Online video just gets bigger and bigger with new sites offering new ways to watch movies coming online almost weekly. But how do you make sure what you watch is appropriate for kids? How about a movie site that specializes in providing family friendly films?

Axiom.tv wants to be the Google of movie download sites. And it’s off to a good start, claiming to have the largest database of family friendly movies anywhere, movies you can watch online or order on DVD. The films and various TV shows are all reviewed and screened for sex and violence so that if Axiom offers it, it is suitable for the whole family. Axiom claims nothing on the site will make you cringe or cover your eyes or ears and that parents can feel comfortable watching the movies on Axiom with their kids.

What kind of movies? Family friendly doesn’t just mean cartoons and children’s shows. While some of the movies may challenge you, and some may not be suitable for small children, all are deemed to deliver a good message or clean entertainment.

You can set parental controls to fine tune exactly what you want to filter out. Prices start at $2.99 for online rental.

Something else: You can even setup custom logins for your kids that will let them only watch the kind of movies you determine. It’s a pretty cool site.

I put my old iPhone 3G up for sale last night. I did a quick survey and it looked to me the going price was $150-$200 for a 16GB black model. So I listed mine at $150.

Within 10 minutes I had 17 offers, including one for someone who would pay me $175. Another guy, who lives near my suburban Detroit home, offered to drive over right then (after 10PM) and pick it up.

I think I offered it at too low a price. I figured since new 3GS iPhones were selling at 32GB, a 3G with 16GB would be worth half that.

I plugged it in and did the reset to erase all data and content to return it to factory specs. That took about two hours. I agreed to sell it to the guy who offered $175/ We’ll  meet in a restaurant parking lot this afternoon. Feel like a drug dealer.

This morning, there were 23 more offers from would-be waiting for me.

But I forgot how incredibly effective Craigslist is. Last year, I sold a couple of bicycles and a computer and remember being impressed. But this kind of instant result is astounding.

You too? Share your experiences under comments.

The issue of Citizen Journalism, though, is quality. How can Citizen Journalism become, well, less irresponsible and more professional, even though those doing it are, indeed, amateurs?

To help, YouTune has just launched a pretty impressive new channel called the Reporter’s Center for Citizen Journalism that teaches how to report the news. It features some of the nation’s top journalists and news organizations sharing instructional videos with tips and advice for better reporting.

The training is spot on. From Katie Couric to Bob Woodward to the Associated Press and even the Pulitzer Center, there are tips on how to shoot and compose video, what elements to include in your “story,” and how to distribute and publicize it as you build your own channel, or advocate your cause.

I’m almost weekly amazed at some of the great material I find on YouTube. I can’t tell you when is the last time I’ve sat down to watch a local TV newscast. Same with the nightly network broadcasts. I do, though, start my day, and visit several times, the YouTube video news channel, that features some of the best news videos from all sources, national, international and local. See for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/news. It’s all pretty much there, isn’t it?

Citizen Journalism, first on blogs and increasingly on video, has become a significant supplement to the news I’ve been consuming lately.

Most of my media professional pals cringe at the Citizen Journalist term. They equate it with bias, sloppiness, advocacy and unreliable hearsay. Doctors call those who practice medicine with no professional training quacks. Many reporters who earn their living as journalists look on Citizen Journalists the same way. Bottom line, though, is that like it or not, as newspapers collapse and TV audiences fragment and dwindle, Citizen Journalism is here to stay. That’s why YouTube’s Citizen Journal Training Center is something to be applauded.

But the move towards helping develp quality Citizen Hournalism isnt restricted to YouTube.

I’m a board member of an outfit known as CMNtv, or the Community Media Network, a cable access group that serves 11 communities in Southeastern Michigan. We’ve just partnerned with The Oakland Press newspaper to hold a series of Citizen Journalism news gathering seminars for Citizen Journalists who will “cover” local high school sports events, community activities and the like. Topics covered will include basic journalism, news writing and media law, as well as technical skills related to videography.

Those finished stories will then be shown on the Oakland Press and CMNtv websites.

Here’s a newspaper that “gets it.” They help train citizen reporters on how to make good TV-style reports, they get the content to share with their own readers and our communities have more local news being reported.

CMNtv also provides extensive multi-week training sessions to anyone who want it on how to shoot and edit video, do multi-camera switching, produce, write and develop programing.

Call it DIY news. But it’s born out of necessity. As traditional media keeps laying off staff, cutting local coverage and all but abandoning home newspaper delivery, there isn’t much of an alternative.

Citizen Journalism is a good thing that’s only going to get better.

That desire has been stoked in recent days by lots of rumors that when the exclusive deal expires in the summer of 2010, Apple may open it up to other carriers.

Financially, of course, it makes sense and has lots of Apple appeal. Verizon has around 90 million U.S. subscribers. I don’t know how many would opt for the iPhone but I’m betting at least as many who now have an iPhone on AT&T (which has about 80 million subscribers).

But technically, it’s another matter. And that’s where the sticking point is.

Verizon’s current network is incompatible with the iPhone. The chip maker Apple uses does not make chips that work on the Verizon network. Apple could, of course, switch or add another chip maker. That’s the hope. But as Glenn Fleishman points out in this terrific background piece for Tidbits, there are compelling reasons why that may not happen.

It’s all rather complicated but, essentially, it boils down to the changing technology and formats that are involved in the worldwide wireless industry and the fact that Verizon’s format would require a US-centric version of the iPhone, while the rest of the world would work with other formats.

In other words, the landscape is changing. And Apple, I’M thinkin, just isn’t ready right now to bring on a new chip maker until it sees where the techno-dust settles in wireless.

