What more is there to say, except this viral video of actor Samuel L. Jackson reading a viral “children’s” book is hysterical.

Written by Adam Mansbach, the book has developed a cult following. It’s more for parents than for their children, of course, in the style of “Everyone Poops.”

While some might be offended by it, I have definitely felt this way too many times over the years trying to put my kids to bed.

[UPDATE: Audible requested I remove the original video clip I had embedded here, as it violated its copyright. I did, of course, immediately and then replaced it with their own below. But fair warning: Audible's is shorter and 87 percent less funny.]

It’s not clear what the initial question was, but Zuckerberg claimed he was misinterpreted: “That’s not what I said,” Zuckerberg said. “The current regulations make it difficult for people aged under 13 to use Facebook. In the U.S., a parent has to either fax in a signature or have a credit card and verify they want their child to sign up….

“In the future, it makes sense to explore that. We would need to try to figure out a lot of ways to make sure they are safe. That’s extremely important. That’s not on the top of the list for things for us to figure out right now.”

So yes, allowing kids under 13 on the site does appear to be what Zuckerberg both said and meant in his remarks last week, despite any backpedalling. It’s just he doesn’t want to do it right just yet.

The regulations he’s referring to are part of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires sites that disclose children’s information to third parties to get parental consent by mail, fax or a special kind of digital signature.

Here’s a Facebook spokesperson’s statement on the matter:

Facebook is currently designed for two age groups (13-18 year olds and 18 and up), and we provide extensive safety and privacy controls based on the age provided.

However, recent reports have highlighted just how difficult it is to implement age restrictions on the Internet and that there is no single solution to ensuring younger children don’t circumvent a system or lie about their age.

As Mark noted, education is critical to ensuring that people of all ages use the Internet safely and responsibly. We agree with safety experts that communication between parents or guardians and kids about their use of the Internet is vital. We believe that services such as Facebook have a role to play in encouraging this.

Our recent announcements around social reporting (http://on.fb.me/i2NhVu) and our Family Safety Center (http://on.fb.me/le4dec) are testimonies to our ongoing efforts to ensure we are giving detailed and helpful advice to help support these conversations.

Just as parents are always teaching and reminding kids how to cross the road safely, talking about Internet safety should be just as important a lesson to learn.

On April 2, the free online game will be unveiled, marking the culmination of two and a half years of development. It represents a significant undertaking for the network.

Kyra Reppen, SVP and general manager of Nickelodeon’s Virtual Worlds Group, who was showing off the game at GDC last week, declined to quantify the investment, but said it will be heavily promoted, much like a new TV show.

Monkey Quest is comparable to other so-called massively multiplayer games, such as the insanely popular World of Warcraft, which has roughly 12 million subscribers.

Except for that it is cute and cuddly, and something even parents can approve of.

“What we did was take the big adult games and adapt them for kids, which is something you don’t see very often,” Reppen said.

That doesn’t mean they cut any corners.

While it runs in a PC’s browser, it has the quality look and feel of a console game, thanks to a development platform company called Unity, which has been the basis for a lot of other high-quality games.

Monkey Quest takes place in the World of Ook. It spans a vast territory that encompasses five different tribes, which are connected by a network of highways. Initially, there will be 50 levels for players to achieve, but new content will be added daily.

Even after the game launches, the Nickelodeon team will be busy adding missions, characters and other tribes–indefinitely.

In the game, each player creates an avatar monkey that can be customized. Even without a lot of work, the monkeys are very animated and have kid-friendly attributes, like the ability to burp, or take a nap if they aren’t being very active.

Challenges include fighting monsters, or venturing into volcanoes, where they may meet Maurice the Gorilla, a friendly giant that enjoys roasting marshmallows. Players never fight one another, and even when shooting monsters, they use silly guns like the Kernal Blaster, which is an ear of corn. The monkeys are also rewarded with bananas for completing tasks.

The game is targeting 8 to 12 year olds, and keeps things safe by limiting what can be said. Players are never allowed to know each other’s real names, and some phrases are filtered out of text-based conversations automatically. Nickelodeon monitors conversations around the clock, and parents can even choose to limit chats to a handful of canned phrases, like “do you want to trade x for y.”

Still, they find that doesn’t keep kids from interacting with one another.

