Lindsay Lohan to serve 1 day in jail in plea bargain

BEVERLY HILLS, California (AP) -- Lindsay Lohan reached a plea deal Thursday on misdemeanor drunken driving and cocaine charges that calls for her to spend one day in jail, serve 10 days of community service and complete a drug treatment program.

"I broke the law and today I took responsibility by pleading guilty," Lindsay Lohan said Thursday.

She was also placed on 36 months probation, is required to complete an 18-month alcohol education program, pay hundreds of dollars in fines and must complete a three-day county coroner program in which she'll visit a morgue and talk to victims of drunken drivers.
"It is clear to me that my life has become completely unmanageable because I am addicted to alcohol and drugs," Lohan said in a statement released by publicist Leslie Sloane Zelnik.
She said she did things she was ashamed of. "I broke the law and today I took responsibility by pleading guilty to the charges in my case."
"She's getting what everyone else would get," Deputy District Attorney Danette Meyers said after an hourlong hearing in Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge H. Chester Horn Jr.'s courtroom. Terms of the plea bargain were worked out in chambers.
If Lohan were to be convicted of another DUI, she would receive a mandatory 120-day jail sentence, Meyers said.
"No matter what I said when I was under the influence on the day I was arrested, I am not blaming anyone else for my conduct other than myself. I thank God I did not injure others. I easily could have," Lohan's statement went on.
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Lohan was charged earlier in the day with seven misdemeanors stemming from two drunken-driving arrests in the last four months. More serious felony drug charges were not filed, prosecutors said, because tests showed there wasn't enough cocaine on her to warrant them.
Attorney Blair Berk entered pleas on Lohan's behalf: she pleaded guilty to two counts of being under the influence of cocaine; no contest to two counts of driving with a blood-alcohol level above .08 percent and one count of reckless driving. Two counts of driving under the influence were dropped.
Lohan was arrested on May 26 in Beverly Hills, California, and on July 24 in Santa Monica, California. In each incident, the amount of cocaine tested was below the .05 grams required for felony charges, according to the district attorney's office.
Each of Lohan's arrests were followed by trips to rehab.
Lohan's legal problems come on the heels of two other high-profile celebrity DUI cases that resulted in jail time. Paris Hilton served 23 days behind bars after she was found guilty of driving on a suspended license while on probation for an alcohol-related reckless-driving case. Nicole Richie served 82 minutes in jail on charges stemming from a December DUI arrest.
Lohan crashed her Mercedes-Benz into a tree on Sunset Boulevard in May and fled the scene to seek medical treatment. Police tests revealed that a white powder found in Lohan's purse was .04 grams of cocaine.
Lohan checked into the posh Promises rehabilitation facility in Malibu, California, after the incident. She left the facility July 13 after six weeks of treatment. She was photographed wearing an alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet after her release.
Lohan was arrested again on July 24 following a 911 call by Michelle Peck, the mother of Lohan's former personal assistant. Peck told police she was being chased by an SUV. Police later said Lohan was the driver.
Lohan's blood-alcohol level was between 0.12 and 0.13 percent when police found her, officials said. Police also found a white powder in her pocket that was determined to be .02 grams of cocaine.
She was enrolled in a drug rehab center in Sundance, Utah, attorneys confirmed in court Thursday.
Lohan started 2007 in rehab at the Wonderland Center in Los Angeles, California.
Lohan's latest film, "I Know Who Killed Me," opened in July to lackluster response.
"I very much want to be healthy and gain control of my life and career and have asked for medical help in doing so. I am taking these steps to improve my life," Lohan said in her statement. "Luckily, I am not alone in my daily struggle and I know that people like me have succeeded. Maybe with time it will become easier. I hope so." E-mail to a friend

Mom reunites through Facebook with son she gave up for adoption

TORONTO, Canada (AP) -- When Lori Haas joined Facebook, she didn't know much about the popular social networking site except that most of her friends were on it. Little did she know how life-changing the online tool would be.

