• Parental controls improving. We - parents - are the winners in the "showdown of new parental controls in Apple's Leopard versus Microsoft's year-old Vista," CNET's Stefanie Olsen reports. The reason is, filtering, monitoring, and time-control features are increasingly built in right at the operating-system level on both PCs and Macs now. That means it's all easier for parents to use and tougher for kids to find workarounds (younger kids, anyway). The huge key thing parents need to keep in mind, though, is that the idea of "the family computer" is beginning to fade - at least in the world's wealthier, more connected countries. More and more households have multiple computers, which might require rules restricting kid use to particular computers. But even so, the Web is available on more and more devices, most of them highly portable. It's also available at friends' houses, or course. The friend's house (or public library, or local wireless hot spot, etc.) is probably the No. 1 "workaround" for which no parental-control software you buy or set up works. Even so, Olsen reports, "parents are clearly paying more attention to technology for managing their children's computer use, especially as more kids venture online at younger ages." She cites NPD research showing that "sales of parental control software were up 47.3% percent in the first nine months of 2007 over the same period last year," and some of the top-selling off-the-shelf parental-control products are Enteractive, Microforum, and ContentWatch.
• Student 'tech sherpas.' Senior Jayson in a Freeport, Me., school district "says he wants teachers to see that technology isn't as hard as they might think." He's a "tech sherpa" for his high school, a group of students that support the district IT department, help teachers with classroom tech, and earn credit in the process, the Christian Science Monitor reports. "This fall the group also launched a weekly live Web-stream show called 'The Tech Curve,' in which students field questions about various Internet teaching tools and the new Mac laptops that the state is issuing to high school teachers (see www.nokomiswarriorbroadcasting.com)." Each year an organization in Olympia, Wash., called Generation YES helps about 200 schools to set up the curricula behind the tech-sherpa program, the Monitor adds. This is the kind of tech-training program that empowers youth as well as educators. The program in Maine is clearly a confidence builder for the "sherpas," who also learn patience and diplomacy in working with adults. "They're relating to people, not just computers," working collaboratively to solve real problems. The school's tech coordinator told the Monitor that "the most valuable assignments he can give are 'authentic' tasks - of real use to the school or the community."
• Teen 'cybercrime kingpin' arrested. The 18-year-old New Zealander's screenname is "AKILL," and he is the alleged head "of an international cyber crime network accused of infiltrating 1.3 million computers" and stealing $20+ million from victims' bank accounts, the Associated Press reports. "Working with the FBI and police in the Netherlands, New Zealand police raided" his house in Hamilton and took him and several computers in custody. His arrest was part of an international crackdown on criminal hackers who hack or social-engineer their way into large numbers of computers, install malicious software, and take control of the machines, turning them into "zombies." The zombie computers become part of large networks (or "botnets") of computers that can launch denial-of-service attacks on large Web commercial Web sites, extort, manipulate stocks, etc. "Eight people have been indicted, pleaded guilty or have been convicted since the investigation started in June."
• ClubPenguin members can give to charity. Parents of penguins probably already know that gold coins are earned by playing games in the site. With them, penguins can now not only feed and care for their puffles, and buy surfboards, etc. They can give to charity, the Associated Press and the in-site Penguin Times report (I like that my 10-year-old started reading that paper unbeknownst to me). "Starting Dec. 14 and running through Dec. 24, kids can choose to donate their virtual money to support the environment, children's health or children's education. The company will then split $1 million real dollars among three charities, including the World Wildlife Fund, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and Free The Children." This started before ClubPenguin was acquired by Disney, according to the AP. "The Canadian website donated a little more than $30 million to charity after Disney agreed to pay $350 million for the company earlier this year."

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