While the game is in beta, they are noticing that a lot of the players are learning how to interact with one another through gestures. For instance if a monkey squats down and puts his hands above his heads, it implies that it is offering to give another monkey a boost up to a higher ledge. If you give someone a boost, it’s only proper etiquette to reciprocate.

Like many social games today, the game is free, and users never have to pay if they don’t want to.

But there’s two premium offers to entice kids. Subscriptions will cost $9.95 a month, or users can choose to pay as they go, by buying Nick Cash. Parents can enter their credit card online, or they can buy game cards in 40,000 retail locations through a partnership with InComm. Players who pay have access to additional content, including premium missions and items for your avatar.

The idea for Monkey Quest is an evolution from Nickelodeon’s roots in the gaming space, starting with Neopets, which Viacom purchased almost six years ago.

Neopets, which launched 11 years ago, allowed kids to take care of virtual pets, by buying them food, toys and clothes. Similarly, users had to purchase virtual currency to play.

Both major media companies and start-ups are experimenting with new tools that combine technology and reality in a bid to get children to engage with real-world objects. And researchers are already investigating whether the new tools help kids learn better than regular computer games do.

Last month, children’s media giant PBS Kids, part of the Public Broadcasting Service, began testing games that use “augmented reality,” or computer-generated content that is combined with images from the real world. Using augmented reality, a computer or smartphone can detect objects and provide information about them. Children can also move the real objects to make something happen in a computer game.

Other games that bridge the gap between real and virtual ask kids to document their activities by taking photos, making videos or recording their location using a GPS device, typically with the help of their parents.

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It was similar to a warning Toshiba issued several months ago about the possible side effects of viewing 3-D images on the eyesight of children six years old and younger. But it was the first time Toshiba spoke about the possible impacts of 3-D after the warning by Nintendo heightened concerns about the technology.

In a press release highlighting the company’s plans to demonstrate a 56-inch and 65-inch prototype versions of its glasses-free 3-D television at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, Toshiba said, “due to the possibility of impact on vision development, viewers of 3D video images should be aged 6 or older.”

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The company posted the disclaimer at the bottom of its Japanese-language website promoting a three-day event in Japan where people can try its new Nintendo 3DS, due to launch Feb. 26 in Japan. It asks that six-year-olds and those younger play games on the 3DS in two-dimension mode.

“For children under the age of six, looking at 3-D images for a long time could possibly have a negative impact on the growth of their eyes,” Nintendo said on the website. It also warned that users should take breaks every 30 minutes when playing games in 3-D and stop playing immediately if they feel ill.

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Even though 56 percent of U.S. households have high-def, more than 80 percent of television viewing is still done in standard definition, according to a report this week by Nielsen.

We at Digits were surprised by this number and wondered why people with HD TVs would watch so much non-HD programming. Nielsen explains that most people with HD TVs also have non-HD televisions in the house, and a full third of programming is viewed on those standard sets. (This is where your Digits blogger differs from these other HD viewers: She has just one television.)

Even on HD sets, though, about 20 percent of programs are viewed through non-HD feeds.

Children’s programming is the least likely to be watched in high-def, Nielsen says. Part of the reason for this could be that the TVs in kids’ rooms are often these secondary, non-HD sets.

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They didn’t bother to obliterate the U.S. Supreme Court. But in the real world, that’s where the $10.5 billion videogame industry faces its greatest threat. On Tuesday, the court’s nine justices will consider whether to strip First Amendment protection from violent videogames that critics say appeal to the deviant interests of children.

A 2005 California law prohibits selling or renting such games to minors based on legislative findings that they stimulate “feelings of aggression,” reduce “activity in the frontal lobes of the brain” and promote “violent antisocial or aggressive behavior.” The law never took effect because lower courts found it violated free-expression rights.

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Web-browsing activity is tracked by “cookies,” “beacons” and “Flash cookies,” small computer files or software programs installed on a computer when a user visits some Web pages. Some are useful. But others are used by companies to track users from site to site and build profiles of their online activities.

All Internet users, whether adults or children, can limit tracking by adjusting settings on Web browsers and Adobe Systems Inc.’s (ADBE) popular Flash program. These settings can delete cookies and limit what types of cookies may be placed on the computer. For additional protection, parents also can install small programs, called “add-ons,” to a child’s browser. And parents can prevent children from seeing behaviorally targeted ads through tools provided by the ad networks.

