Newsletter - MR DesignNet - Website Design, Marketing and Advertising Solutions

Did Google Steal Your Soul?

March 4, 2010

I wasn't looking for Google... but Google was looking for me.

Google seemed very austere. No flashing banners, no blinking buttons, no prettiness at all in fact, but very COOL non-the-less. Less is more. Clothed in simple green and blue, I liked Google right away.

Google said that I could search all of the world's information that was currently online. Google said that one day, in the near future, the sum of all human experience, the totality of all knowledge would be safely stored, managed and maintained by Google.

Wow! I said. What do you want in return? Nothing said Google. Google love is yours for FREE.

Later Google said to me that I could use a new 'threaded' email system that would give me 2Gb of web memory space so that I need never ever delete another email. All of my emails could be kept for the record, on the record forever.

Wow! I said. What do you want in return? Nothing said Google. Google love is yours for FREE.

Still later Google said to me that I was so cherished that I could have a calendar in which I could input all of my appointments and tasks and all of my contacts of friends, family and associates. I could access this information from any computer, anywhere in the world at any time.

Wow! I said. What do you want in return? Nothing said Google. Google love is yours for FREE.

Soon Google gave me Docs for me to write, analyse, plan and present with complete ease and accessible by anyone whom I authorised. My friend and I could collaborate and work on the same document together even if he was in Tokyo and I am in London.

Wow! I said. What do you want in return? Nothing said Google. Google love is yours for FREE.

Google encouraged me to use Chrome as my browser of choice as all other browsers are... so steam-aged. Google convinced me that I needed speed in my browsing experience. This is the fastest loading browser on God's Green Earth they said. I hate Redmond so I was cool with that.

Wow! I said. What do you want in return? Nothing said Google. Google love is yours for FREE.

Over the years Google has given me Alerts, Books, Blogger, Checkout, Custom Search, Desktop, Earth, Finance, iGoogle, Images, Maps, News, Product Search, Scholar, Toolbar, YouTube and also Groups, Picassa, Reader, Sites, SketchUp, Translate and more...

Wow! I said. What do you want in return? Nothing said Google. Google love is yours for FREE.

Google just kept on giving and giving and giving...

Over the years Google and I have become very close, so close that Google now knows more about me than I probably do myself.

Who I am, who my friends and family are: Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, Checkout, Streetview. Google has a record of all of my personal information including banking and financial affairs. My calendar holds up to date contact information on all of my family, friends and business associates. It knows where they all live and what their houses and streets look like.

My financial affairs: AdSense, AdWords, Checkout, Streetview. Google knows where I work, what I do and how much money I make, where that money comes from and why. Google knows where I work, from which office and what it looks like.

Where I am, what time, with whom, for how long: Calendar, Latitude, Maps, Gmail, Earth, Search. Google knows where I am from my calendar but also from the computer I am using it can tell which city I'm in, how I got there, which websites I visit, how long I stayed there and which language I read in.

What I read and talk about: Google News, Gmail, Blogger, Search, GTalk, Voice. Google knows what type of news I am interested in. It knows what subjects I read about. It knows and has back ups of every single email that I have sent or was sent to me and by whom at what time and what the content was. These are packaged in 'conversations' so are all related to each other.

What my interests are: Search, Blogger, Voice, Picassa, Gmail, Chrome, Docs, Checkout. Google tracks every search I make and which links I click to and for how long. Google knows my shopping habits, what I buy, where they are delivered to and how much it cost. It deduces my spending budget and financial thresholds.

What I watch and when I watch: YouTube, Search, Chrome. Google notes what I look at on YouTube and how many similar videos I watch. It can deduce from this what kind of TV and movie shows I would be interested in and when they should be promoted to me. Every search is logged and recorded.

Cross-referenced and cross-correlated Google can infer from this arsenal of digital information my complete make-up as a person and a Google user.

The listing above is not exhaustive and I'm sure you can point out other areas of Google dominance. Hint: Google Health, Google Mobile, Google Wave, Chrome OS... get my drift?

You might think that, knowing all of the above as I do, I am against Google but you'd be wrong. Apart from the China censorship scandal, I actually believe that, on balance, Google is a worthy entity and on the whole makes life easier for most. Right now, it is a benevolent power.