After spending a year searching for the son she gave up for adoption 20 years ago in phone books, adoption registries and on the Internet to no avail, a friend suggested searching for him on Facebook.

Lori Hass said she recognized the son she gave up for adoption on a Facebook profile photograph.

"When my friend told me about the search tool and I typed in my son's name, Travis Sheppard, I couldn't believe it when I saw a photo of him," she said.

The photo was a thumbnail shot of Sheppard wearing a hat and sunglasses and he was with a friend. Haas felt sure he was her son, but since it was difficult to clearly make out the picture, she was hesitant to send him a message. Then a week later, Sheppard changed his profile photo to a lone shot of himself.

"He was still wearing a hat, but I knew, I just knew that was him. My heart was racing when I saw the photo," said the 37-year-old nurse from Vancouver. "We have the same long face and nose! And it was listed that he was in Vancouver. I couldn't believe it. I thought, 'Oh my god, he's been living here too?!"'

The 20-year-old Sheppard had moved to Vancouver only four months earlier in the hopes of locating his birth mother. He knew she had given him up for adoption in the suburb of Richmond when she was 17.

Haas worried about contacting Sheppard through Facebook since she didn't know if he knew he was adopted. She finally sent him a message saying she was looking for a relative and provided a birth date and name. He confirmed the details were his and sent her a message saying he thought she was his birth mother. The two decided to meet the following day.

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"It was exciting and scary all at the same time," said Sheppard. "I'd heard so many horror stories about adopted kids meeting their birth parents, so I went into our meeting expecting nothing, so I wouldn't get too hurt since I wanted to know for so long about my mother. But as soon as we hugged, I knew everything was OK."

The connection between the two was instantaneous and they discovered they share similar characteristics and likes and dislikes.

"It was amazing how familiar it was meeting him and the feeling of being complete," said Haas. "I carried around the pain and anxiety of giving him up for adoption at such a young age, but when I heard him say that he didn't hate me for doing that, a chapter of my life ended and a new one is beginning."

Since that meeting two weeks ago, the two have spent almost every day together touring Vancouver's landmarks, as well as meeting Sheppard's birth father, his family and Haas' extended family.

"Everything's fallen into place so perfectly and, well, so easily because of Facebook," said Haas. "This weekend Travis and his birth father and I were all together. It's been one of the happiest moments of my life."

The reunited mother and son now have a profile photo showing them together on their Facebook pages. They plan to continue getting to know each other and to become a significant part of each other's life.

"I was about to delete my Facebook profile just a few days before I got the message from Lori," said Sheppard. "I can't even imagine if I had done that. I'd still be looking for my birth mom, I wouldn't have decided to stay in Vancouver and I'd still be wondering about my roots." E-mail to a friend

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Investors, big businesses see green in being green

LONDON, England (AP) -- Big business fears that the fight against climate change will cost billions are now giving way to a different view: green can be the color of money.

More companies are involved in the creation of alternative sources of energy like electricity from wind farms.

The United States, Europe and Japan are locked in a frantic race to cash in on the exploding business of saving the planet. London has become the center for the multibillion dollar market in carbon emissions, attracting investors who trade CO2 allowances.

Silicon Valley is leading the way in attracting venture capital for green technologies that shows signs of mirroring the dot-com boom -- and critics say eventual bust -- of the 1990s. And Japan's Toyota has sold more than a million Prius hybrid models, its cutting-edge eco-friendly car.

Like all markets, the clean energy industry faces risks.

A sustained fall in the world's steep oil prices could make investment in alternatives to fossil fuels seem less attractive.

More important, to sustain business' new attraction to clean energy, governments must maintain, or even step up, efforts to cut carbon emissions. Toward that end, a major U.N. meeting will be held in Bali, Indonesia, in December aimed at reaching a new global climate pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

But for now, the battle against global warming continues to offer investors an unusual chance to be idealistic and greedy at the same time.