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If you look carefully to the left, looking at the stage, you can see Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs grinning away at the performances of “Yellow,” “Viva La Vida” and a new one, which I think Martin said was called “Wedding Bells.”

In one of many very funny remarks he made onstage, Martin–who is married to actress Gwyneth Paltrow and with whom he has two children, Apple (named after the fruit, not the company) and Moses–thanked Jobs and Apple iTunes for helping make some of his songs into hits, noting, “It proves you can market anything.”

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100902/video-apples-dad-chris-martin-of-coldplay-jams-for-apples-ceo/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100518/togetherville-social-network/ http://allthingsd.com/20100518/togetherville-social-network/#comments Wed, 19 May 2010 01:03:34 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/?p=1234 Right this second, parents around the country are arguing with their children about using the computer—in particular, whether they’re old enough to start accessing social-networking sites like Facebook. Parents worry about how kids behave with each other online and if they’re interacting with strangers. A new site being launched Wednesday aims to ease those worries by providing training wheels to young kids looking to social network.

Togetherville (Togetherville.com) is designed to function as a safe, kid-centric social network. The site guides kids ages 6 through 10 on how to communicate online with others, using canned responses and parental participation. Togetherville links into Facebook so parents who use the popular social-networking site can have a say in who their children are connecting with and can even interact with their kids online.

While there are many kid-friendly sites like Disney’s (DIS) Club Penguin that have a social-networking aspect, Togetherville offers young children their first taste of social networking like grown-ups, using their real-life identities (not cute avatars) and real-life relationships.

Togetherville smartly restricts certain online activities, but does so in ways that don’t make a child feel too restrained. For example, there aren’t any places on the site where a child can enter free-form text. Instead, kids choose from several pre-set quips, including sayings that they or other kids submitted for approval. The quips can range from questions kids ask one another (“Who saw ‘Avatar’?”) to “I (heart) my family.” And rather than directly sending friend requests to other kids, children first send a request to their parents, who give their consent and send the invitation to make the connection.

To review this site, I used accounts for both kids and adults. I was impressed by the clean interface of Togetherville, which is free of advertisements (though ads may be added to the parent side over time). The three core themes of the site are art, entertainment and education. The content is hand-picked by adults—many of whom are either parents on the site’s staff or are volunteers. And includes 2,000 videos from YouTube and 34 games, some of which are educational. Kids can easily save or share content they discovered on the site or created, like their artwork.

This site is available to the public Wednesday after operating in private beta with 800 test users for six months. A couple things about the site still need work. First, if an adult isn’t Facebook friends with another child’s parent, the two children can’t become friends on Togetherville.com. This is something that Mandeep Singh Dhillon, co-founder and CEO of Togetherville Inc., says he intends to change by late summer. He realizes that many kids are friendly with one another irrespective of their parents’ friendships and envisions classrooms using Togetherville by next fall.

Second, Togetherville is still working on the details of an allowance feature, which will be available this summer so the kids can pay for virtual things like premium games or apps. Parents will be able to add money to their kids’ accounts, and just like real money allowances, they’ll be able to take it away. For now, allowance isn’t an issue since everything on Togetherville is free.

To access Togetherville, adults must be Facebook users, though Mr. Dhillon says access through additional platforms and networks will be available later this year. Adults sign in on Togetherville.com by using the Facebook Connect app to link their Facebook account to the website. Then adults can create accounts for children and grant additional administrator access to a designated person, like an aunt or caregiver. Kids sign in on Togetherville.com with their own login and password, so it feels like their own site.

On the adult account’s home page, the adult’s kids are listed in the top left of the screen, with quick links to view each child’s profile and online activities, or to manage his or her friends. For parents wondering who their kids online friends are, there is a section that shows how a child’s friends are connected by displaying other members in the friends’ families, including parents, siblings and other relatives. When kids ask parents for permission to connect with friends, adults are notified via email and with Togetherville.com alerts.

Using a kid’s account, I played games like Mooncakes, which asks users to rank images with the most egg yolks in descending order as fast as possible. A helpful feature in games and videos lets users hit a light bulb icon to dim everything else on the screen, making the activity easier to see—much like what Hulu.com can do while videos are playing. Leaderboards for games list All-Time High Scores, Neighborhood High Scores and My High Scores. This provides something for everyone to feel good about without taking away the thrill of competition.