I'll panic when the Google board members consider changing the name to SkyNet.

by Sal Abdin

The Importance of Choosing the Right Colors for Your Website

February 3, 2010

Colors have psychological impacts, they are attributes of eyes, but are the chemistry of the mind. Colors are perceived though pupils and its effects are produced with associated nerves to the brain neurons. Light reflecting through objects in different wavelengths and frequency stimulates different “cones” or color receptor cells of the retina in the eyes and makes perception possible for different colors.

Colors influence people through psychological changes and are associated with certain feelings and meanings. Colors exist everywhere else, it is omnipresent. Colors represent cultural, social customs and emotional values and its use in arts, printing, designing, websites, graphics, etc. – these days are unavoidable.

Choosing proper color is an essential constituent for your website and its graphics; as visitors to your website first encounters colors and graphics before they read your textual descriptions.

Colors are used in website design and graphic design for various forms; use of colors can be for backgrounds, navigation, logos, and navigation buttons to emphasize, highlight, symbolize your text description and outlining your site.

Despite the fact that your website is enhanced and fabricated with textual and graphical design, if you are using the wrong color combinations, then you are annoying your own visitors rather appealing them. As a result, to attract your customers, it is important to understand psychological behavior of your customers to your websites chromatics. The use of wrong colors results in the wrong impression.

Below are the details for color interpreted through different professions, culture, and physiology science:

Red: Red is a color of intensity, stimulants, love, gaudiness, blood, war, excitement, speed, heat, leadership, masculinity, power, passion, strength, energy, financial loss, Danger, fire, radicalism, aggression, stop, anger, and revolution.

Blue: Blue is a color of peace, unity, harmony, depression, coldness, ice, tackiness, winter tranquility, calmness, coolness, confidence, water, ice, loyalty, conservatism, dependability, cleanliness, technology, winter, idealism, and obscenity.

White: White a color of peace, innocence, cleanliness, simplicity, security, humility, sterility, winter, reverence, purity, coldness, surrender, cowardice, and fearfulness. Black: Black is a color of power, sophistication, Evil, death, fear, anonymity, anger, sadness, mystery, formality, elegance, wealth, style, remorse, mourning, and unhappiness.

Green: Green is a color of nature, spring, good luck, illness, greed, vigor, generosity, go, grass, wealth, money, fertility, youth, environment, envy, misfortune, jealousy, aggression, and inexperience.

Purple: Purple is a color of spirituality, royalty, nobility, enlightenment, sensuality, creativity, wealth, gaudiness, ceremony, mystery, wisdom, mourning, profanity, exaggeration, confusion, arrogance, and flamboyance.

Brown: Brown is a color of richness, stability, anachronism, dirt, dullness, filth, heaviness, poverty, roughness tradition, calm, depth, natural organisms, and nature.

Yellow: Yellow is the color of joy, happiness, optimism, idealism, gold, summer, hope, air, sunlight, hazards, dishonesty, avarice, weakness, cowardice, and illness.

Orange: Orange is a color of energy, flamboyance, playfulness, balance, heat, fire, enthusiasm, overemotional, warning, danger, fire, aggression, arrogance, flamboyance, and gaudiness.

Even choosing color is a professional skill in graphic design business, as it is not only just the colors, but are the color that stimulates the mind of your viewers. Graphic designs inevitably comes with colors, and selecting the best ones for your business is an expertise.

Here is a more in depth description of colors and their psychological effect from this interesting article.

- Purple and violet are psychologically inspiring for the spirit, and benefit the pineal gland, cerebral cortex, right eye, central nervous system and upper brain function.

- Indigo aids concentration, insight and imagination, and promotes peace of mind. Physically it benefits the pituitary gland, left eye, sinus, nose and eyesight.

- Blue is linked to integrity, honesty, loyalty, kindness, commitment and endurance. It benefits the throat, thyroid, parathyroid, lungs and mouth.

- Green promotes compassion and unconditional love, forgiveness, contentment, nurturing, harmony, and generosity. Physically it is linked to the heart, circulatory system, arms and hands.

- Yellow stimulates humour and logic, efficiency, warmth, self-awareness and personal power. It corresponds to the solar plexus, stomach, liver, gall bladder and pancreas.

- Orange is required to stimulate sensuality and passion, vitality, optimism and enthusiasm, tolerance and hospitality. It affects the reproductive organs, genitals, gonads, prostate and spleen.

