In one of our recent blogs called “MySpace Affecting our Teens” we mention how teenagers use the popular social network MySpace more for a popularity contest than anything else, which poses a risk. These risks could range from sexual behavior to violence. We all remember the Lori Drew cyberbully case that made headline news in which a teen committed suicide.

How can parents monitor their teenagers behavior when online using MySpace? It’s difficult for any parent to police their teens 24×7 as they have other responsibilities to tend to. The other challenge is that parents may become more complacent when they have teenagers that are 17 to 18 years of age, and may assume they should know better.

“We found the majority of teenagers who have a MySpace account are displaying risky behaviors in a public way that is accessible to a general audience,” said Dr. Dimitri Christakis of Seattle Children’s Research Institute, whose studies appear in the journal Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine.

In one of two studies, Christakis and Dr. Megan Moreno of the University of Wisconsin analyzed 500 randomly chosen MySpace profiles of 18-year-olds in 2007.

Overall, 54 percent of the publicly available accounts they checked contained information about high-risk behaviors: 41 percent mentioned substance abuse, 24 percent sexual behavior and 14 percent violence.

Christakis said many teens are unaware of how public and permanent Internet information can be, while parents often do not know what their kids are up to.

We need educate our teenagers about the dangers of the internet, but also provide them the benefits as well. We don’t need another cyberbully case and certainly any public suicide, like the one recently displayed on justin.tv.

In years past the CES show in Las Vegas brought in well over 130,000 people to see the latest gadgets. In fact, it was harder to get a hotel room on the strip than it was to get front row tickets to a Led Zeppelin concert.

The global economic downturn has not had an impact on attendance for the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show. It’s estimated that more than 130,000 people are expected to travel to Las Vegas for the show.

The show is the highlight of the hi-tech calendar and is a showcase for top gadgets of 2009.

“It will be a bright spot compared to the uncertainty in the rest of the economy,” said Gary Shapiro, head of the Consumer Electronics Association that stages CES.

Mr. Shapiro said he expected the 2009 show to be among the top two or three in terms of attendees and exhibitors.

In 2008 attendance was slightly higher at 140,000 but, said Mr. Shapiro, the number of exhibitors at CES had held steady despite the wider economic woe.

“I think we will see positive feelings there,” he said.

The 2009 show will see more than 2,700 companies showing off their wares across more than 1.7m square feet of exhibition space.

It is not clear how positive these statistics are because most firms paid well in advance for their stand space - most long before the global economic slowdown made itself felt.

CES is well known as a showcase for new display technologies and the 2009 show is expected to see the appearance of many more Organic LED screens as well as many 3D TV and film technologies.

Are you attending this years CES?

The popular site Twitter has been experiencing a tremendous amount of phishing attacks that stole the usernames and passwords of site users. Many of these accounts were prominent Twitter accounts. Fox News’ account declared for about an hour that “Bill O’Reilly is gay” while Barack Obama’s account, which was last used in November on election day, posted a long link to a third-party survey with the lure of a gas card prize.

Rick Sanchez, a CNN anchor and frequent Twitterer, was declaring earlier he was “high on crack and might not be coming into work today.” Britney Spears account, started in October to promote her new single and upcoming tour, took a sharp turn from cheerful updates about eating Pinkberry frozen yogurt and relaxing with family to a poorly-punctuated attack on her nether region. Aw, hackers, just leave Britney alone!

Facebook’s Twitter account is also among the hacked, with a link to porn at “http://yougetlaid.info” that was just removed.

It doesn’t appear these hacked accounts are related to the phishing scam of the weekend, as ReadWriteWeb points out, since the phishing works through direct messages that send e-mail notifications to the user that run along the lines of “check out this funny blog about you!” The message includes a link to a site that looks exactly like the Twitter homepage. Once the unassuming user clicks on the link and logs in to the masquerading page, the hackers obtain the user’s log-in information and can take over an account.

According to Twitter many of the offending messages that are known as tweets have been removed.

Twitter also suffered a second large-scale scam yesterday when users began receiving direct messages telling them how to win a free iPhone — by signing up for a $5-a-month text messaging service.

Apple has admitted that CEO Steve Jobs is skipping Tuesday’s Macworld keynote for health-related reasons, after initially pointing to other reasons for his absence. (Credit: James Martin/CNET).

Throughout 2008 Apple was plagued with rumors about Jobs’ health, but steadfastly refused to acknowledge that anything was behind concerns over what many believed was substantial weight loss suffered by the iconic Apple founder. Apple stunned onlookers in December with the news that Jobs would be skipping his much-anticipated Macworld keynote, but said the reason was that Apple had decided not to invest in a Macworld keynote because it would be the company’s last year at the show.

Apple’s board of directors put out a statement Monday acknowledging that Jobs would need some time to recuperate from what he called a “hormonal imbalance” in a letter to employees Monday. Jobs said he decided a few weeks ago that getting to the bottom of his mysterious weight loss was his biggest priority, and doctors had determined that the imbalance was “robbing” the ability of his body to be healthy.

You can read the letter here http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/05sjletter.html

Jobs will continue as CEO while he is regaining weight in what he called a “simple and straightforward” remedy, which is expected to last until late spring, he said in the letter. “I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years now. I will be the first one to step up and tell our Board of Directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties as Apple’s CEO.”

We hope that Steve has a speedy recovery!