Blitzkrieg indeed: Disney’s Camp Rock

The summer movie blockbuster season isn’t just limited to the big screen. As the Disney Channel proved last August with “High School Musical 2,” children and families during the summer are just as likely to catch new releases in their living rooms as they are in theaters. With “HSM3″ being prepped for a theatrical [...]

Toys Get Their Dreams Too!

Buzz Lightyear has a big weekend coming up  as he, actually a 12-inch Buzz action figure, heads for the Space Station aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery, which is set to liftoff from Kennedy Space Center this Saturday, May 31 at 5:02p.  Buzz’s adventure is part of the Space Ranger Education series, which in turn is [...]

Heads Up: Elf Island

With environmentally focused sites like ZookaZoo, home helper (chore supporter) sites like Handipoints, science based environments like Whyville, math & financy fancy destinations like Minyanland, and literacy-friendly sites like Dizzywood, here’s another to add to the group of parent-happy sites: Elf Island.
A nice little bird popped this into the comments section of my Worthy Virtual [...]

Social Networks, Control, Gov, and You

What is it about politicians that make them absolutely freak out about things that they really shouldn’t be wroried about? The latest is that the EU internet security agency ENISA is calling for all sorts of new laws to be put in place concerning social networks. It sounds like most of the proposed laws will [...]

Great Video of Stardoll insights

Via Kzero.com
GOOOOAAAHHH…. There are so many gems in here for the sharp eye of those building or working within the virtual space for youth regarding branding, self-branding, UGC, community work (and subsequent admission of hacking), etc.
Watch it and see what kind of epiphanies you have.  I’d spill mine, but I think [...]

Games with Vocal Chat and Safeguarding kids

Anyone who has ever listened to a teenager on Xbox Live knows how it goes. He’s saying WHAT? Racist, homophobic, bigoted language … and that’s just in their handles. Given easy voice chat, conversation heads straight to the lowest common denominator. But unfortunately perhaps, it’s not possible to censor voice chat as easily as it [...]

Life Lessons from a Faux-Pirate

I had already played Jack as a hobby at San Diego’s Comic-Con and the Renaissance Faire.
Thirty-seven actors showed up that day, four of us in costume. Only eight were chosen for the next round. We were told we would be auditioning the next day at Disneyland. When I showed up, there were now 23 [...]

Tips for Community Management – Youth and Adult

eModeration, a community management and moderation provider that works with Dizzywood, released a report on “Virtual World and MMOG Moderation: Five techniques for creating safer environments for children.” Every youth-focused world I’ve encountered touts its safety practices, implementing most, if not all, of eModeration’s ideas. So the big ideas may not be entirely new, but [...]

Noteworthy: “Foundling”

WOWZA.

So, I used to talk more about what I’m watching and playing and yadda-ing. I just INHALED the first book in D.M. Cornish’s “Monster Blood Tattoo” series, Foundling.
I actually almost didn’t read it because “Monster”, “Blood”, and “Tattoo” don’t sound like my cup of team, but “Foundling” is very intriguing as a title, and [...]

Interesting stat for club penguin

The Nielsen numbers, which track monthly unique visitors to social-networking sites, found that MySpace’s growth from April 2007 to April 2008 was just 3 percent, and that Club Penguin’s traffic shrank 7 percent. If Nielsen’s numbers are accurate (which is always debatable with online metrics), that’s not good for News Corp and Disney. In August, [...]