"Everybody is jumping on the bandwagon," said Milo Sjardin, a senior associate at New Energy Finance, a research house in London on the world's clean energy and carbon markets.

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The City of London financial district has taken the lead in making billions from the management of CO2 emissions, one of the fastest-growing segments in financial services.

The carbon market was created after Europe signed the 1997 Kyoto agreement on curbing green house gases. In 2005, European governments started capping the amounts of carbon dioxide that industries could emit, while letting them buy and sell CO2 emission allowances.

The cap-and-trade system encourages factories and industries to cut emissions by giving them "pollution permits." If they produce less greenhouse gases than the total of their permits, they can sell the surplus certificates -- also known as credits -- to companies that find them cheaper than cutting their own emissions.

That created the fast-growing carbon markets, where certificates are bought and sold like a commodity. It also includes investments in projects that help to generate additional credits.

About $30.4 billion of allowances were traded last year, representing 1.6 billion tons of CO2, double the volume of 2005, said Point Carbon, a company of market analysts based in Norway.

New Energy Finance estimates that $33.8 billion carbon credits will be needed to meet targets under the Kyoto Accord and the European Emissions-Trading Scheme by 2012.

Britain has emerged as the clear leader in carbon fund management, with 72 percent of private carbon funds and 50 percent of all carbon funds being managed out of London, New Energy Finance said.

The United States, which rejected the Kyoto agreement, has never adopted a federal system of controls for carbon-dioxide emissions, although California has binding targets to cut CO2 emissions and other states are expected to follow.

The United States, however, has emerged as the world leader in developing clean energy technologies.

It involves a wide range of sectors, including wind, solar, biofuels, biomass (organic material to produce power and heat), energy efficiency technology, hydrogen and fuel cells, and tidal power.

"General Electric has been a leader in the campaign to develop new clean technologies that allows one to save energy and make money at the same time," said Dr. Andrew Dlugolecki, head of Andlug Consulting, a strategic consultancy on climate change and the financial sector based in Perth, Scotland.

He said oil companies, carmakers and power generators are increasing their investments in renewables and biofuels.

Silicon Valley venture capitalists also are rushing into the business, hoping to design revolutionary technologies, drive down prices and defeat energy business giants, said Dlugolecki.

Some entrepreneurs are seeking technological and scientific innovations to produce alternatives to oil and coal, while others hope to find ways of using those fuels in cleaner and more efficient ways.

Other investors are pouring money into wind, solar, geothermal and hydropower as countries such as China and more than 20 U.S. states require a certain portion of energy sold to come from renewable sources.

Study: Martian soil may contain life

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- The soil on Mars may contain microbial life, according to a new interpretation of data first collected more than 30 years ago.

Scientists want to know whether or not Mars ever supported life.

The search for life on Mars appeared to hit a dead end in 1976 when Viking landers touched down on the red planet and failed to detect biological activity.

But Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen, Germany, said on Friday the spacecraft may in fact have found signs of a weird life form based on hydrogen peroxide on the subfreezing, arid Martian surface.

His analysis of one of the experiments carried out by the Viking spacecraft suggests that 0.1 percent of the Martian soil could be of biological origin.

That is roughly comparable to biomass levels found in some Antarctic permafrost, home to a range of hardy bacteria and lichen.

"It is interesting because one part per thousand is not a small amount," Houtkooper said in a telephone interview.

"We will have to find confirmatory evidence and see what kind of microbes these are and whether they are related to terrestrial microbes. It is a possibility that life has been transported from Earth to Mars or vice versa a long time ago."

Speculation about such interplanetary seeding was fueled a decade ago when researchers said an ancient meteorite found in Antarctica contained evidence of fossil life on Mars. Doubt has since been cast on that finding.

Houtkooper is presenting his research to the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, Germany.

