Symantec Corp. today announced the public beta of a new Web-based service, currently named Norton Online Family during the beta period, that’s designed to help parents protect children online and connect with their online lives. Norton Online Family is a unique Internet safety service built on a philosophy of dialogue between parents and kids. The service not only encourages discussion between parents, it is also easy-to-use and provides customizable tools that keep kids safe online.

Symantec also announced today the formation of the Norton Online Family Advisory Council, a committee of experts in education, parenting, media and child health, and childonline safety that will test the beta, provide feedback and offer insight on issues relevant to its continued development.

“Norton Online Family takes a different approach from today’s parental control solutions by providing tools that help parents understand their kids’ online world and fostering communication,” said Marian Merritt, Symantec’s Internet Safety Advocate and Norton Online Family Advisory Council lead. “These tools include the ability to show what kids are actually searching for on ten different search sites, including Google, YouTube and Wikipedia. Parents can also confirm kids’ IM friends and monitor conversations with unconfirmed friends, as well as see the number and type of social networking accounts their kids have and their published age on these sites.”

The Norton Online Family Advisory Council is comprised of members who are leaders in their field, concerned about the cause of children’s online safety and interested in fostering better communication between parents and children.

Social networking site Facebook finds itself needing to update its data center infrastructure to support new media applications, and Intel will be the one to help them do it. The two companies on Thursday announced a joint agreement that will see Facebook use "thousands" of Xeon 5400 quad-core processors built on a 45nm manufacturing process.

More than just hardware support, Intel will also work with Facebook to optimize its software for use with the bevy of Xeon chips, giving extra focus to making the software take advantage of the additional processor cores. Moreover, Intel will look to send a message that its microarchitecture can support the massive data centers that will support cloud-computing infrastructures."It's a big win for Intel in the general category of web infrastructure and by that I mean categories like cloud computing," said John Spooner, an analyst with Technology Business Research. "Facebook has a large computing infrastructure that delivers these types of web services on demand and it requires the same level of service and infrastructure as a cloud-computing provider."

Facebook wouldn't comment on which OEMs would build the new servers, but according to eWeek, multiple sources have confirmed Dell and HP would be involved.

In what's turning into a cat and mouse game of legalese and fine print -- the Calcutta bros. behind Scrabulous have just relaunched their Facebook game as Wordscraper. Changes made include using circle tiles, customizable boards, and different point values for letters.Our take on this mess is this: can't the two just get along? Surely Hasbro can license the Scrabble name to what is an able game engine? The why-not here could be that Hasbro had entered into a deal with Electronic Arts to produce a Scrabble online game; also available on Facebook. This was incidentally, just before Hasbro sued the boys behind Scrabulous.
Meanwhile, Scrabulous can still be played on scrabulous.com.

We first looked at the Eye-Fi wireless SD flash memory card back in February, and liked its easy uploading and support for photo-sharing sites like Flickr. This week, Eye-Fi announced new partnerships with Nikon's my Picturetown, Adobe's Photoshop Express, and made its cards available at Circuit City. Here are the details.
Nikon and Eye-Fi

While Nikon already supports wi-Fi wireless uploading to my Picturetown from its Coolpix S50c, S51c, and S52c, the built-in support in Eye-Fi Share and Explore cards enables users of any Nikon camera that uses SD media to transfer pictures automatically to my Picturetown.

Nikon has also worked with Eye-Fi in the design of its new D60 DSLR camera. The D60 adjusts its power levels when using an Eye-Fi card for better wireless uploading.Shoot Them and They Will Come (to Your Favorite Sites)

Eye-Fi Share and Explore cards now support Adobe Photoshop Express as well as over 20 other photo sharing sites, including Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, Snapfish, Windows Live, and many others.
Easy to Use, Easier to Find

Eye-Fi Share cards are now available at Circuit City stores and the Circuit City website.
Eye-Fi by the Numbers

In our original February review, we reviewed the Eye-Fi Share card, but Eye-Fi actually make three different lines of 2GB SD cards with Wi-Fi radios:

* The entry-level Eye-Fi Home card ($79.99 MSRP) connects wirelessly to Wi-Fi-equipped home computers or the user's iPhoto account.
* The Eye-Fi Share card ($99.99 MSRP) connects wirelessly to Wi-Fi-equipped home computers or the user's choice of photo sharing websites.
* The Eye-Fi Explore card ($119.99 MSRP) adds geotags to your pictures and supports uploading from over 10,000 Wi-Fi hotspots

Easy Photo Transferring and Sharing - What's It Worth to You?