Those Verizon users waiting for an iPhone may have a very long wait on their hands.

The service rolled out Monday in Portland, with plans to bring the service to Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia by the end of 2009 and in 80 U.S. markets by the end of next year.

“With Comcast’s wideband Internet, we already offer one of the fastest wired connections available today. Now with the launch of High-Speed 2go, we also deliver the nation’s fastest wireless Internet,” said Cathy Avgiris, senior vice president and general manager for wireless and voice services at Comcast. “Innovation through mobility is one of many advances Comcast is providing consumers in the area of entertainment, information and communications. Comcast High-Speed 2go now gives consumers the best of both worlds, the fastest fast at home and on the go. In today’s world, consumers don’t want to be disconnected for even a minute and now Comcast provides wired and wireless access – a combination consumers won’t want to live without.”

Comcast is selling two different data cards and service plans:

* Comcast High-Speed 2go Metro service uses a 4G-only data card giving customers the fastest wireless service within the 4G metro coverage area. The Metro device operates only in a 4G service footprint.

* Comcast High-Speed 2go Nationwide service delivers the fastest metro 4G service plus coast-to-coast access on Sprint’s national 3G network. The Nationwide device automatically switches between available 4G and 3G networks.

For the first time, consumers will have bundled access to both the fastest wired and wireless internet in the nation – sold together at launch as a “Fast Pack” for as low as $49.99 per month for one year.

Both new and existing Comcast customers will be eligible for special bundled pricing, with Triple Play customers receiving 4G wireless as an add-on for as low as $30 per month. Visit www.comcast.com/highspeed2go for additional pricing plans and service packages.

The $49.99 Fast Pack Metro service includes Comcast’s 12 Mbps home Internet service, a free WiFi router for mobility and extended coverage in the home, and 4G service that will provide up to 4 Mbps download speed when customers are on the go.

For an additional $20 per month, consumers can upgrade to the Fast Pack Nationwide service that includes the same services plus nationwide 3G mobile network access.

Comcast also will be selling High-Speed 2go to small-to-mid-sized businesses through Comcast Business Services sales teams. As the nation’s largest video provider, largest residential ISP and the third-largest residential phone provider, Comcast now has the ability to provide wireless mobility to consumers in a combination that is both competitive and differentiated from any bundled services on the market today.

Comcast is selling wireless data services following its investment in Clearwire in November 2008. Comcast’s 4G service will be provided via the Clearwire network, and its 3G service will be provided by Sprint’s nationwide 3G network. Comcast is one of the first investors in Clearwire to bring a service to market and expects that it will continue to add value to existing bundled products.

Some are from hackers. Others organized criminal gangs. Others are secretly financed by espionage agencies from forign nations.

Think, for example, just what would happen if the Net was totally inaccessible tomorrow. All day.And the next day, too.  Forget your Facebok fix. We’re talking an complete halt to online business. Communications, media, medical, insurance and banking centers would be severely disrupted.

I don’t think the average person has a clue as to how serious Net security really is. We’re so dependent on the Internet that a real meltdown would be devastating in ways we can scare imagine.

The New York Times had a piece over the weekend that noted how many countries, including the United States, are developing weapons like “logic bombs” that can be hidden in computers to halt them at crucial times or damage circuitry; “botnets” that can disable or spy on Web sites and networks; or microwave radiation devices that can burn out computer circuits miles away.

It’s an online arms race and Russia and the U.S. are divided about how to deal with the threat of cyberwar. Any agreement on cyberspace presents special difficulties because the matter touches on issues like censorship of the Internet, sovereignty and rogue actors who might not be subject to a treaty.

Want a good backgrounder on this? Read  U.S. and Russia Differ on a Treaty for Cyberspace – Series – NYTimes.com.

So demand is obviously there for the $489 wireless e-book reader that features a 9.7 inch screen, compared to the 6-inch screen of the $359 standard model.

I have the first model, with a six inch screen and have balked at upgrading.

Why? Four reasons:

First the text, while crisp and without flickers, is still not bright enough for me. There’s not enough contrast, either.

Second, there’s also a lag time of a millisecond or two when you push the button to turn the page. You get used to it eventually, but I find it irritating.

Third, the cost of newspaper subscriptions is way too much. The New York Times is $14 a month. The Detroit Free Press is $7 a month. Besides, the way they appear on the Kindle screen is not like they appear in the dead tree edition. Finding and reading stories is awkward. Newspapers are hard to navigate. That’s the only reason I’d get the DX, to get newspapers. But not they way they’re displayed and not at such high subscription rates.

Fourth, the small unit I have has room for over 1,000 books. I don’t need to carry around 3,500, which is how many the DX can hold.

That said, I’d still delighted with my first generation Kindle. The battery, even with wireless turned on, lasts forever. It’s addictively easy to download new books. Amazon has more than 300,000 now available for the Kindle. And my Kindle library can be read, and synced, to my iPhone.

I think the Kindle will eventually have a better screen, maybe even color. I think newspaper subscriptions will drop and a better way of displaying them will be designed. When that happens, I may upgrade.

But for me, the old works just fine.

If I was buying for the first time… yeah, I guess I’d go with the DX. And I suppose that’s where most of the buyers who have sold out the DX are coming from.

But this is one upgrade I’m not doing, Not yet.

And it happens all the time. Vlingo, a voice recognition app for mobile phones, did an official survey tht found 26 percent of mobile phone users questioned admit to DWT,

And CNET just put some people behind the wheel of a driving simulator and had them read and compose texts while driving. Check the link below.

Road test shows texting slows reaction time | Wireless – CNET News.