I was just reading feeds and saw that Northern Voice is on. This is one of those conferences that I’ll spend my own money to attend. It’s where I first saw video blogging. It’s where I met Kris Krug, who I’m hoping will take us on a cool photowalk. It’s where Julie Leung made me cry. Coming next February sometime. Please schedule it after February 11th, cause I’m going to LIFT 2007 in Switzerland.

Yes, my schedule is being booked for February already. Sigh.

Oh, Google, why do you do stuff like this? They turned off ZeFrank’s advertising/donation site. Lame.

UPDATE: Google turned back on Ze Frank’s service.

Brandon Watson CEO/Founder of IMSafer just talked with me on the phone. Funny that geeks are online and available on Friday night. Anyway, one problem with having kids online in social networks like MySpace is that sexual predators can easily meet up with them without parents knowing about it.

His system is interesting because it warns parents when sexually predatory behavior is taking place. Downside? Kids might feel spied on. I think that’s a lame excuse, though. This doesn’t tell your parents when you say something like “let’s go over to Steve’s and drink some beer.” Rather it’ll warn parents when a dangerous situation develops that the child might not be able to deal with.

So, why should MySpace buy this? Because it would demonstrate that they are doing something to try to keep kids safe from predators and, if there is a lawsuit (there already was one) then penalties would probably be lower because MySpace could demonstrate that they tried to do something about the problem (and, this might head off some really nasty stuff anyway).

More about how it works is here.