Editors' note: In the original version of this blog, we used the beta name for this product. The official name is OnlineFamily.Norton.
Back in February, Symantec debuted a new security program that sought to help parents talk to their kids about how they use the Internet. OnlineFamily.Norton has been a free beta since then, but this Monday at midnight, the program will leave beta and remain free at least until the end of 2009. The program was originally called Norton Family Online.
OnlineFamily.Norton makes your child's surfing habits available from any browser.
(Credit: Symantec)This parental control suite provides parents with an interesting and possibly unique approach to online child safety. OnlineFamily.Norton does provide a blacklist, boilerplate for most parental control software. However, the suite offers more than just an On/Off switch, and provides tools that encourage communication between parents and their children.
There's a wide range of control over what sites a child can access. The restrictions can vary from a strict no-access policy that can block specific sites and site categories, to a more lenient notification e-mail sent to the parents when the child visits sites that parents merely want to be warned about. On the child's side, kids are given the option of e-mailing their parents when they're blocked--if the parents allow those e-mails in the first place.
Jody Gibney, product manager for OnlineFamily.Norton, said, "We want to encourage a different philosophical approach, encouraging parents to talk to kids instead of setting up an adversarial relationship." To further that, the program's House Rules can be customized to suit the needs of individual children within each family, a useful feature since a teenager will have different browsing and social-networking interests than an 8-year-old.
The dashboard for OnlineFamily.Norton will change slightly from the beta release, highlighting the options available to parents.
(Credit: Symantec)It's impossible for a kid not to know that OnlineFamily.Norton is running on their computer's background, since it warns them that it's activated. The log-in process requires that the Norton Safety Minder for Windows and Mac be installed first. The program allows kids to view the House Rules independently of their parents. Parents, on the other hand, are able to see what sites their children have been visiting, including search results for terms the child has queried.
However, the program doesn't provide "reams and reams of information," as Gibney put it. "We want to provide [parents] with enough information to start a discussion without overwhelming them." The program will flag social-network profile inconsistencies, such as discrepancies in a child's stated age or name, for example.
The differences between the beta and the free version are apparently limited to interface enhancements designed to streamline the setup process and provide better access to the information that OnlineFamily.Norton collects. The free version will be available at midnight on Monday. A one-year subscription starting January 1, 2010, is expected to cost $60.
KidZui's closed-system browser for children upgrades to version 4, but fans of the program won't notice many changes initially. Available for Windows and Mac and as a Firefox extension, the update encompasses a range of changes, including optimization for Netbooks, client- and server-side caching, simplified animations, and a number of bug fixes. Most importantly, the program is supposed to run faster, although that was hard to judge from 10 minutes of use. It's not slower, though.
KidZui 4 looks a lot like KidZui 3, but with a few options to better control the clutter.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)The big changes that kids and their parents will pick up on mainly involve smoother integration between the interface and the features. There's now a grid button on the bottom right that allows kids to jump back to their most recent search results after they've proceeded to a page. Videos now can be set to auto-play in the default mode as well as the maximized "Go Big" mode. The Explore and Friends navigation bars on the left and right side are now minimizable, expanding screen real estate for larger video and image viewing. This last change is significant since KidZui's interface can often feel cluttered and chaotic.
Changes to the social-networking tools include removing online/offline notifications from the Event stream in MyKidZui, which creates more space for tags and sharing with friends. Kids can also add an unlimited number of channels to keep track of. Overall, though, the program feels like it hasn't changed much since version 3, and that's a good thing for fans.
UPDATED: Corrected list of supported messaging protocols.
Known for its security software, Symantec on Tuesday launched a new program aimed at educating parents about their children's online usage. Norton Online Family, now available in beta, is a parental control suite with multiple levels of restriction and an emphasis on usage reporting.
Norton Online Family makes your child's surfing habits available from any browser.
(Credit: Symantec)Citing a Rochester Institute of Technology study that found a huge gap between the percentage of parents versus children who report no online supervision, Symantec says that Online Family is intended to bridge that gap by "fostering communication" between parents and their kids. According to the RIT study, only 7 percent of parents think their children have no online supervision, while 66 percent of kids think they go unsupervised.