While most scientists think our next-door neighbor in the solar system is lifeless, the discovery of microbes on Earth that can exist in environments previously thought too hostile has fueled debate over extraterrestrial life.

Houtkooper believes Mars could be home to just such "extremophiles" -- in this case, microbes whose cells are filled with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and water, providing them with natural anti-freeze.

They would be quite capable of surviving a harsh Martian climate where temperatures rarely rise above freezing and can fall to minus 150 degrees Celsius.

Houtkooper believes their presence would account for unexplained rises in oxygen and carbon dioxide when NASA's Viking landers incubated Martian soil. He bases his calculation of the biomass of Martian soil on the assumption that these gases were produced during the breakdown of organic material.

Scientists hope to gather further evidence on whether or not Mars ever supported life when NASA's next-generation robotic spacecraft, the Phoenix Mars Lander, reaches the planet in May 2008 and probes the soil near its northern pole. E-mail to a friend

Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

All About Mars Exploration

Cafferty: Seniors heading South?

What does it say about the U.S. that seniors are going to Mexico for affordable nursing home care?
Jack, It says that people need to wake up and realize that a capitalist medical system is NOT the way to take care of people. I don't care if you raise my taxes 20 percent up from what it normally is to fund a socialized medical program, we need to stop caring about profits and put the well-being of people first. It's immoral, even by religious standards, to make people suffer because they can't pay medical bills. -Clayton, Gresham, Oregon

I have seen floods of U.S. citizens crossing into Mexico to purchase cheaper drugs.You can see people on oxygen, in wheelchairs, on crutches, etc. Now theyare fleeing to nursing homes in Mexico. Our leaders need to stand on the borderto see what we are reduced to doing. I don't think they have the guts! -C., Surprise, Arizona

Most cultures revere senior citizens, Jack. Just not us. -Patricia, Palmdale, Calif.

What should be done to reverse the Army's highest suicide rate in 26 years?
Hey Jack, Maybe if we didn't send troops into a no-win situation over and over again without relief, they wouldn't feel the need to off themselves. Heat, stress, low pay, and several tours in a war zone might be enough to make break the strongest man down. Talk about a quagmire.
-Kaz, Atlanta, Georgia

Simple. End the war in Iraq. Let the oil companies fight their own wars; after all, they plan to keep all the profits, so they should pay the cost, both in terms of dollars and lives. -Steve, Reno, Nevada

Jack, The solution is twofold. First, bring the troops home, and then properly fund the VA to deal with the level of PTSD in returning soldiers. -Ralph

How do we decrease the military's suicide rate? Easy. Remove the cause of increased suicides. How? Get the hell out of Iraq. It's just that simple. -Mike, Richmond, Virginia

A Dutch Catholic bishop says people of all faiths should call God "Allah" to ease tensions with Muslims. How much sense does that make?

I'm guessing the Dutchman has been inhaling too much incense and sipping too much communal wine. Perhaps with a little more thought, he could have come up with the idea that Muslims use the term "God" to ease tensions. What will ease tensions is when Muslims really follow the Koran and love their fellow men and women and sit down and negotiate with one another and other nations in the name of peace. Amen! -Anne, Seattle, Washington

As a Jew, I could call God "Allah" till I'm blue in the face and I don't think that will change radical Islam's view that all Jews and Christians are pigs. -Robin

Jack, it makes sense. If it would ease tensions, what do we have to lose? The end of all of us. It is only a word. There are many words that mean God. Everyone needs to shift their perceptions and figure out their priorities for themselves and the children that will come into the world. If some people don't like it, that is OK. If some are willing to give it a try, I say wonderful. Words are powerful. They can wound or heal and can always make a difference. -Debbie, Anaheim, California

Sure, Jack, and while we’re playing the appeasement game, how about all Western women don burkas, all Western nations roll back civil and women’s rights several hundred years, and we forbid the education of girls? Jeesh! No wonder the Catholic Church has declining membership!
-Carla, Canada

Hi Jack. I was born in Holland, now living in Canada and loving it. They are nuts! -Marian, Burlington, Ontario

Posted By Jack Cafferty, CNN Commentator

Review: Apple iPhone leaves users wanting more

(CNET.com) -- From the moment Apple announced its iPhone at Macworld 2007, the tech world hasn't stopped asking questions. Because Apple has kept many iPhone details under wraps until very recently, we've been forced to speculate. Until now. Is the iPhone pretty? Absolutely. Is it easy to use? Certainly. Does it live up to the stratospheric hype? Not so much.

