Web warnings may not make kids safe
Almost every lesson on Internet safety warns against posting personal information such as phone numbers and school names. Researchers are now suggesting, though, that such advice, however well-intentioned, doesn't necessarily make children safer from predators and related threats. In a recent study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, researchers found no evidence that sharing personal information increases the chances of online victimization, such as unwanted sexual solicitation and harassment. Rather, victimization is more likely to result from other online behavior, such as talking about sex with people met online and intentionally embarrassing someone else on the Internet. The research, published in February, was based on telephone surveys of 1,500 Internet users ages 10 to 17. In a separate study of 2,574 law-enforcement agencies, researchers found that online sex crimes rarely involve offenders lying about their ages or sexual motives. Many Internet-safety experts remain skeptical that parents and educators can let their guard down on the posting of personal information at sites like Facebook and News Corp.'s MySpace. "The only way they can get into trouble is if they end up meeting the stranger, and that's going to come from giving out personal information," said Susan Sachs, chief operating officer with the nonprofit Common Sense Media. "It's pretty clear to connect the dots between personal information and predators." Monique Nelson, executive vice president of the Internet safety group Web Wise Kids, said kids "don't have the sense of ... knowing when a predator would be grooming them" so a blanket message against posting personal information is a good first line of defense. Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist at the Pew Internet and American Life Project, agrees that the attention on personal information may be misplaced, but she said caution may still be wise.

Hollywood chiefs urge end to residual payments
In an unusually blunt session here, several of Hollywood's highest-ranking executives have called for the end of the entertainment industry's decades-old system of paying so-called residuals for the reuse of movie and television programs after their initial showings. But the executives, speaking at a briefing Wednesday, stopped short of saying they would demand an immediate end to residuals in coming, and most likely difficult, negotiations with writers, actors and directors. But they were emphatic in calling for the dismantling of a system under which specific payments are made when movies and programs are put on DVD, shown abroad or otherwise resold. Instead, the executives said all such revenues should be pooled and companies would be able to recover their costs before sharing profits with the performers, writers and directors. The briefing was intended to set the stage for the opening of contract talks Monday with the Writers Guild of America unions. John Bowman, who will lead the writers' negotiating committee in the talks, rejected the idea of replacing residuals with a profit-based formula.

Who will grab Facebook?
Google is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of Facebook, Google co-founder Sergey Brin told CNBC, though the entrepreneur left open the possibility that Google would be open to talks with Facebook if the social networking site made the first move. Google executives "don't look at companies for acquisition unless they are really interesting," Brin told CNBC's Julia Boorstin. "I think they [Facebook] are doing well on their own," he added. Google would not go after Facebook, the second-largest social networking site after News Corp.'s MySpace, unless Facebook came to "talk to us," Brin said. Google has been widely perceived as the most likely acquirer of Facebook, which has already declined a takeover offer from Yahoo!, one of Google's principal competitors. Howard Stringer, chairman and chief executive officer of Sony, also expressed a lack of interest in Facebook, telling Boorstin that Sony is more interested in building up its Grouper online video site.

Top News Sites
Here are the top news sites according to Unique Visitors in the U.S. for June 2007, according to Nielsen/Netratings.

The biggest shift happened with AOL News gaining 5 million uniques since May 2007. This comes in the last month before the site relaunched as a blog. We’ll see how that affects the numbers when the July Nielsen numbers are released.

Amazon.com's S3 Quietly Gaining Market Share
Startup Phanfare, which stores a lot of user generated media, announced today that they are in the process of moving all of their backups of stored user data - 40 terabytes - to Amazon’s S3 storage service. Amazon S3 has been on a bit of a roll lately, recently surpassing 5 billion stored objects and growing fast. It’s also racking up a number of passionate users who swear by it for reliability and cost savings. Phanfare is just the most recent example, albeit a large one. Phanfare stopped short of moving all data over to S3, though. For now they are just moving backups. They admit they’d save more money by moving the storage function entirely to Amazon, but note that: After all, right now, Amazon does not provide a Service Level Agreement (SLA) or even a phone number to call if you are unhappy with the Amazon web service. I don’t expect that Amazon will ever lose our data of course, but we would like an SLA before we bet our customer’s data on that. On the subject of Amazon, rumor has it that they’ll be adding to their storage and computing web services by year end - and adding a MySQL database web service to compliment the other two.