I watched a video of Hannah Montana singing “The Climb,” and while watching, read video comments from other Togetherville kids, noting that all comments were made using pre-approved quips. I played with a Mother’s Day Card Maker app to drag colorful images and pre-set text onto a screen, creating a stylish design. I saved both the Hannah Montana video and the card in My Trunk, a virtual repository where videos, games and art can be saved. Every activity I did as a kid was visible to others in My Neighborhood (network) on a stream much like Facebook’s “Most Recent” list of friends’ activities.

Parents can engage with their kids, which the Mr. Dhillon says is still acceptable for this age group of kids. Though the pre-set quips were originally designed for helping kids know what to say to one another, parents can use them to better fit in when interacting with their kids online.

Togetherville will continue adding more content, but as is, it provides a social-networking environment that kids can enjoy and that parents will feel comfortable managing.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100518/togetherville-social-network/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091129/viral-video-a-twilight-spoof-with-an-actual-twilight-star/ http://allthingsd.com/20091129/viral-video-a-twilight-spoof-with-an-actual-twilight-star/#comments Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:49:33 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=21148

There has been plenty of online hay made over the latest of the “Twilight” movies, “New Moon,” which has turned out to be a blockbuster for Hollywood over the last two weekends, pulling in $474 million in worldwide box office.

Of course, there are the spoofs, including this pretty funny one about what’s coming up in the next two in the series, called “Eclipse” and “Breaking Dawn,” in which the Romeo and Juliet of the Undead move onto marriage and children, with some decided Wolfman complications.

What’s unusual about this one, from “Attack of the Show,” is that it stars Peter Facinelli, who plays “Twilight” paterfamilias vampire and doctor Carlisle Cullen, and the doctor here too.

Here’s the video:

Game Reviews – E3 2010 – Comedy

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091129/viral-video-a-twilight-spoof-with-an-actual-twilight-star/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20090908/digital-management-musical-chairs-the-tooth-free-edition/ http://allthingsd.com/20090908/digital-management-musical-chairs-the-tooth-free-edition/#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:30:00 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=18208

Brad Garlinghouse’s appointment to a new job at AOL today as its new communications czar is yet another sign of an interesting trend for those keeping score of the comings and goings of top Internet execs.

Garlinghouse came to the Time Warner (TWX) online unit after a year-long break, preceded by six years at Yahoo (YHOO).

As anyone who watches the digital space knows by now, this kind of management musical chairs is common and never-ending.

In fact, borrowing a quote by IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI) CEO and chairman Barry Diller from an onstage interview I did with him at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference and switching out Hollywood for Silicon Valley: “[It] is a community that’s so inbred, it’s a wonder the children have any teeth.”

But, given all the movement of late, this insider seat-switching seems more frantic than ever, as allegiances shift, competitors become friends and colleagues become rivals faster than you can tweet.

When he left Yahoo last summer, in fact, the digital chatter was that Garlinghouse would take a job either as a venture capitalist (he had been one once) or helming a start-up (that too, at Dialpad.com).

In fact, sources said, Garlinghouse had been considering two mobile gigs, but opted for helping to try to overhaul a troubled Web giant.

Fixing messes was the impetus of Owen Van Natta, who left a top job at social networking giant Facebook in early 2008 and by the end of the year, headed over to run Project Playlist, a controversial online music-sharing service.

But then he had hightailed it by spring to try his hand at reviving MySpace, as its CEO.

His boss, News Corp. (NWS) digital head Jon Miller, did the same, getting the hook (unfairly to my mind) at AOL several years ago and then creating an investment firm with former MySpace head Ross Levinsohn.

The pair considered being part of a bid to oust Yahoo management in 2008.

Miller’s freedom lasted only until he got an offer that he presumably could not refuse from News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch recently. (Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

The list goes on, chock full of ex-Yahoos, in fact.

Its one-time COO, Dan Rosensweig, left the company in 2006, for example, and joined the well-known private-equity firm, Quadrangle Group.

But, soon enough, he was scooped up by Activision Blizzard (ATVI) to run its Guitar Hero division.

Yahoo Network head Jeff Weiner also departed from the Internet giant, in mid-2008, for a stint at two VC firms.

He landed at LinkedIn, the business-networking service where he was named CEO in late June.

Greg Coleman ran Yahoo ad sales until mid-2007 before taking a job at AOL earlier this year, which he lost after it got new management soon after.