Don't get us wrong, the iPhone is a lovely device with a sleek interface, top-notch music and video features, and innovative design touches. The touch screen is easier to use than we expected, and the multimedia performs well. But a host of missing features, a dependency on a sluggish EDGE network, and variable call quality -- it is a phone after all -- left us wanting more.

For those reasons, the iPhone is noteworthy not for what it does, but how it does it. If you want an iPhone badly, you probably already have one. But because you'll have to sign an iPhone-specific two-year contract with AT&T to get an iPhone and shell out $499 (4GB) or $599 (8GB), we suggest you wait until the phone comes down in price and the network improves. Hopefully, both will happen soon.

On with the review: the iPhone boasts a brilliant display, trim profile, and clean lines (no external antenna of course), and its lack of buttons puts it in a design class that even the LG Prada and the HTC Touch can't match. You'll win envious looks on the street toting the iPhone, and we're sure that would be true even if the phone hadn't received as much media attention as it has.

We knew that it measures 4.5 inches tall by 2.4 inches wide by 0.46 inch deep, but it still felt smaller than we expected when we finally held it. In comparison, it's about as tall and as wide as a Palm Treo 755p, but it manages to be thinner than even the trend-setting Motorola Razr. It fits comfortably in the hand and when held to the ear, and its 4.8 ounces give it a solid, if perhaps weighty, feel. We also like that the display is glass rather than plastic.

The iPhone's display is the handset's design showpiece and is noteworthy for not only what it shows, but also how you use it. We'll start off with its design. At a generous 3.5 inches, the display takes full advantage of the phone's size, while its 480x320 pixel resolution (160 dots per inch) translates into brilliant colors, sharp graphics, and fluid movements.

In true Apple style, the iPhone's menu interface is attractive, intuitive, and easy to use. In the main menu, a series of colored icons call out the main functions. Icons for the phone menu, the mail folder, the Safari Web browser, and the iPod player sit at the bottom of the screen, while other features such as the camera, the calendar, and the settings are displayed above.

It's easy to find all features, and we like that essential features aren't buried under random menus. Fluid animation takes you between different functions, and you can zip around rather quickly.

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Much has been made of the iPhone's touch screen, and rightfully so. Though the Apple handset is not the first cell phone to rely solely on a touch screen, it is the first phone to get so much attention and come with so many expectations. Depending on what you're doing, the touch screen serves as your dialpad, your keyboard, your Safari browser, and your music and video player. Like many others, we were skeptical of how effectively the touch screen would handle all those functions.

Fortunately, we can report that on the whole, the touch screen and software interface are easier to use than expected. What's more, we didn't miss a stylus in the least. Despite a lack of tactile feedback on the keypad, we had no trouble tapping our fingers to activate functions and interact with the main menu.

As with any touch screen, the display attracts its share of smudges, but they never distracted us from what we were viewing. The onscreen dialpad took little acclimation, and even the onscreen keyboard fared rather well. Tapping out messages was relatively quick, and we could tap the correct letter, even with big fingers. The integrated correction software helped minimize errors by suggesting words ahead of time. It was accurate for the most part.

Still, the interface and keyboard have a long way to go to achieve greatness. For starters, when typing an e-mail or text message the keyboard is displayed only when you hold the iPhone vertically. As a result, we could only type comfortably with one finger, which cut down on our typing speed. Using two hands is possible, but we found it pretty crowded to type with both thumbs while holding the iPhone at the same time. What's more, basic punctuation such as periods or commas lives in a secondary keyboard -- annoying. If you're a frequent texter or an e-mail maven, we suggest a test-drive first.

