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Social Media for Children – KidzVuz

Posted by Andrew at 12:57 AM on February 8, 2012

KidzVuz LogoKidzVuz is an on-line community for children that lets them review and comment on kids’ gear. Andy and Don talk with co-founder Rebecca Levey about the site’s features and how they’re tailored to children.

Children are often left out of the on-line world as the major social networking sites such as Facebook enforce age restrictions on their members, and rightly so. KidzVuz encourages junior members to join in but addresses child protection issues by seeking parental permission, moderating all content and preserving anonymity. The site is completely COPA-compliant.

KidzVuz encourages children to upload video reviews of toys and games; to reward participation, many activities are turned into games with worldwide leaderboards. The site is categorised with different areas such as games, books and film. Food and travel has proved popular with children reporting back on family holidays.

KidzVuz is free to use by children and there is complementary blog for parents.

Interview by Andy McCaskey of SDR News and RV News Net, and Don Baine, the Gadget Professor.

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Posted in ces, Interview, Special Media, travel accessories, Useful sites

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Mahalo.com cuts 10% of Workforce after Google Algorithm Change

Posted by Jeffrey Powers at 11:12 PM on March 1, 2011
Mahalo

Mahalo

Just a day after Google announces they changed their Algorithm, Jason Calacanis and Mahalo sends word to their staff that 10% will be laid off. Since there are only 20 people working at Mahalo (according to Wikipedia), that means only 2 are being let go. Unless that is 10% of the content providing staff, then those numbers are greater.

I remember when Mahalo started. Jason was on a uStream connection talking about this great new site that lets people create pages and monitor content. A pay content farm. I signed up for the site, seeing if it would fit what I was doing. Alas, I couldn’t find a niche and so I decided to favor Digg over Mahalo.

A content farm is a site that regurgitates information. Let’s say you wanted to know how to tie your shoe. These sites would give you instructions, with ads blaring all around you. The information is something a 3rd grader could write, except for the fact it had to be rich in keywords. That way, they profit and give the writer of the article about 10%.

Therefore, if I write an article on my site about how to tie a shoe – maybe talk about a new easier way to do it, I could get overshadowed by a content farm. Nobody sees my site and I lose on any revenue from ads.

Over the weekend, Google changed the algorithm a bit to knock down link farm sites. Web pages like Mahalo, ezinearticles.com, business.com, examiner.com (etc) got hit hard. The top content farm hit hardest was a site called wisegeek.com. Sistrix.com put out a report of the top 25 content sites affected. Mahalo lost about 70% of their keywords on Google and the remaining keywords were downgraded severely.

Some sites got caught up in the new algorithm. CultofMac was one of them. Google is working with these sites that don’t really fit the profile to get them back up to par.

As for sites like Mahalo, it’s more about making a $ on what others can minimally create. Of course, this will cause these sites to retool the business to turn a profit in a different way. We’ll see what Calacanis does to counter the move. Maybe put some original thought into the site?

In the end, the hope is to find those top websites that were buried by other sites trying to make a profit off minimal work. That is really what it boils down to.

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Posted in content, google, Useful sites

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SourceForge changes it’s name to Geeknet

Posted by Mike Dell at 12:01 AM on November 5, 2009

SF04925LOGO SourceForge, Inc. announced on Wednesday that it has changed its name to Geeknet, Inc. to more accurately reflect the company’s business and the growing market it serves. The name change also supports the company’s intention to expand the reach of its online advertising services into new categories.

Sourceforge has always been a place to find open source applications and tools.

“Renaming the company Geeknet is the latest step in our rapid transformation,” said Scott L. Kauffman, President & CEO of Geeknet. “Our new name is a more accurate articulation of our business. With Geeknet as our calling card on Madison Avenue, we are now able to clearly define the audience we serve and more effectively capture the business opportunity that we are addressing.”

The Geeknet network, also includes  Slashdot, ThinkGeek and Ohloh, among others, and serves  more than 40 million geeks each month.

Geeknet has laucned it’s new website over at www.geek.net. Read the full announcement on geek.net

The sourceforge.net site will remain as it was.

I’ve downloaded a lot of great software from there over the years. It looks like they will be around for the long haul!

Posted in business, Useful sites

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EduFire says it can help students learn and teachers make extra money

Posted by Jeffrey Powers at 12:07 AM on September 23, 2009

edufireA couple years ago, I talked with a friend who was a teacher. We put together an idea for a website to help teach. It never made it off the planning stages, but I knew something would eventually come along.

It’s hailed as the “eBay for teachers”.  EduFire is a site that has been around for a year and has over five thousand teachers creating hundreds of classes with over 30 thousand students. For $30 a month, you get a Superpass to all courses.

Teachers get a cut of all students that take their lessons. EduFire gets 85% commission. It’s not unlike a musician renting a practice room for lessons or a personal trainer for a Pilate session. A good teacher that gets hundreds of students per course could easily make some good extra cash.

But is it a quality education system?

With five thousand teachers and growing, you would have to keep up with the content being published. There seems to be no accreditation needed to teach or tutor. Sign up for an account and go.

There is a “Tutor score” to weed out the bad ones. 1-4 = minus 1 point, 5-6 = 0 points and 7-10 – 1 point.

Still, it might be a great place for your kid to get the extra help needed to pass the ACT, or improve an individual academic. It even looks like a place to help those kids who have English as a second language. The flash card section is also pretty interesting.

Bottom line – if your child is partaking in the course, keep an eye on it. Make sure they are not giving misinformation. If you are a teacher, it could be some good extra money, but make sure it’s not going to cause any problems with your regular job.

As for my friend, I am going to point her in this direction. It looks like everything we discussed a couple years ago. I think this will be right up her alley.

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Posted in service, Useful sites

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How to survive disaster

Posted by todd at 6:17 AM on April 4, 2008

If you haven’t seen the Danger Room blog at Wired yet, it mainly focuses on what is new in National security issues. While it does post about some serious topics it also has a fantastic series on how to survive particular disaster situations. By far my favorite so far is the guide to how to survive a zombie apocalypse.

With heaps of useful tips on what tools and weapons will help you the most in different situations. There is also some warnings about problems you might encounter like trying to shoot straight in a stressful situation, and to keep a close eye on the fuel level in the flamethrower. Reading this will prepare you whether it is a demonic ‘evil dead’ style (“this is my boom stick”) or a mysterious spreading plague style a’la Romero living dead style attack.

It is only a matter of time before the zombies rise so best to be prepared.

Posted in Useful sites

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Test your password strength

Posted by todd at 9:08 PM on April 2, 2008

An interesting litttle app that will give a measure of how secure your password is. One extra that others like this have not offered before is the ability to download an offline version so you don’t have to enter your prospective passwords into a web site you do not control. It does not yet solve the problem that secure passwords are a pain to remember, but it can least give you an idea of the effect small tweaks to your existing password, like a random capital or susbstituting a letter for a number or symbol.

One trivial criticism I have with their algorithm is that some of their subtraction logic doesn’t stand up. If I enter the password “h@3B6)sR?” it gets a score of 100%, but if I add extra characters “h@3B6)sR?xxxx” it drops back to 0% because of the repeated characters. Technically any character combination that is secure cannot be made less secure by adding more characters whatever they are. However this is a very small issue with a very good, very simple app.

Found via lifehacker.

Posted in Useful sites

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