- Red will arouse instincts of self-preservation and survival, stimulating the senses and bringing out the spontaneous primal urges. It relates to the base of the spine, adrenals, kidneys, bladder, colon, spinal column, legs and blood.

by Bharat Bista

2010 New Year Resolutions

January 1, 2010

New Year's Eve has always been a time for looking back to the past, and more importantly, forward to the coming year. It's a time to reflect on the changes we want (or need) to make and resolve to follow through on those changes.

1) Be realistic by setting achievable goals. Winning the lottery, for example, is out of your grasp.

2) Describe your resolutions in specific terms. Instead of "I don't want to be lazy," opt for "I want to exercise regularly" or "I will cut down on my television watching."

3) Break down large goals into smaller ones. For instance, commit to losing weight by resolving to join a gym and improve your eating habits.

4) Find alternatives to a behavior that you want to change, and make this part of your resolution plan. So you want to quit smoking but you smoked to relax yourself? What other forms of relaxation are available to you?

5) Above all, aim for things that are truly important to you, not what you think you ought to do or what others expect of you.

Writing Compelling Content for the Web

November 25, 2009

Content is one of the most valuable things you can focus on during development of your website. Consider each page of your website a chance to capture or lose your audience. If a web page has paragraph after paragraph of text, many visitors won’t bother to begin reading. There are various other things to be leery of when writing for the web. This article covers eight tips to help you succeed when writing content for your website.

Entice with Communicative Headings

Visitors decide whether to invest their precious time reading your content, typically after scanning a heading or two. Consider which headline will receive more attention:

• PHP solutions for the Web

• Three eCommerce PHP Solutions for the Web

While both could be headings for the same content, the second heading will attract more attention because it clearly denotes what will follow. Additionally, it adds a level of expertise. It is also important to keep your headings concise. When headings wrap to multiple lines, they start becoming paragraph-like and readers cannot scan them. Sub-headings are another way to make your content easier for visitors to scan. Once readers have decided your heading is worth investing more time in, they often scan the sub-headings to jump to the section that is most applicable to them.

Conclude Before You Expand

Every page of your website should cater to the most impatient reader and clearly state what the page is about in the first few lines. Most readers won’t want to read an entire page to get to the point. Write an introductory paragraph that summarizes the most important parts.

Many successful writers outline the points they want to get across, fill in those points and only then do they write their first paragraph. It is not necessary to write from top to bottom and this method can help you write a stronger introduction.

Create Effective Lists

It is quicker to scroll down a web page than it is to read from left to right and keep your eyes wrapping from line to line. For this reason, readers appreciate lists. However, it is important not to use overwhelmingly long lists. Studies have shown people can remember 7 things at a time. A list of seven bulleted items is digestible, while a list of 50 is intimidating. If it is crucial for you to list 50 points, break up your lists with sub-headings so readers are able to jump from section to section efficiently.

Write Clearly and Succinctly

Whether your visitors are coming to gain information, make buying decisions or simply be entertained, respect that they don’t have all day to read your content. If you are wordy, you can expect your visitors to drift to competitors’ websites. However, don’t sacrifice clarity for brevity.

Similar to print writing, each paragraph should contain only one idea. The attention span of a web reader is shorter than that of a print reader though, which makes it important to trim your paragraphs to a few sentences each.

Eliminate unnecessary words. For example, there is no need to say, “at this point in time” when you can say “currently.” It is useless to say “an awful tragedy” when tragedies are awful by nature. Avoid describing an object as “round in shape” when you can just say round.

Avoid the passive voice. For example, replace, “My life has been made easier by templates” with “Templates simplified my life.”

The above paragraph helps illustrate that examples are useful; however, I should specify that repeating yourself is not. Do not say the same thing in three different ways.

Use consistent language. Consider your audience when writing in first, second or third person and be careful transitioning from one to the next. Jumping from a formal paragraph to a first person story sounds like two authors wrote the content.

Finally, read your content aloud and trust your first reaction. If you have to re-read to put the emphasis in the correct part of the sentence or to understand your point, you can bet that others will too.

More importantly, have someone else read your content – preferably, your target audience, not your business partner. You are too close to the ideas you want to communicate and others may find ambiguities that you will certainly want to clarify.

Create Content Relative to Your Audience

Know your audience and speak to them, not at them. Whether your objective is to sell toilet seats or convey a change in the stock market, play to people’s emotions. Don’t use technical terms for a less than savvy audience.