We also found it somewhat tedious to scroll through long lists, such as the phone book or music playlists. Flicking your finger in an up or down motion will move you partway through a list, but you can't move directly to the bottom or top by swiping and holding your finger. On the other hand, the letters of the alphabet are displayed on the right side of the screen. By pressing a letter you can go directly to any songs or contacts beginning with that letter. But the lack of buttons requires a lot of tapping to move about the interface.

For example, the Talk and End buttons are only displayed when the phone is in call mode. And since there are no dedicated Talk and End buttons, you must use a few taps to find these features. That also means you cannot just start dialing a number; you must open the dialpad first, which adds clicks to the process. The same goes for the music player: since there are no external buttons, you must call up the player interface to control your tunes. For some people, the switching back and forth may be a nonissue. But for mutlitaskers, it can grow wearisome.

Criticisms aside, the iPhone display is remarkable for its multitouch technology, which allows you to move your finger in a variety of ways to manipulate what's on the screen. When in a message, you can magnify the text by pressing and holding over a selected area. And as long as you don't lift your finger, you can move your "magnifying glass" around the text. You can zoom in by pinching your fingers apart; to zoom out you just do the opposite.

In the Web browser, you can move around the Web page by sliding your finger, or you can zoom in by a double tap. And when looking at your message list, you can delete items by swiping your finger from left to right across the message. At that point, a Delete button will appear.

Thanks to the handset's accelerometer (a fancy word for motion sensor), the iPhone's display orientation will adjust automatically when you flip the iPhone on its side while using the music and video players and the Internet browser. Also, a proximity sensor turns off the display automatically when you lift the iPhone to your ear for a conversation. All three are very cool.

The iPhone's only hardware menu button is set directly below the display. It takes you instantly back to the home screen no matter what application you're using. The single button is nice to have, since it saves you a series of menu taps if you're buried in a secondary menu. On the top of the iPhone is a multifunction button for controlling calls and the phone's power.

If a call comes in at an inopportune time, just press the button once to silence the ringer, or press it twice to send the call to voice mail. Otherwise, you can use this top control to put the phone asleep and wake it up again. You can turn the iPhone off by pressing and holding the button.

Located on the left spine are a volume rocker and a nifty ringer mute switch, something all cell phones should have and which is a popular feature of Palm Treos. On the bottom end, you'll find a pair of speakers and the jack for the syncing dock and the charger cord. Unfortunately, the headset jack on the top end is deeply recessed, which means you will need an adapter for any headphones with a chubby plug. Is this customer-friendly? No.

Many parents now get domain names for kids too young to type

NEW YORK (AP) -- Besides leaving the hospital with a birth certificate and a clean bill of health, baby Mila Belle Howells got something she won't likely use herself for several years: her very own Internet domain name.

Corrie Pankow, pictured with daughter Makenzie, has claimed domain names for her children.

Likewise newborn Bennett Pankow joined his four older siblings in getting his own Internet moniker. In fact, before naming his child, Mark Pankow checked to make sure "BennettPankow.com" hadn't already been claimed.

"One of the criteria was, if we liked the name, the domain had to be available," Pankow said. It was, and Pankow quickly grabbed Bennett's online identity.

A small but growing number of parents are getting domain names for their young kids, long before they can do more than peck aimlessly at a keyboard.

It's not known exactly how many, but the practice is no longer limited to parents in Web design or information technology.

They worry that the name of choice might not be available by the time their babies become teens or adults, just as someone claimed the ".com" for Britney Spears' 11-month-old son before she could.

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The trend hints at the potential importance of domain names in establishing one's future digital identity.

