If you have children under the age of 12 and you’re always concerned that they’re going to accidentally access some sleazy website, then Glubble may be the answer you’ve been looking for. Glubble is a Firefox extension that allows you to create separate accounts for you and all of your children to use while browsing the Internet. When your child logs in they’ll have their own Glubbleworld to protect them from the nonsense that sometimes finds its way onto your home computer. While you have free reign, your kids can only access pre-approved sites. If there’s a site that they think you’d let them visit then they can send you a quick request and the next time you log onto Firefox you can approve or deny their request. Let me just add that this really is for kids under the age of 12. A lot of the sites are something a 12 year old would probably laugh at and kids are getting wiser by the minute - why not just pull up IE? BUT, I do think that it’s something that will be useful to someone who has youngsters that like to play around on harmless sites and you won’t have to worry about them clicking on something you don’t want them to see. Here’s my screencast tour of Glubble:
Awesome. A friend pointed me the way to Glubble, where I stumbled upon their Glubble blog, and then ultimately onto this review. I’ve heard some minor cons about it– but nothing that can’t be fixed and typically the sign of a beta.
It tagteams with firefox, and who doesn’t love firefox?
Anyway, if you have a U13 tater tot, I think this is a great tool for you to use with your family… might help cut down on crazy situations where U13 kids are planning 80-kid SMACK DOWNS on Bebo.
A potential fight involving up to 80 children, some as young as 11, was averted by police in the UK, after they received a tip. Riot police were called on Saturday afternoon after reports a brawl had been orchestrated by children from 3 different schools, who used the social networking website Bebo, as well as emails, mobile phones and text messages to plan the brawl. Bebo said it had not been contacted by the police regarding the incident. A spokeswoman said: “We would, of course, assist immediately with any investigation. “Illegal and inappropriate communications are in direct contradiction of our strict terms of use.” Children were said to be carrying metal bars, wood, baseball bats and bicycle chains to use as weapons. The initial group of children assembled at a playing field, but dispersed as police units arrived at the scene.
Secondly: WHAT THE HECK? Dear Great Godzilla (<- story for another time)!!!
Of all people, I am not as naive to think this doesn’t happen daily. I know there are stories about cyberbullying nearly every hour it seems. But EIGHTY CHILDREN?! Some as young as ELEVEN?!
Things to point out (aka, initial reactions):
1. How… HOW… is it that 80 children– averging two parents each… were involved? Where were the parents during this whole time? EIGHTY CHILDREN– that’s not like five angry kids… This wasn’t some “backyard gang” of morally corrupt tater tots– but enough children to house FOUR CLASSROOMS OF CHILDREN. This was an army of kids.
2. Another notch on my anti-cell-phone-youth stick. No one should allow their child to have a phone unless they understand EXACTLY what that means– RESPONSIBLITY. Can your child handle the responsiblity? Can they handle the rules? Can they use it appropriately?
The fact that these tater tots had the ability to orchestrate such a riot… and that it wasn’t just hidden in their social networking activities– but CELL PHONES AND EMAILS. What do parents do now? Are they walking ATM machines that just provide social luxuries to their deliquent & confused & morally corrupt minors?
Yet another need for parents to have some sort of “Parental Must Read” hand out regarding their child’s use of social technology– help them see the light and understand what is at stake.
3. AN 11-YEAR-OLD ON BEBO IS ILLEGAL. Pure and simple. When are social networking sites going to get punished for breaking the law? SERIOUSLY?! There are MANY social networking sites out there that just turn a “blind eye” to their users who are under the COPPA U13 legislation.
4. Quite possibly the scariest thing of all time would be the vision of our future– our children– our YOUTH… walking down the street “carrying metal bars, wood, baseball bats and bicycle chains to use as weapons” to meet at a baseball field (a place of fun and entertainment) to beat the CRAP out of each other. It just turns my stomach. Shame on those children, shame on their parents.
