Mediaboss Marketing

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) Registered sex offenders who have been banned from social networking websites are fighting back in the nation's courts, successfully challenging many of the restrictions as infringements on free speech and their right to participate in common online discussions.

The legal battles pit public outrage over sex crimes against cherished guarantees of individual freedom and the far-reaching communication changes brought by Facebook, LinkedIn and dozens of other sites.

"It's going to be really, really hard, I think, to write something that will achieve the state's purpose in protecting children online but not be restrictive enough to be unconstitutional," said Carolyn Atwell-Davis, director of legislative affairs at the Virginia-based National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Courts have long allowed states to place restrictions on convicted sex offenders who have completed their sentences, controlling where many of them live and work and requiring them to register with police. But the increasing use of social networks for everyday communication raises new, untested issues.

The bans generally forbid offenders to join social networks or chat rooms or use instant-messaging programs just a few of the online tools that civil liberties advocates say have become virtually indispensable to free speech.

After hearing challenges, federal judges in two states threw out laws or parts of laws that they deemed too stringent. In Nebraska, the decision allowed sex offenders to join social networks. And in Louisiana, a new law lets offenders use the Internet for shopping, reading news and exchanging email. A case filed against Indiana's law is under review.

Authorities insist the bans address a real problem: the need to protect children from pedophiles who prowl online hangouts visited by kids.

"It's hard to come up with an example of a sexual predator who doesn't use some form of social networking anymore," said Steve DeBrota, an assistant U.S. attorney in Indianapolis who prosecutes child sex crimes.

Ruthann Robson, a professor of constitutional law at the City University of New York, said the bans could eventually be taken up by the Supreme Court if the justices decide there's a constitutional question.

"If we think that the government can curtail sex offenders' rights without any connection to the actual crime, then it could become a blanket prohibition against anyone who is accused of a crime, no matter what the crime is," Robson said.

The rest is here:
Sex Offenders-Social Networking

OMAHA, Neb., May 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Social networking, both online and off, as well as personal branding, are two actions that just may help you stay employed or land that next gig. "Most professionals are familiar with the phrase, 'It's not what you know, it's who you know,' but then fail to perform any follow-up after meeting an important contact," says April Kelly, author of "Spaghetti on the Wall: Branding and Networking Methods that Stick!" "Something as simple as sending an email to your newly made contact thanking them for their time could mean the difference between getting the job or not."

"By following up with a new contact and connecting with them online on sites such as LinkedIn, you are making yourself more memorable, which in a nutshell is personal branding," according to Kelly. "The goal is to make yourself the person they think of when they need problem X solved."

In her new book, "Spaghetti on the Wall," Kelly offers time-tested advice and practical tools that will help you build a personal brand and real networking connections that deliver results. She illustrates things such as identifying key strengths, unique values, and passions; creating realistic, specific goals; enhancing and defining a personal brand; applying the four paramount rules of networking and using social networking sites to build a valuable network. Taking control of your career now is essential, and the advice Kelly shares will help you effectively manage and develop the kind of personal brand that sticks.

Kelly held senior management positions and leadership roles for both PayPal and LinkedIn from their start-up years through their rapid growth to industry powerhouses. She is currently a senior consultant at Luma Services and is also the author of "Gratitude at Work: How to Say Thank You, Give Kudos, and Get the Best From Those You Lead."

To book an interview with April Kelly or request a review copy of "Spaghetti on the Wall," contact Erin Pankowski at erin@conciergermarketing.com or at 402-884-5995. For more information or to download a press kit, please visit http://www.AuthorAprilKelly.com.

This press release was issued through eReleases Press Release Distribution. For more information, visit http://www.ereleases.com.

Read the original post:
Networking and Personal Branding Are Key to Longtime Career Success

ANALYSIS

Social networking in the enterprise has implications beyond the trade-off between happiness and distraction in the workforce.

Hard to control and difficult to characterise, it represents a unique vector into the heart of organisations that must be understood to be made safe.

When policy-based contextual security vendor Clearswift surveyed global attitudes towards social media within the enterprise last year, it revealed that 19 percent of companies routinely blocked access to social-networking sites and 48 percent of managers considered social media usage as being of concern.

In the UK, the exact same proportion (48 percent) of enterprises thought that the benefits of social networking outweighed the potential security risks.

