What we need is an attention management or filtering tool like the Social Lens project at IBM, discussed in a recent MIT Technology Review article.

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The report said that for more selective universities, such as those in the Russell Group who tend to ask for higher A-level grades, mathematics requirements can be a useful filtering tool.

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But even with this new tool, YouTube's filtering makes media companies work too hard to find and delete their content from the site, argues Gregory Rutchik, the founding attorney of the Arts and Entertainment Law Group.

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Books lend themselves particularly well to an Internet-selling tool known as "collaborative filtering": Amazon and other Web vendors ask you to name some of your favorite products -- in Amazon's case, the books, authors, or genres you like best -- and then the retailers' software program tells you what other people with similar tastes liked so you can add to your shopping list.

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One tool Magid advises parents to use with caution, however, is Web filtering software like Net Nanny or Cybersitter, which block objectionable content online.

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