This was a post specifically about cretaing a space in Second Life, but I believe it has completely valid paralells to the tips you should think about when creating any community space online, 3D/Virtual or not.
Last month Sony was in early talks to buy kid-themed virtual Club Penguin for $450 million. After the price went above $500 million, Sony backed out, reports PaidContent.org. PaidContent also speculates that the deal breaker may have been over concerns with churn and Club Penguin’s dedication to non-profit donations. Regardless, there is another unnamed player in the ring now.
It may be that Sony just saw too much risk in investing in virtual worlds: “If you notice that almost everybody has one acquisition, because they are very expensive, and if the public moves on, you are left holding thin air. I mean, the virtual world you inhabit, you inhabit at your peril if it runs out of energy or excitement for the customer. If it runs out of energy or excitement for the customer you can buy Penguin Club tomorrow and maybe it will be Seal Club the next day,” said Sony Chairman and CEO Howard Stringer in an interview with the Financial Times.
A 10-year collaboration between UCLA, the University of Virginia and the Politecnico de Milano produced Rome Reborn 1.0, a virtual 3D model of the ancient city as it looked on June 21, 320 A.D.The researchers studied information on Rome’s topography, urban infrastructure, buildings and monuments, then filled in the rest using digital reconstructions.If Google had been around in 4th century Rome, this is what the city would have looked like on Google Maps.Credit: UCLA Experiential Technologies Center
Ever wonder what Salem, Massechutes may have been like during the witch trials? Well… how about play the part of Abigail, or even one of her accusers, trying to work your way through the ties of church & state in early American times. Talk about difficult– how do you win that battle? (The Salem thing was more or less my sudden idea for an example– MacArthur produced better examples).
But they specifically mentioned– what if teachers could take their students on a field trip throughout ancient Rome? …Well, it looks like UCLA and the Unversity of Virginia are making steps closer to the visualization of such a thing (p.s. I’m not saying that they’re doing this in hopes of Virtual Field trips– I’m just making the observation that it might be assumed that using such awesome technology could produce cool effects for the classroom… that’s all )
Anyway… just thought I’d point this visual nugget out for anyone following the MacArthur Foundation initiatives or the Power of Visualization of worlds online.
viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace
Over the last six months, i’ve noticed an increasing number of press articles about how high school teens are leaving MySpace for Facebook. That’s only partially true. There is indeed a change taking place, but it’s not a shift so much as a fragmentation. Until recently, American teenagers were flocking to MySpace. The picture is now being blurred. Some teens are flocking to MySpace. And some teens are flocking to Facebook. Which go where gets kinda sticky, because it seems to primarily have to do with socio-economic class.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to articulate this division for months. I have not yet succeeded. So, instead, I decided to write a blog essay addressing what I’m seeing. I suspect that this will be received with criticism, but my hope is that the readers who encounter this essay might be able to help me think through this. In other words, I want feedback on this piece…. (click link below to go to Danah’s site & view her paper)
What I lay out in this essay is rather disconcerting. Hegemonic American teens (i.e. middle/upper class, college bound teens from upwards mobile or well off families) are all on or switching to Facebook. Marginalized teens, teens from
poorer or less educated backgrounds, subculturally-identified teens, and other non-hegemonic teens continue to be drawn to MySpace. A class division has emerged and it is playing out in the aesthetics, the kinds of advertising, and the policy decisions being made.
First of all– click that link to go to Danah Boyd’s site to weigh in if you wish.
Otherwise, here’s my ramble. Three funny things about this M v F thing:
a) A bunch of my mid-twenties friends in the UK just did this HUGE migration from myspace to facebook– several of which started a facebook group of their hate for facebook, and their wish for myspace to return to power.
Nickelodeon will launch Neopets “mini-shows” this Saturday, June 23, 2007. The interstitial shows will include Neopia specific story information, like characters outsmarting each other, taking chances or setting evil plans in motion.