Think of how much a typical teen's online life now revolves around Facebook or News Corp.'s MySpace. Imagine if one day the domain could take you directly to those social-networking profiles, blogs, photo albums and more.

"It is the starting point for your online identity," said Warren Adelman, president of registration company GoDaddy.com Inc., which sells basic domain name packages for about $9 a year. "We do believe the domain name is the foundation upon which all the other Internet services are based."

Hundreds of companies sell domain names with suffixes like ".com," ".org" and ".info," which individuals can then link to personal Web sites and e-mail accounts. Parents simply visit one of those companies' Web sites, search for the name they want and, if no one else has claimed it yet, buy it on the spot with a credit card.

There's no guarantee, though, that domain names will have as central a role in online identity. After all, with search engines getting smarter, Internet users can simply type the name of a person into Google.

"Given the pace of change on the Internet, it strikes me as a pretty impressive leap of faith that we're going to use exactly the same system and the same tools ... 15 to 20 years from today," said Peter Grunwald, whose Grunwald Associates firm specializes in researching kids and technology.

Still, even if the effort is for naught, $9 a year is cheap compared with the cost of diapers and college tuition.

Besides providing an easy-to-remember Web address, the domain name makes possible e-mail addresses without awkward numbers -- as in "JohnSmith24", because 23 other John Smiths had beaten your child to Google Inc.'s Gmail service.

Parents not ready to commit or knowledgeable enough on how to buy a domain, though, are at least trying their luck with Microsoft Corp.'s Hotmail or Gmail.

Melissa Coleman of Springfield, Massachusetts, grabbed Hotmail addresses for her two kids. She said the kids' grandparents occasionally send e-greeting cards to those accounts, and she sends thank you notes for gifts in her child's voice.

"I think it's great that it's so loud and that it came with an actual WORKING MICROPHONE ... and I'm not sure what `annoying' means, but I'm sure it means that Mommy loves it too!!!!," read one message to Grandpa.

She said she logs in at least once every month to keep the accounts active and plans to save all messages for when her children get older.

Tony Howells, a business consultant in Salt Lake City, Utah, got a Gmail address along with the domain name for his daughter, believing people would enjoy seeing "an e-mail address pop up for an 8-month-old who is obviously not equipped to use it."

Although some parents have yet to use the domain names they've bought, others are sending visitors to baby photos, blogs and other personal sites. Domain name owners have a variety of options to have their personal sites hosted, typically for free or less than $10 a month. They include baby-geared services like TotSites.com and BabyHomePages.net.

Theresa Pinder initially received a domain name as a Christmas gift from her son's godparents and gives it out to friends and family who want updates.

"People are like, `Wow. He already has his own Web site,"' said Pinder, a physician assistant in Phoenix.

There are downsides to all this, though: An easy-to-remember domain also makes a child easier for strangers to find. Chances are one only needs to know a child's name and add ".com."

Pankow, a database administrator in Phoenix, said that was one concern keeping him from using the domains he bought for his five children, including a 9-year-old daughter.

"I'd want to research and try to figure out how easy it is to find out what school she goes to and where she lives" based on the Web site and domain name, Pankow said.

GoDaddy and many other registration companies offer proxy services that let domain name buyers register anonymously. Otherwise, the person's name, address and other contact information are publicly searchable.

Notwithstanding the privacy concerns, Adelman said domain names for kids have become more and more popular as parents start to get domains for their business or family and realize how difficult it is to find ".com" names not yet claimed.

But the numbers are still relatively low. Our Baby Homepage, which lets parents set up personal baby pages with photos and greetings, says only 10 percent of its customers have bought their own domains. A similar service, Baby's First Site, considered selling domains for parents but didn't get much interest.

Brian Vannoy, founder of TotSites, said parents might need more lessons on safety measures such as how to password-protect sites. But he believes the hurdles can be overcome once parents who are less-savvy about technology see the benefits.

"It's easy to remember," Vannoy said. "Everybody knows the new baby's name."