Eye-Fi cards command a hefty price premium over standard 2GB SD cards, but they can save you a lot of time and effort. What say you? If you're already using Eye-Fi cards, tell us how they're doing for you. If you're new to the idea, let us know if you think the features are worth the money.

The popular online hangout Facebook is sporting a new look to reflect changes in how its members communicate with each other and how they share photos and updates about their lives.

Central to the redesign, to be unveiled Monday, is an expanded Wall, the section of a member's personal profile page where friends can leave comments and photos. People will now be able to add items more easily, and the Wall will incorporate reports on a user's activities previously found on a user's ''Mini-Feed.''The development comes as Facebook and rival MySpace from News Corp. vie to become the central hub of online communications. Both sites are reorganizing their layouts this summer to reduce clutter and make information easier to find.

Facebook, trying to avoid the type of privacy backlash that has accompanied major changes in the past, said it has been alerting users of the changes in recent weeks. The site first outlined the facelift in May and plans to let users start testing it this week. A complete switch won't occur for at least another week or two.

The changes stem from the growing comfort people have with sharing details about their personal lives more frequently and in smaller bursts - such as on the ''microblogging'' site Twitter.

Instead of creating a full photo album or blog entry, Facebook users are apt to share just a single image or update the one-sentence status message on their profile, said Mark Slee, lead product manager at Facebook. On top of that, Facebook profiles are loaded with information generated from games and other applications that Facebook started letting outside developers write last year.

The Facebook redesign seeks to make these now-disparate pieces of information easier to find at a central location. Now the site will organize information into tabs to reduce clutter.

And users will get more control over what appears on their feeds, with the ability to add as well as delete individual items. Slee said no information about a user's online behavior that wasn't previously public would suddenly become posted to the Wall.

That is a sensitive subject at Facebook, which faced privacy criticisms when feeds first began, though now they are a staple of the site. Then last year a tracking tool called ''Beacon'' caught users off guard by broadcasting information about their shopping habits and activities at other Web sites. Facebook ultimately allowed users to turn Beacon off.

The world's second largest social network Facebook (with 70 million active users worldwide) has entered into an agreement with US officials wherein it will add over 40 new safeguards to protect its young users from sexual predators and cyberbullies. A similar agreement was signed by the world's largest social network MySpace (with 200 million users worldwide) in January this year.

US officials from Washington DC and 49 states have signed the agreement; Texas hasn't endorsed it in much the same way it did not -- the agreement with MySpace.Facebook has agreed to adopt precautionary measures such as banning convicted sex offenders from the site, limiting older users' ability to contact subscribers under 18, even participating in the task force that was set up in January to find ways of verifying users' ages and identities.

To enlist, Facebook has agreed to:
# ensure that companies offering services on its site comply with its safety and privacy guidelines

# keep tobacco and alcohol ads from users who are too young to purchase these products

# remove groups whose comments or images suggest they may be into incest, pedophilia, bullying, or other inappropriate content

# participate in the Harvard-based task force set up in January under the national agreement with MySpace; the task force is constituted by scholars, prosecutors, businesses, state officials, and child safety advocates

# send warning messages when a child is in danger of giving personal information to an adult

# review users' profiles when they ask to change their age, ensuring the update is legitimate and not intended to let adults masquerade as children


Many of the changes have already been enacted, according to Facebook officials.

Announcing the agreement along with his counterparts in other US states Thursday, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal reportedly said, "The agreement marks another watershed step towards social networking safety, protecting kids from online predators and inappropriate content

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said, "Social networks that encourage kids to come to their sites have a responsibility to keep those kids safe. We've now gotten the two largest social networking sites to agree to take significant steps to protect children from predators and pornography."

Chris Kelly, Facebook Chief Privacy Officer, said, "Building a safe and trusted online experience has been part of Facebook from its outset. The attorneys general have shown great leadership in helping to address the critical issue of Internet safety, and we commend them for continuing to set high standards for all players in the online arena."

Social networks such as Facebook and MySpace have been under fire lately for attracting the wrong kind of people; sex predators who tend to lie about their age to lure young victims into chatting, sharing images, and even meeting in person, and empowered cyberbullies who've gotten round to sending threatening and anonymous messages to classmates and even entire schools in the US.

Apparently the protections included in the MySpace and Facebook pacts would be eventually expanded to smaller networks like Friendster and Bebo to ensure childrens' overall safety online.