More news from Neopets, which will launch beta testing Thursday, June 28
for its new virtual NC Mall. The NC Mall will allow Neopets
members to purchase Neocash, a new currency
unique to the site, with which they can then buy virtual items for their
pets. The Neopets website will continue to be free of charge.
Initially, Neopets is launching the NC Mall in the US and Canada, with PayPal
serving as the payment service during the beta testing. Additionally,
plans for more payment options and an international launch plan will follow
soon.
I’m interested to see how the Neopets “mini-shows” do– I’m guessing they’ll be cartoon shorts before/after and commercial breaks? Personally, I like that mini descriptor “setting evil plans in motions”… how very evil.
And there goes the Neoconomy– neocash takes on the neopoints. I’m interested to see what the difference will be. My only problem? I’ll have to visit (dun dun duuuuuuuun) Colin Skye… my probably-dead-making-me-feel-neo-guilty neopet. I might do a wee run through of the site too, just to report (more for myself) on how the community is growing, living, exceling… to see if there are any new yellow flags and such. I’ll let ya know.
It’s a gorgeous day outside. Have you checked out wis.dm yet? That’s great for randomness & time wasting. I’ve been exploring it for like a week… week and a half now.
This has been the week of reform for my social network profiles… I’ve gone through oldies, newbies, greenies, and blue-ies. I forgot how very, very many communities I belong too. Frightening really.
A 12-year-old boy in Washington State got stuck in a particular level of the PlayStation 2 game Ratchet and Clank, so he called the tipline printed on the game disk and found he’d called a phone sex line, KNDO TV reports. “The number appears on multiple games, including top sellers like Hot Shots Golf, and a similar number on other games leads to the same service.” When the boy’s mom called Sony, the company said it hadn’t used that number for about two years and couldn’t be responsible for it.
I wasn’t going to pass this along… except for one thing. Isn’t Sony trying to buy Club Penguin (latest rumors aside)???
Seems awful irresponsible to me that a company looking to broaden its horizons by jumping into the U13 environment (granted, CP will only be a tiny portion to the conglomerate that IS Sony) doesn’t take responsibility for it’s products. Tsk tsk. Not good press indeed.
People spend over $1.5 billion on virtual items every year. Pets, coins, avatars, and bling: these virtual objects are nothing more than a series of digital 1s and 0s stored on a remote database somewhere in the ether. What could possibly possess people to spend real, hard earned cash on ‘objects’ that have no tangible substance?
The virtual worlds space has received tremendous press attention in the last year, fueled in no small part by Wild West stories of fortune and anarchy in worlds like Second Life and the plight of the Chinese gold farmer in World of Warcraft. But people aren’t paying attention to the bigger story. While people preoccupy themselves with mocking the absurdities of some of these virtual worlds, the reality is that there are many businesses out there making
meaningful amounts of money in virtual goods:
Tencent is one of the largest Internet portals in China with over 250 million active user accounts. They generated $100 million+ in Q1 of 2007 and over 65% of their revenue comes from virtual goods.
Habbo Hotel has over 75 million registered avatars in 29 countries and 90% of their $60 million+ yearly revenue comes from virtual goods.
Gaia Online does over 50,000 person to person auctions and 1 million message board posts a day- making them the 3rd largest auction site and the 2nd largest message board on the Internet. Their average user consumes 1200 page views a month. They employ 3 people whose sole job it is to open snail mail envelopes full of cash that people send in for virtual goods.
There’s a commonly held misperception that virtual goods are only for online gamers. Both Dogster and HotorNot
are succeeding with a hybrid ad/virtual goods business model. Currently, over 40% of HotorNot’s revenue comes from virtual goods.
Major mainstream brands are now buying advertising in the form of virtual goods in social networks. Gaians can now purchase and pimp their virtual Scion xBs. Coca Cola and Tencent partnered to allow Tencent’s users to trade codes taken from real Coke cans for virtual objects in the Tencent network. Wangyou, a Chinese based social network, has also been extremely aggressive in experimenting with branded virtual goods.