Don’t assume your readers have been to certain pages of your website before others. With a growing dependence on search engines, visitors often arrive at a website two tiers down from the home page. Consider the visitor’s point of view: If I knew nothing about this company or website, would I understand this page?

Be cautious of tangents, information and links that will distract a reader from the web page’s primary purpose.

Specify Links with Style and Language

Links are another way visitors can scan your web pages as they stand out from normal text – or at least they should. Make sure your links differ in color or style from other text on your website.

Using “click here to learn more” is a waste of space. Instead, use “learn more.” Your links should tell readers where they are going, but they shouldn’t be reminded they need their mouse to get there.

Be specific with where the link is leading to. There are many websites that break up articles into two or more pages. Readers are more apt to click on a link that says, “Part 2: SEO Tips” than they are to click on a link that says “next.”

Proofread – Forward and Backward

There are some people who are a captivating force to typos and grammatical blunders. While some will gloss over these errors, the people who do notice are typically repelled. Websites with typos look unprofessional – or worse – like the author didn’t care enough about the reader to take the time to proofread.

Tips for proofreading:

• Use spell check and grammar check.
• Read backward. When we read forward, our eyes skip over small words and miss mistakes.
• Have someone else proofread your content.
• If in doubt, look it up!

Trusting copy/paste is a common mistake; be sure to proofread your content after it is on the web page.

Conclude with Action

Although many of your readers won’t make it to the end of your content, it’s important to summarize for those who do. Include your overall point, as well as where you would like to lead your reader to next. If you are fortunate enough to have your readers want more, don’t miss a chance to provide it!

For example, I would like to conclude by articulating that web writing has similarities to print writing (entice and be concise!) but differs in that readers are more impatient and can easily “surf” elsewhere. The more you understand how people read on the web in general and what your audience wants to know, the more you will keep visitors coming back for more.

Resource: WebAssist

How a Blog Can Seriously Help Your Business

October 26, 2009

If your business website doesn’t have a blog, get one. A blog, if done right, can act as a direct and indirect mechanism that brings large amounts of qualified visitors to your site, many of whom may become customers.

This is mostly related to the way blogs interact with search engines and the traffic I am speaking of will come from search engines, mostly Google.

Before I explain how you can do this to help your website, let me first give some background on how search engines work, Google in particular.

When it comes to optimizing your website (or blog for that matter) for search engines you must always keep in mind two things: on-page optimization and off-page optimization.

On-page optimization is the elements of a Web page that better optimize it to be found and ranked well in the search engines. These elements can include on-page content such as the actual sentences and paragraphs on the page, the headlines (or headers or Hx tags), the links, the links’ text, the title tag and much more.

Off-page optimization means the things that are done on sites besides your site, namely link-building. Off-page optimization is the process of creating links (or causing others to create links) on other websites that point to your site. Inbound links as these are often called have a major impact on how well you rank in search engines. Generally speaking, the more inbound links, the better. But the quality of the sites with these inbound links, or the way the search engines perceive the sites, is even more important.

To rank on the first couple of pages on the search engines requires work on both on-page and off-page optimization.

Two additional and important pieces of information that you’ll need to understand are related to site content and internal links.

Search engines also very much love new, original and quality content, and they like to see your website regularly adding this kind of new content. You don’t need to add pages every day, just add pages at the same rate over time. So if you add a page a week to your site, keep it at around that same pace, or increase or decrease gradually.

A website can be considered a living entity in a sense. It certainly shouldn’t be static. It should grow over time. And the fantastic thing about content is that the more of it there is on your site, the more chances you have of getting found in the search engines.

The idea that inbound links help your search engine rankings that I explained above can be extended to your internal pages as well. In other words, the more links to a particular page coming from other pages within the same site will boost that page’s rank as well.

Think of it this way. If you had a ten page site, including a product page and every page on the site contained a link to your product page and, if all other things were equal, your product page would rank higher than the rest of your site’s pages (besides the home page which is given a little extra weíght).

Now let’s consider what would happen if there were only you and your competitor in your industry (if only that could be true!) and your site still had those ten pages while your competitor’s site contained one hundred pages. Furthermore, your competitor set it up the same way as you where he added a link to every page on his site that pointed to his product page. If all other things were equal, his product page would outrank your product page every time. Why? Because he had 100 internal links pointing to his product page and you only had 10.

If you put all these pieces together now, on-page optimization, off-page optimization or link building, content creation and internal linking, can you begin to see why a blog may be a good thing? A blog helps with all of these.

