, very close to the "cochlea, the inner ear chamber where hearing happens." See also this item about Apple's free software for protecting iPod users' ears
In other news...
- Phones as personal location devices. That's one big reason why cellphones are joining computers as social networking devices (the other being that people have a lot of fun sharing media on phones). Friends and family can find each other's physical location and get together or blog about their locations as they go. "Location-based services represent at least a $750 million market in 2007," reports ConnectSafely.org co-director Larry Magid in CBSNews.com. "Soon, thanks to Federal Communications Commission rules, all phones will be able to transmit your location. The question isn't whether you can be found, but how that information will be used and who will have access to it." And there are other tracking technologies besides GPS for both phones and computers using instant messaging. That's why "members of the location services industry met with Washington policy makers and other stake-holders at the April 25 event that was sponsored by the Internet Education Foundation. Although no formal proposals came out of that meeting, there was discussion about "best practices," Larry writes. Socializing by sharing media and documenting our lives on phones is the focus of the New York Times's report this week on mobile social networking.
- Lawsuit over student's MySpace photo. A student has sued her school for denying her a teaching degree "because of a MySpace photo," the Associated Press reports. "Millersville University [in Pennsylvania] instead granted Stacy Snyder a degree in English [instead of Education] last year after learning of her Web-published picture, which bore the caption 'Drunken Pirate'." The AP says the dean of the Education School "accused Snyder of promoting underage drinking, the suit states." Snyder is seeking "at least $75,000 in damages" with her federal lawsuit, the AP adds.
- Disney's social site for tweens. Aimed at social networkers under 14, Disney Xtreme Digital will allow them to create their own "personal mini Web sites" as in MySpace only with parental controls, Reuters reports. Parents will be able to monitor interaction, and "a chat feature requires parental approval for kids to go beyond trading canned messages designed to prevent users from revealing personal information, or from using profanity." Kids can decorate their sites with Disney characters and themes (which sounds a little juvenile for older tweens, so we'll see). The site's goal, Reuters says, sounds like viral marketing, actually. It's "to create a community of kid marketers for Disney, as kids visit each other's sites and talk up Disney TV shows, characters, and products."
- Schools banning music players. Where cheating's concerned, first it was baseball caps (answers under brim), then it was cellphones (texting answers), "now, schools across the country are targeting digital media players as a potential cheating device," the Associated Press reports. Kids can podcast (audio record) answers, store them on an iPod, Zune or Zen, and hide them "under clothing, with just an earbud and a wire snaking behind an ear and into a shirt collar to give them away, school officials say." The National Association of Secondary School Principals told the AP it's becoming a "national trend."