It seems incomprehensible to many that people would spend so much money on virtual objects. A Techcrunch article on Facebook’s new virtual gifting service was met with jeers:
“the whole virtual gift via icons idea seems tacky…i just don’t see it”
“I think if any of my friends knew I paid $1 to post a puppy icon
on a friend’s facebook profile, they would quit talking to me… that
seems really creepy.”
“Who buys money for that junk? I feel sorry for anyone who wastes their money on such futile nonsense.”
[and that was just from the first 16 comments]
So why do people spend real money on virtual objects? There are four major reasons:
Virtual objects aren’t really objects - they are graphical metaphors for packaging up behaviors that people are already engaging in. (izzy says: go to the article’s link to read more about this)
Virtual objects create real value for people
Each day, thousands of transactions take place via markets such as eBay for virtual swords, currency, or clothing across a multitude of virtual world environments. For people who purchase virtual items such
as swords or armor, buying these items increases the overall satisfaction she receives from spending time in this virtual world / online community / online game. (izzy says: go to the article’s link to read more abotu this section)
I’m an avid player of multiplayer online games. A couple of years ago, I spent 10 real dollars to buy 1 million gold in a game [yes, it was legal and part of a world where real money trade is not prohibited.] My friends mocked me and told me I was throwing money away, so I tried to explain it to them: 1 million gold would give me 20 hours of entertainment. If I were to go to the movies, 10 real dollars would buy me 2 hours of entertainment. Assuming that 1 hour of movie
watching entertainment gives me the same personal satisfaction as 2 hours of game playing enjoyment, I would have been willing to pay $50 in exchange for that 1 million of virtual currency. In fact, I felt like I had gotten a bargain paying only $10!
Probably the most powerful way that virtual objects create real value is through self expression. RockYou is now serving 150 million+ widgets a day - widgets that people put on their Facebook profiles to differentiate themselves - much as they do in the real world with accessories and bling. The US retail market for apparel is ~$300 billion - there’s good reason to believe that people’s strong drive to personalize and differentiate in the real world will proliferate online as well. Widgets are a form of virtual good - though most widget companies are ad supported today, **I see widgets fueling a massively distributed microtransaction economy in the not too distant future.
The cost of buying objects can be cheaper than “earning” them
Who hasn’t heard of the Chinese gold farmers in World of Warcraft? Typically, these farmers are young students who spend up to 12-14 hours a day playing the game. They can then sell these goods or characters to US based players for US dollars. The term ‘farming’ refers to the fact that they spend hours performing the same tedious in-game action over
and over again to yield a certain payoff. This industry has arisen to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities that result from the disparity in opportunity costs. The Chinese farmers value their time much less than American players. This isn’t a moral statement, it’s just one of economic fact. While it might take both players 60 hours to progress a character up to level 40, the opportunity cost for the American player could be $900 (60 hours * $15/hr,) whereas the
opportunity cost for the Chinese player could be $30 (60 hours * $.50/hr). The American player is willing to pay up to $900 for a level 40 character, creating profit opportunities for the Chinese player. [Note to all the flamers: I don’t sanction farming in environments where it’s clearly prohibited by the game designers. I’m just trying to
explain why this makes sense to some of the buyers and sellers.]
You can make money off of virtual objects
Last year we were inundated with stories about Second Life’s first real estate millionaire. Though it might seem ludicrous to spend as much money on a virtual island that you could otherwise use to purchase real acreage in the physical world, the buyer in this case could actually be quite financially savvy. Buying an island in this virtual world is a other virtual assets and real estate development. The buyer could in turn subdivide the island into multiple parcels and make a healthy
return reselling the land to other players. Of course, this type of investment strategy requires market liquidity; that is, a sizeable and willing market of buyers willing to pay your desired price. With the rapid growth in number of players in virtual world environments and burgeoning market infrastructure, market liquidity is likely to
increase with time.
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