To address that, Online Family uses a desktop client called the Norton Safety Minder for Windows and Mac that reports to the parents' Norton Family account with options to e-mail notifications, too. Norton Online Family features parental-controlled customization levels based on the computer's user accounts, so that multi-child families can have different monitoring levels for different kids. It runs in the system tray, too, so that its presence is obvious to all users.
Online Family can log Web sites, block sites using both a topic blocker or a traditional blacklist, and report on social-networking activities. When it tracks visited Web sites, it automatically filters out advertisement URLs that get pinged when visiting media-rich sites. This makes the log easier to parse through.
Online Family includes some innovative features that lend credibility to the claim that this is more than just a souped-up keylogger or blacklist. The blocked sites feature, for example, can be set so that kids can "appeal" to their parents for approval via either e-mail or a Norton-based chat app. It can also be set so that it lets kids through to see the flagged site, regardless of parental approval, but then the parents' log flags the visited site. The responsibility of discussing the content, of course, is left up to parental discretion.
Online Family uses a clean design to make control settings easier to change.
(Credit: Symantec)Importantly, Online Family tracks how children represent themselves on social-networking sites, and alerts parents when a child misrepresents their age. Age misrepresentation, Symantec said, was often an indicator of a child associating with people or groups that the parents weren't aware of. It also keeps track of how long a kid has spent on a social-networking site, what time they log in and out, and how often they visit the site.
The new program monitors client-based instant messaging, too. This includes Google/Jabber, Yahoo, Microsoft Live, AOL, Skype, ICQ, Trillian's native chat protocol, as well as Trillian's multi-protocol features and Digsby's, too. However, site-based messaging can not be tracked. Once a child logs into Facebook, for example, Online Family won't be able to follow what they're doing within the site.
Other monitors include a personal information blocker, where personal information specific to the child can be blocked from being sent out from the computer, a parental notification whenever a kid creates a new account on any site, a time monitor to enforce a "computer curfew," and a notification for when the Norton Safety Minder is turned off.
Online Family requires a Norton account, and the registration is free until the program leaves beta. Final pricing for the Online Family stable release that's expected in the spring has yet to be announced, but the beta trial is free for now. Symantec has said that they want to make Norton Online Family affordable, though, so it's unlikely that the price point will be exorbitant.
KidZui for Windows and Mac seems like a kid-ified browser with social networking rolled in. Children can find their favorite YouTube videos, rate content using tags, and share opinions with other KidZui friends, all from a colorful interface with big buttons and labels. KidZui is anything but a standard childrens' browser, though, and what makes it so unique is precisely why it's such a safe tool for children.
KidZui is a closed system, not filter-driven, so all content that's available has been approved by editors into a whitelist database. Children can explore the Internet by using the search/URI bar, or search by a left-navigation sidebar that's organized by topics including science, movies and TV, games, sports, and animals. Just below the search bar are three tabs, for Web browsing, Photos, and Video.
Parental registration is required before your child can create "Zui," in the program's parlance. Children can customize their avatars to a limited degree in the free version, with more options available via a paid upgrade. Free KidZui is fully functional, but upgrading definitely offers more. Among the additions: children get more content rating tags, more avatar clothing, and more backgrounds, while parents get the capability to block individual sites, can view an unlimited history of the child's browsing, and can force-add sites to their children's favorites list.
KidZui offers children one of the safest Web browsing methods I've seen. Parents get the peace of mind that their children are both learning and having fun without relinquishing their role as the final arbiter of the Internet experience. If you're hesitant, KidZui offers a Firefox extension that replicates the KidZui experience in Mozilla's browser.
I'm going on vacation for the next few weeks, so this will be the last Featured Freeware until January 2009. You can peruse the past nine months of Featured Freeware here. Have a happy and safe holidays!
KidZui, the child-safe browser maker, has put out a Firefox extension that offers all the functionality of its standalone browser right inside of Firefox.
Once installed and activated by a parent, it locks the child (or anyone else for that matter) out of accessing non-Kidzui approved sites, or other areas of the computer, by taking up the entire screen. A password, which is chosen by the parent, is the only way to exit the KidZui browsing experience, essentially turning your computer into a kid-friendly Internet kiosk.
The browser extension has full support for the company's paid subscription service, which runs around $40 a year. Paying users get a few additional features like being able to white list certain sites, track children's browsing history on a per-session basis, along with a tool that will figure out what your kids are into based on that history.
