In response to an epidemic of cyber-bullying - abusive and aggressive online behavior - the Kamaron Institute has created a cyber-bullying resource site that provides information and tools for anyone trying to combat this plague. According to the Institute, cyberbullying is the use of e-mail, instant messages, chat rooms, pagers, cellphones, or other forms of information technology to deliberately and repeatedly hurt, taunt, ridicule, threaten, or intimidate someone.  In the blogosphere, there have been a number of ugly incidents with threats against bloggers, on all parts of the political spectrum.

The Kamaron Institute provides a fairly wide range of resources and data. There are links (currently nonfunctional) to send kind messages, tools aimed at schools and libraries, lesson plans on bullying for kids in K-12, online safety tips, and an overview of some available software that can serve as a line of defense against Internet harassment. There are Internet tools like a tracer that will allow the recipient of a message to garner some information about its sender. There are also many, many links to other sites and services, book reviews, news feeds about cyberbullying, etc.
Overall the site is fairly useful. However, there are some problems, mainly cosmetic ones. The site has a copyright date of 2004-2007, indicating that it has been in development for at least a few years. With that in mind, it really should be a much more graphically attractive site. The use of fonts and colors is inconsistent and hard on the eyes, and the page is singularly unattractive and amateurish in appearance. Menu bars are stacked next to plain text which is stacked next to glossy image buttons which are interspersed with text links - it’s an aesthetic mishmash, and it’s hard to see what on the page is important and what is just filler.

However, those concerns are relatively minor. The issue this site deals with is important and I can overlook a bad presentation for a good message. If you are concerned about cyberbullying, want to learn more about this problem, or are being harassed or stalked online, I recommend the Kamaron Institute site to you.

[This is a sponsored review, meaning that BNN was commissioned and paid to review the site. Our review is an honest and accurate description of the reviewer’s opinion of the site, good and bad.]