A blog that is regularly updated is providing a mechanism for adding fresh content on a regular basis. Plus, it’s so easy to use a blog that anyone can use them, so even if you or your employees don’t know a thing about Web pages and HTML, you’ll still be able to add new content to your site.

Consider this. If you add fresh, quality content to your blog on a regular basis by writing posts, something the search engines love, and within each post you link to an important page within your site, let’s say your product page for instance, you’re now building links to help your rankings using your blog. With this additional link your product page gets that much more boost in the search engines.

Remember how I explained that links from within your site help your rankings? Adding links within your blog posts pointing back to your other important pages that you want to rank well is a great way to help your rankings.

And every time you publish a new post, you’re giving the search engines one more entry point into your site. Your site will quickly get bigger, and with each new page your site gets more visible.

Keep in mind that the links you make within your blog posts should be relevant. Only link to your product page from a post that has to do with your products. And also, blog posts ought to be useful to your site visitors. The less you talk about your products and instead offer useful, free information that people can use, the more traffíc and repeat visitors you’ll get.

Remember that people really don’t care about you, your website or your products, they only care about how you can help them. If you sell furniture, a blog post about how to find the best deals on furniture would be far better than a post about how your chairs are the best in the world.

One important thing to remember is that if you plan on creating a new blog for your business as a way to augment your website be sure you put the blog on your actual domain. This means that you would not use a remote service like Blogger.com. Instead, you must have the blog on your business website’s address (or domain).

By adding a blog to your business website you are creating a way to get additional traffic. You’ll get direct traffic from your posts, which get indexed by the search engines and drive traffic to your site from searches. And, you’ll get indirect traffic from your other site’s pages ranking well in the search engines because they have links pointing to them from your blog posts.

You’ll be regularly adding fresh content to your site, which search engines love, thereby creating more ways to be found in the search engines at the same time. And each post provides a new chance to create a link or two to other pages and blog posts on your site, thereby boosting those pages’ rankings.

Like I suggested at the beginning, if your business website doesn’t have a blog, go get one.

Jason O’Connor

Basics of Video Marketing on the Internet

October 2, 2009

Marketing through audio-video is very cheap as compared to other form of advertisement. It can also be said that one video can be equal to many other forms of promoting. This marketing technique can also be very cost effective and useful in driving more and more customers. And with the way video promoting is exploding the day is not far when it will become the most powerful way of online marketing. You may not believe it but majority of the clients prefer to watch a video about the company rather than reading about the same company.

Video marketing is becoming a large online marketing system. Several businesses nowadays are using video to reach out to their customers or clients. It is the most sorts after thing in internet marketing today and websites like YouTube and Google videos are providing the options for uploading your video so that it can be viewed by a large number of people over the internet.

But creating a video only will not make sure that your job is done as videos will not help you increase your page rank on Google as it's a viral and relies majorly on community submission and social tags. Only a video commercial will not help in increasing your search rank. But it can surely increase your clientele as many people prefer watching then reading. In a recent survey it was found out that people prefer entertainment while learning and that is what video do it entertains people while they get to know about your business. Sites like YouTube can provide a great marketing campaign for your online business or website and at present you can gain effectively from these marketing campaigns online.

Checkout my online video marketing campaign for Satellite Imaging Corporation on YouTube. A remote sensing and GIS company that porvides high resolution satellite image data for mapping purposes.

Majority of the people are still not using video marketing and are not comfortable with this marketing technique. It's a widely open area to be taken to boost your business through video marketing. In future it certainly will be the mostly used marketing tool, so why not get you ahead of time and get maximum benefits from video marketing technique today. Companies that feel to reach masses would prefer this technique sooner or later as video marketing is effective and efficient.

Back-to-School - Parents' Guide to Protecting Your Child on Social Networking Sites

You’ve probably heard the names – MySpace.com, Facebook.com, Xanga.com. These are some of the top social networking websites, that have become an online craze for teens and for many adults. You’ve probably also heard some stories about how pedophiles are surfing these pages for their next targets, or how teens are having their identities stolen after posting too much information online. The good news is that young people can protect themselves and their personal information easily, if they know how.

Social networking websites may seem high-tech, especially to the non-tech savvy user, but they’re easy to use and to understand. They differ from traditional websites in that they allow users to interact with them and with other users. Many of the popular social networking websites let users create personal profiles, add photos, write in a public journal or blog, send messages to others, and invite people to become their online friend – all with just a few clicks of the mouse.

