NetIDme Beta Version Due Shortly

Cyberbullying is a significant problem for US teens, shows a recent survey

Almost All Teens Online A recent study shows almost all teens in the U.S. participate in social networking at least once a week.

Social Sites chase members: NetIDme

A recent study by Alloy Media & Marketing found that a massive 96 percent of U.S. teens and tweens go online to participate in a social network at least once a week. more

Cyworld, the social networking platform that lets you create your own virtual home space, has recently added Live Chat to its service.

You can see which of your neighbours are online at the same time, and start a new, live chat with them immediately. A chat link displays in your list of friends online, along with the option of sending a message (Cygram).

A concern is that you won’t be sure who you are speaking to.  A NetIDme account lets you swap your own personal, virtual ID card with other NetIDme members in order to check their age, gender and general location before deciding to chat to  neighbours.

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre has launched its first year figures. Amongst the announcements today is that news that the Centre has delivered ThinkUKnow education training to over 750,000 UK school children with sessions looking at online internet safety. 1 million kids will have attended by the end of the academic year. This is a great achievement for CEOP which was set up in April 2006. Its mandate, first and foremost, is child protection: Enpower, Protect, Enforce. This includes using a multitude of resources to focus on tackling high risk, high impact offenders.

There’s an interesting article in Information Week on the issues surrounding digital identity, OpenID & online ‘reputation’ systems. The article highlights the need for an online authentication system that offers a workable solution for both individuals & businesses.

OpenID, and the concept of a decentralised system is definitely a step in the right direction. NetIDme is currently developing a verified OpenID service for its members. As the adoption of OpenID grows, the service will allow web users to securely login to websites that support OpenID without having to create any new user names or passwords. Check out the article if you’d like to find out more about the issues involved in designing a workable solution.

The Portman Group has today launched a comprehensive and authoritative set of best practice marketing guidelines for drinks producers.

The Best Practice Guidelines cover a range of marketing topics including unit labelling, the promotion of drinkaware.co.uk and website age verification pages.  The Guidelines are based on best practice initiatives which Portman Group member companies have pioneered and implemented.  (more)