At Yahoo, Coleman sparked with former advertising sales head Wenda Harris Millard, whom he ousted. She went onto Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) and left there this spring for the Media Link consultancy.

Presto! She is now helping MySpace’s Van Natta fix the social networking site’s ad business.

Current Yahoo U.S. advertising head Joanne Bradford actually came from Microsoft last summer, via her own short visit to the troubled ad start-up SpotRunner.

Former Yahoo search techie Qi Lu now runs digital for Microsoft (MSFT), along with a big gang of ex-Yahoo techies he has recruited.

And Scott Moore is even better at the switcheroo. He was at Microsoft running MSN U.S. content, switched to Yahoo as its media poobah, left last year to consider a start-up and then headed back to Microsoft as head of U.S. content this year.

But former Google (GOOG) execs have also been busy shuttling hither and yon, mostly to innovative start-ups.

Of course, many find refuge at Facebook (COO Sheryl Sandberg, PR major domo Elliot Schrage and many more) and Twitter (GC Alexander Macgillivray and COO Dick Costolo).

Recent departures–such as Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, who landed at Accel Partners for now–are also likely to find new homes soon enough.

And, of course, there’s always Garlinghouse’s new boss, former Google ad head Tim Armstrong, who took over at AOL earlier this year.

We’ll skip former Joost CEO and former Cisco (CSCO) exec Mike Volpi (who is now a VC); former Netscape Communications/short-term VC/ex-banker/current-for-now CBS (CBS) digital head Quincy Smith; and Joanna Shields, who has worked at Real Networks (RNWK), Google and Bebo (which was bought by AOL)–for now.

Because, around and around and around it always goes, as you can see in this funny video below, which I posted previously:

[Musical Chair designed by Jacob Mathew.]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090908/digital-management-musical-chairs-the-tooth-free-edition/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090220/what-we-really-need-is-a-stopping-congress-from-exploiting-for-the-children-politics-bill/ http://allthingsd.com/20090220/what-we-really-need-is-a-stopping-congress-from-exploiting-for-the-children-politics-bill/#comments Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:02:01 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=13306 Funny isn’t it? Congress spent most of last year calling for Internet companies to limit user data retention and here it is pushing legislation that would require Internet service providers and the operators of Wi-Fi access points to retain Internet user data for up to two years. Why? To protect children from predators, of course.

Introduced by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, the “Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act,” or Internet Safety Act, states that “a provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user.”

Sounds a bit broad, doesn’t? And indeed, privacy advocates say that it applies not just to the Wi-Fi access points of Internet service providers, but to those of libraries, schools, businesses and individuals as well.

To mine. And to yours.

An unsettling thought. Said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology: “[This is] invasive, risky, unnecessary, and likely to be ineffective.”

Perhaps. But it’s for the children. “While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and do business, its limitless nature offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children,” Sen. Cornyn said Thursday. “Keeping our children safe requires cooperation on the local, state, federal, and family level.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090220/what-we-really-need-is-a-stopping-congress-from-exploiting-for-the-children-politics-bill/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090127/should-cameras-be-required-to-click/ http://allthingsd.com/20090127/should-cameras-be-required-to-click/#comments Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:21:03 +0000 Andrew LaVallee http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=7978 A bill forcing cellphone cameras to make a sound when taking shots has been introduced in Congress, with its sponsor citing voyeuristic and exploitative picture-taking as the reason behind it.

The Camera Phone Predator Alert Act would require camera-phone manufacturers to include an audible “click” or other sound when the device takes a photo. That sound won’t be able to be disabled or silenced, according to the draft of the bill.

“Congress finds that children and adolescents have been exploited by photographs taken in dressing rooms and public places with the use of a camera phone,” the draft says.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090127/should-cameras-be-required-to-click/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090114/the-case-for-age-verification/ http://allthingsd.com/20090114/the-case-for-age-verification/#comments Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:52:03 +0000 Emily Steel http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=7614 For years, Attorneys General Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut have been leading a coalition of 49 states that were pushing MySpace to add technology to verify the age of its members. The attorneys general argue that age verification will help keep younger children off the site and therefore prevent them from being contacted by sexual predators and other unsavory characters.

Tomorrow, however, leading researchers in online child safety are expected to submit a report to the attorneys general stating that age verification technology is flawed and will not protect children from online dangers.

Following are excerpts of separate interviews with Attorney Generals Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who led the charge for social-networking safety standards.

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