Comnews Webwatch - Directory

Communications News, March, 1999

INTERNET Neighborhood Watch

The Neighborhood Watch Web site at www.bellsouth.com/ neighborhood watch is an easy-to-use source consumers can use for information on telephone fraud, how to combat it, and what steps to take if they are victimized. With increasing competition in the telecommunications marketplace, "cramming" (billing for telephone services never ordered) and "slamming" (unauthorized change in telephone service), following phony prize scams, rank at the top of the list of unscrupulous practices. Consumers paid more than $40 billion in 1998 because of fraudulent telemarketing operations--some 14,000 are at work yearly in the United States.

KIDZ INTRANET

www.kidzonline.org, a free, closely monitored electronic playground launched in 1994 by Sharon and Phil Cruver, has online chat rooms, e-mail, columns, poems, art by kids, math and science facts, and games, as well as its own monthly stock analysis, weekly sports wrapups, and movie reviews, all written by local teens. There's a digital library, online dictionaries and databases, and kids' pages. As a closed network with no Internet access, the playground spares children from unsavory sites. Late in 1998 Kidz Online received InfoWorld magazine's Information Technology Innovator prize for its campaign to bring together inner-city schoolchildren with their high-tech suburban counterparts to share computer skills.

CALL CENTERS

Admirers of Pope John Paul II crowded Saint Louis, Mo. streets as he made his historic visit to the U.S. in late January. The event could have been a logistical catastrophe: over 100,000 jammed the Trans World Dome, more than 2,000 media representatives covered the event, and an extra 700 police and dignitaries arrived in the city. However, the Archdiocese of Saint Louis engaged Convergys to support the occasion with call centers that provided information about the Pope's visit to thousands of inquirers. Dave Dougherty, president of the company's customer management group, says, "This project has a very special and unique aspect to it. It's not very often that we get to be a part of history in the making, but this is truly such an event." www.convergys.com