Virtual ID card to protect your ward from Net

For parents, an endemic worry is what their wards are up to online, especially when there is no adult supervision. The greatest fear is that the kids, particularly teenagers, will log into sites with content or chats inappropriate for their age. Sure, there are technologies that can try an ensure that an impressionable youngster does not crawl into a porn site, but nobody is really sure how effective they are.

Now, a company in the United Kingdom, NetIDme, has launched a virtual ID card designed to keep children safe while surfing the Internet. How does the virtual ID card work. According to the Glasgow-based Internet ID verification company, the electronic identity card displays the user’s first name, age, gender, and general location. Children can use it to swap online when in chat rooms and social networks or exchanging instant messages.

NetIDme managing director Alex Hewitt says he decided to design the card after finding that his daughter could only verify the age and identity only one-third of her 150 online friends. "I needed to come up with a way to protect her, so I created software that works on a secure public and private key system," he says.

"If you want to give me your ID, the system creates a virtual ID card and sends it to me. Only I can view and lock that information, so I can’t pass on the card to someone else and pretend to be you." Children are encouraged to check the identity of people they communicate with online by being awarded points for each ID they check or issue, says TechWeb. The points are exchanged for prizes like music. Parents and children can apply for the card online. Mr Hewitt admits nothing is fool proof. "The only way to guarantee the system is 100 per cent safe is to unplug the Internet." You can try doing that at your peril.

Internet TV

Although online content aggregators are in the early experimentation stages of rolling out video services, they will have some dramatic revenue-generating opportunities in the next five years. The worldwide market for online content services is expected to expand by a factor of 10, growing from about 13 million households during 2005 to more than 131 million households by 2010, says In-Stat, a high-tech market research firm.

"AOL, Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Apple, major Broadcast TV networks, Pay-TV services and local TV stations are all working on ways to blend their video assets with personalised TV services," it says. Worldwide broadband households will more than double between 2005 and 2010, growing from about 194 million in 2005 to more than 413 million by 2010, the research firm says.