What I’m Reading
Shareworthy articles and content syndicated from other sites. These aren’t things I’ve written or necessarily endorse, for the record.
Facebook translates privacy policy for non-legal experts
Facebook has cut down on its privacy policy’s lawyer-speak in an attempt to accurately explain its guidelines to its users.
Kidlandia Raises $2.5 Million To Create Personalized Fantasy Maps For Kids
Kidlandia, the awesome site that lets you create your own personalized fantasy maps for your kids, has raised $2.5 million led by Alsop Louie Partners with GRP, Net Discovery, Ivan Sutherland and Jim Sandler participating. This brings the startup’s total funding to $3.5 million.
As we’ve reported in the past, Kidlandia lets parents and kids create maps of a fantasy land, where the child is King or Queen of their own eponymous fantasy kingdom. You can insert family members or friends names into the map, so other areas of the land incorporate family members’ names. The map also features whimsical characters from Kidlandia’s brand Kreechurs.
Shortly after launching in 2009, Kidlandia signed a deal with Pottery Barn to feature the maps in its catalog, its website, and its retail stores. Since that time, Kidlandia’s reach has grown to a number of other well-known retailers including Snapfish, FAO.com, DisneyStore.com, and NickShop. The startup will actually launch a mini-store at FAO Schwarz’s flagship store in New York City in the next few weeks.
And, Kidlandia has also started to create branded maps for kids toy and entertainment companies, and are currently producing products for Disney, Nickelodeon, Lego, and Marvel.
2010 In Movies, As Seen On Foursquare [Graphic]
It’s Oscar weekend so of course every social media service, smart phone app and “tech” blog is going to find some movie angle to remind you that they exist. And because I tend to write the more fluffy cultural pieces, I will be stuck writing about them, even though I hate Hollywood and celebrities of the non-YouTube or TopCoder variety.
But Foursquare’s map of 2010 movie checkin frequency (above) is an exception to the “blatant attempt to glom publicity off of an ‘important’ event rule,” and deserves reposting. And yes, the mention of Sex In the City 2 on the pink side of the Venn Diagram here makes me ashamed for my gender. Very ashamed.
First Ever HIPAA Fine Is $4.3M
Trailrunner7 writes “The health care industry’s toothless tiger finally bared its teeth, as the US Department of Health and Human Services issued a $4.3M fine to a Maryland health care provider for violations of the HIPAA Privacy Rule. The action is the first monetary fine issued since the Act was passed in 1996. The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a Notice of Final Determination to Cignet Health care of Temple Hills, Maryland on February 4. The notice followed a finding by HHS’s Office of Civil Rights that Cignet failed to provide 41 patients with copies of their medical records and for failing to respond to requests from HHS’s Office of Civil Rights for information related to the complaints.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.