This social/anti-social dilemma is set to continue alongside the consumerisation of workplace IT, with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) being the buzzword of the day. One of the biggest problems is the security disconnect between management and employees; 50 percent of managers believe that staff are oblivious to the security concerns of social networking, but only 21 percent of employees admit they don't think about social media security issues at all. So where does the truth actually sit?

Education is key: management needs perspective on the real risks of social media use within the enterprise, while employees need to ensure that those risks are understood and controlled by acceptable behaviour.

In fact, the risks of staff engagement with social media are little different to those of using the cloud or even, when it comes down to it, CRM tools. Access, Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and compliance will apply to most enterprise situations for all of them.

If you consider security as the driver, regardless of the platform, and apply the same basic best-practice principles of data protection to social network usage as you would anything else, then you and your business should be OK. Apart from, quite possibly, the regulatory compliance angle. This will depend upon your industry sector, but posting to Facebook could easily fall into non-compliance territory if sensitive corporate data is exposed to the public internet in this manner.

Blanket bans are rarely a good idea, and in the case of access to social media at work could prove to be disastrous from a productivity angle report after report reveals employee demotivation when access to social networks is removed.

Original post:
Social networking's nasty habits

By BEN NUCKOLS Associated Press

OXON HILL, Md. (AP) - The youngest speller in National Spelling Bee history said Thursday that she knew the word she misspelled during the competition, but she was too tired, bored and stressed out to concentrate when she stepped to the microphone.

Six-year-old Lori Anne Madison of Lake Ridge, Va., fell four points short of making the semifinals at the 85th Scripps National Spelling Bee. If she had spelled "ingluvies" correctly during Wednesday's preliminary rounds - she began the word with an "e'' - and gotten one more word correct on a computer test, she would have achieved a qualifying score.

"I was really disappointed that I misspelled the word. I knew the word," Lori Anne said Thursday. "It was just too bad that I misspelled the word."

Admittedly overwhelmed by the media attention, the home-schooled prodigy held court with reporters for 25 minutes Thursday morning. Although she wasn't always forthcoming with her answers, making clear she'd rather be outside playing with her friends. Her blue eyes lit up when talking about her experience at a barbecue on Monday.

"I blew some absolutely huge bubbles, like this big!" she said, holding her hands a foot apart and reminding everyone of her age.

Waiting for her turn to spell wasn't so much fun. She hadn't gotten enough sleep and came close to nodding off, and the hour-and-a-half wait "seemed like two millennia," she said.

"I was just stressed. It was a really, really long wait," Lori Anne said. "Overall, it was just boring. Really boring! Really boring!"

She did enjoy interacting with the other spellers - many of whom are more than twice her age and twice her size - and she gets a thrill out of hearing a word she knows and spelling it correctly. She pledged to return next year.

"I just love spelling, so I'm really excited to go to next year's bee - if I go, which is probably going to be a yes," she said.

More here:
Youngest-ever speller disappointed by mistake

6-year old Lori Anne C. Madison of Woodbridge, Virginia, after the second round of the 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee competition May 30, 2012 in National Harbor, Maryland. 278 spellers are competing in the 85th annual competition. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

BOSTON (CBS) Theyre finishing up the annual national spelling bee today, and if youve never sat down and watched the thing with a kid you care about, I strongly recommend it.

The kids are so smart, so poised, and its a rare example of intellectual excellence being given the star treatment and exposure normally reserved for athletic competition.

Listen to Jons commentary:

But the spelling bee also raises a question do we care about spelling as much as we used to, or as much as we should?

An article in yesterdays USA Today points out that proper spelling does still appear to matter in some quarters.

They quote one expert saying that when a paper or an application or a report or even an e-mail contains spelling errors, people who read it judge it harshly, and cite research showing that job applicants who submit resumes or applications with misspellings are statistically less likely to advance.

And it seems thats increasingly the rule, not the exception.

The experts say many schools no longer bother with spelling instruction, a 15-year trend linked with declining reading scores.

Even the detail-oriented Romney campaign has faltered in this way, putting out a press release this week that spelled America A-m-e-r-c-i-a.

View original post here:
Keller @ Large: When You See A Word Misspelled, Do You Care?