Mac desktops are 'smarter money
Property asset management company Capital & Regional is evaluating Linux desktops and Apple Macs as a way to reduce its dependency on Microsoft. While the U.K. company has about 700 PC users and currently runs Windows XP Pro and Office XP Pro, Chief Information Officer Richard Snooks has criticized Microsoft's aggressive licensing policies. "We are feeling the pinch of the aggressive revenue targets of Microsoft," Snooks said. "We are asking ourselves, 'Are they (Microsoft) fit for our business?'" In particular, Snooks isn't convinced by the arguments for upgrading to Microsoft's latest Windows operating system, Vista, and is actively looking at alternatives, including a small trial of a Suse Linux desktop inside the IT department. "I feel we are being railroaded, and the market generally forced (us) into a corner or even a cul-de-sac. In a free market, we have made Microsoft dominant, and now we have the collective responsibility to reverse this situation to re-establish balance and competition. If I am being driven down the Vista route, then an Apple Mac is smarter money and cheaper." Snooks said the browser-based ATMs at Capital & Regional's shopping outlets could potentially run on Suse Linux with a Firefox browser, while Apple Macs may be a better alternative to Windows PCs.

Men spend 458 minutes a month on wireless, women - 453 minutes
Men average 458 minutes of monthly wireless phone usage, and women average 453 minutes. The largest historical gaps since the survey's inception in 2001 were in 2002, when men averaged 589 minutes and women talked only 394 minutes, and in 2005, when men averaged 571 minutes and women talked only 424 minutes. AT&T survey results also indicate that 45% of wireless subscribers use the text- messaging features on their device and 44% use the camera feature; 17% of subscribers play games on their wireless device and 11% access wireless e-mail. Women use the gaming, camera and text-messaging features more frequently, and men use their device for wireless e-mail and accessing the Internet more frequently than women. Both men and women continue to use cell phones more than home phones on average (455 minutes compared with 394 minutes), a trend that began in 2005. Women, on average, spend more time on home phones than men; women talk for 532 minutes compared with only 237 minutes for men.

US Broadband Is Really Expensive
OECD just released their telecommunications outlook report, which is one monster of a document, that can take up an entire weekend. There will be a longer post sometime this weekend, but for now little nugget: US broadband in terms of prices is not exactly the cheapest, which is typically what you should expect when the market is a duoply. Using the monthly subscriptions, the cheapest broadband plan, according to OECD is available in Sweden: $10.47 a month. US comes in fourth at about $15.93 a month, which is hardly a surprise given cheap DSL offers from Bell Operators. However, price per megabit per month is where US is woefully behind other countries. In Japan consumers pay 22 cents Mbps per month, which Americans pay $3.18, about 15 times that. US ranks #13 by prices. The worst comparison is in the newest and shiniest broadband technology: Fiber. In Japan NTT residential connection (100 Mbps down/up) costs $49 a month. In US, Verizon FiOS (30 megabits down/5 megabits up) costs $191.20.

Whole Foods CEO went after rival as a message board troll
Court documents reveal that organic grocer Whole Foods CEO John Mackey was an internet forum troll intent on undermining his main competitor through chatter. Using the pseudonym Rahodeb (a variation of Deborah, his wife's name), Mackey posted on Yahoo! Finance's bulletin board over an eight year period, claiming to be a huge fan of Whole Foods and sparring no barb for its rival, Wild Oats Market. "The writing is on the wall. The end game is now underway for OATS," Rahodeb wrote on the forum in March. (OATS is the ticker symbol for Wild Oats.) "Whole Foods is systematically destroying their viability as a business — market by market, city by city. Bankruptcy remains a distinct possibility for OATS IMO if the business isn't sold within the next few years." Whole Foods later agreed to purchase Wild Oats for $565 million. Mackey's internet exploits were revealed by a Federal Trade Commission antitrust lawsuit seeking to block the sale of Wild Oats.

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