None of this technology is inherently dangerous, and if it’s safely used it can be a great creative outlet for young people and a way to get them excited about technology. However, many young people are sharing too much information online and aren’t aware that anyone with an Internet connection can view it – even pedophiles, employers, teachers, their school nemesis, and you. As a parent, you can teach your children how to safely use social networking websites and make sure that they do. Below are some ways that you can protect your children and their personal information online.

Talk to your kids about the risks.

Explain that online information and images can live forever. It can be very hard and sometimes impossible to take down information that is posted, and photos and information may already have been copied and posted elsewhere.
Tell your children not to post any identifying information online. This includes their cell phone number, address, hometown, school name, and anything else that a stranger could use to locate them.
Explain that anyone in the world can access what they post online. Tell your children that some college admissions boards and employers are checking social networking sites before they admit students or hire people.
Remind your children never to give out their passwords to anyone but you – not even their friends. Explain that if someone has their password, they could post embarrassing and unsafe information about them on their personal pages and even pose as your children to talk to other people.
Make sure that children understand that some people they meet online may not be who they say they are. Explain that on the Internet many people are not truthful about their identity and may even pretend to be someone else. It’s important to stress that young people should never meet people face-to-face that they met online.

Protect them from dangers.

Most social networking websites require that young people be at least 13-years old, and sometimes even 18, to create an account. Don’t let younger children pretend to be older to use these websites.
MySpace and some other social networking websites let users set their profiles to private so that only their friends – usually defined as people that know their full name or email address – can contact them. Make sure younger teens’ profiles are set to private.
Go online with your children and have them show you all of their personal profiles. Ask to see some of their friends’ profiles too. If they have a blog or share photos online, ask to see them too.
Treat your children’s online activities like you do their offline ones. Ask questions about what they do, who their friends are, and if they have made any new friends.
Set clear rules that you can all agree on regarding what your children are allowed to do online. Make sure you decide if your children are allowed to post photos of themselves and open accounts without your permission.

How you can help them.

Have your children tell you if they ever see anything online that makes them uncomfortable. Make sure they understand that you won’t blame them.
Ask them to come to you if anything happens online that hurts or scares them. Tell them that you won’t punish them by banning them from the Internet – this is a big reason why many kids don’t talk to their parents about their online problems.
Report any cases of possible child sexual exploitation, no matter how small, to the Cyber Tipline.

Back-to-School - Internet Safety for Children, Tweens and Teens

Almost all children today have access to the Internet through schools, libraries, community centers, or their home. And most 8 to 18-year-olds, 74 percent, have Internet access from their home computers according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Not only do more children have access to the Internet than ever before, but they are using it more, too. Many schools incorporate the Internet into their curricula and encourage online research for projects. But that’s not all kids are doing online. They also email, chat with friends through instant messenger and in chat rooms, play games, create websites and web blogs, and just surf the ‘net.

Even as kids grow savvier in their use of the Internet, it can still be a dangerous place. The good news is that most dangers can be avoided if children and their parents learn about smart Internet use.

Tips for Internet Safety

To guard against identity theft, never give out your Social Security number. Treat it as confidential information.
Commit all passwords to memory. Never write them down or carry them with you.
When using an ATM machine, make sure no one is hovering over you and can see you enter your password.
When participating in an online auction, try to pay the seller directly with a credit card so you can dispute the charges if the merchandise does not arrive or was misrepresented. If possible, avoid paying by check or money order.
Adopt an attitude of healthy skepticism toward websites that offer prizes or giveaways. Chances are, all that’s been “won” is the opportunity to buy something you didn’t want in the first place.
Choose a commercial online service that offers parental control features.
Tell your children never to give out their address telephone number password school name or any other personal information.
Make sure your children know to never agree to meet face-to-face with someone they’ve met online without discussing it with you. Only if you decide that it’s okay to meet their “cyber-friend” should they arrange to meet this person, and then the meeting should be in a familiar public place in the presence of a trusted adult.
Tell your children never to respond to messages that have bad words, are scary, or just seem weird.
Tell your children never to enter an area that charges for services without asking you first.
Tell children never send a picture of themselves to anyone without your permission.
Make sure that access to the Internet at your children’s school is monitored by adults.