Easily the funniest video of the week. Enjoy! Continue reading

By July, Facebook, Google, Tumblr and others will likely be forced to remove photos, audio recordings or other personal identifiers of children -- or else face stiff fines, thanks to updates to a 15-year-old law. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) was enacted in 1998. In 2011, the FTC beefed up the measure, preventing sites from collecting personal information from kids such as name, location and date of birth without a parent's consent. Continue reading

"I was just, 'oh, he's cute, I'll accept him,'" a 22-year-old called "Nina" recalls. She was 18 at the time, and didn't imagine that clicking "accept" would start her on a path to four years of prostitution across the country. "Nina" is a pseudonym; CNNMoney agreed to change the names of the victims in this article to protect their privacy. Upper middle-class and college-bound, Nina had her plans derailed in her senior year of high school after her mother was sentenced to two years in prison for financial crimes. Lonely and looking online for male attention, she started messaging back and forth with a man who said he was falling for her. They talked about trips they'd take together as a couple, and about marriage, maybe kids. "He sold me the biggest dream in the world," she says. "I thought he really did like me and we were going to... Continue reading

Digital parenting is one of the hardest parts about being a modern day parent; the possible dangers that come with digital interaction, especially when unmonitored, are well known thanks to news articles and TV specials. I believe that it is important for digital parents to avoid creating restriction upon restriction. According to Connectsafely.org, based on surveys of 25,142 families of 9-to-16-year-olds in 25 countries, researchers came to the conclusion that parents' active engagement with their kids' Internet activities works better than restricting them. Continue reading

Hot, new Washington D.C. tech accelerator known as The Fort is debuting its inaugural class of startups today. The organization grew out the efforts from early stage VC firm Fortify Ventures LLC, also known as Fortify.vc (that’s its URL, too), which had previously invested in nearly dozen D.C.-area tech companies. Over the past 9 months, The Fort’s co-founders, Jonathon Perrelli and Carla Valdes, have been busy trying to spark innovation in the nation’s capital. They set up the fund, invested in group of startups, created the accelerator, hosted a pitch competition called “Distilled Intelligence” which handed out $25K to winners, and selected a dozen more startups for The Fort’s first program. “D.C. is not a place where people are always working together,” says Perrelli of the group’s efforts, “but now there is this uprising. People are trying to build something here.” via techcrunch.com It is great to see the startup... Continue reading

Check out this video of a guy throwing a paper airplane 226 feet 10 inches. He is using a plain piece of paper, but the airplane's design was quite sophisticated. Amazing stuff!! You can learn more about the designer's secrets in this article http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/diy-flying/the-secrets-of-the-world-record-setting-paper-plane-7013184?click=pm_latest Continue reading

If you are an entrepreneur, you will find this video to be pretty funny. Have fun! Continue reading

We've known for quite some time that cyber-bullying is a serious problem. The scary thing is that despite all the attention given to the phenomenon, it appears to be getting worse. What are we to make of a recent survey that indicates that a quarter of U.S. parents say their children have been involved in a cyber-bullying incident, either as a bully, victim, or witness. Or another study that found that relatively few teachers have even spoken about cyber-bullying with their students. via www.pcmag.com An interesting Infographic on the subject of cyberbullying. Continue reading

I love the technology world. There is so much creativity, and the following video is a great example of that. This music video is a parody of Nickelback's Rock Star music video. Check it out. There is more reality in this video than most of us would like to admit. :) I saw this video on Brad Feld's great blog, "Feld Thoughts", so special thanks to Brad for bringing it to our attention. Continue reading