What's really interesting here is this is one of the few times a standalone browser has been rolled up as an extension for another browser. Of the many variants which are built on top of mainstream browsers, there's the lingering question whether the same experience could simply be offered on top of someone else's product. With something like Flock or Maxthon, this would likely be underwhelming, however, in KidZui's execution it appears to be a smart play at getting more users onboard.
KidZui's standalone browser experience comes to Firefox with a new extension that keeps kids from visiting sites or accessing parts of your computer you don't want them to.
(Credit: KidZui)
When you first look at it, KidZui seems a bit like a kiddified Flock, a Web browser with social networking rolled in. Children using Windows or Macs can find their favorite YouTube videos, rate content using tags, and share opinions, all from a colorful interface with big buttons and clear, clean labeling.
Billing itself as "the Internet for kids," it turns out that KidZui is anything but a standard kids' browser, and what makes it so unique is precisely why it's such a safe tool for children to use.
What you see when you log in to KidZui.
(Credit: CNET Networks)KidZui is a closed system of pre-approved content, and although it seems to function like a browser, there's no way to use it to access the Internet directly. Instead, all the content that's available from KidZui has been approved by a group of editors. These moonlighting parents, teachers, and retired teachers started from a database built by a spider that checked dmoz directories across the Internet--similar to how Yahoo searches the Web. From there, they looked at each video, image, and Web site that KidZui lets children see, and then added the safe ones to an age-delineated whitelist. Four-year-olds, for example, can not see content that 10-year-olds can.
When KidZui launched in March 2008, the list of approved content included around 500,000 sites that, according to KidZui's chairman and CEO Cliff Boro, took two years to build. Eight months on, that's now expanded to more than a million pieces of content, with 50 editors still contracted to review new material and purge links that have changed or are dead.
Being closed doesn't mean that that the KidZui experience is limited. More secure than a haphazardly-applied algorithm from a Web blocker, but less limiting in part because it includes kid-appropriate social networking, KidZui in many ways seems to offer a more comprehensive Internet experience to children.
The Zui, the KidZui avatar, features customizations that draw kids in.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The basic version is free, and includes a solid core of features for both children and their justifiably worried parents. Remember the old use of Whitehouse.com, and how easy it was to get there by mistyping whitehouse.gov?
Since KidZui is closed to actual browsing, accidentally or intentionally reaching improper content means that's no longer an issue. There are three main tools for kids to explore the Internet with. There's a search bar at the top, a left-nav sidebar organized by topics including science, movies and TV, games, sports, and animals, and a bottom scroll bar that shows your most frequently-viewed Web sites. KidZui's URI bar includes predictive text similar to Firefox, Chrome, and Opera, but only for the pre-approved content. Below the URI bar are tabs for your default Welcome page, Games, New, Most Popular, and Most Tagged.
Once you start looking at content, three new tabs replace the default five. The Photo and Video tabs work much like Google's Image and Video searches, where you type into the URI bar what you're looking for and the tab automatically narrows it down to the specific type of content that you want under that topic. The Web tab allows for more open, Web browser-style exploration of the whitelisted content.
The right-side nav is taken up by the social-networking features, but again there's little cause for concern by parents. Kids can not e-mail or instant message each other, and there is no personal information that gets revealed when your child "friends" another. They can only see each other's avatars, known as Zuis within the program, usernames, and recently viewed or recently tagged content. By emphasizing the sharing of likes and dislikes as they pertain to videos, photos, and Web sites, and eliminating the ability to communicate directly, KidZui is able to keep the kids who use it focused on positive experiences.
KidZui also hopes to keep kids from being distracted by other local content on the computer by always running in a maximized, full-screen window. It also requires two clicks on the Exit button on the bottom right to fully log out, and parents can require that they enter in their username and password to prevent kids from accessing the rest of the computer.
After the parent has registered KidZui, the child needs to create an online identity. Kids can customize their avatars clothing, skin, face, and hair to a limited degree in the free version, with more options available if you upgrade. The more kids explore via KidZui, the more choices get unlocked, including background options, additional emoticon tags, and Zui customizations. Parents get weekly updates on all the sites that their kids have been looking at.
MyZui pages let kids create their own channels and see where they've been.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Free KidZui is fully functional, but the paid version definitely offers more to both parents and kids. Among the additions, children get more tags for rating content, more avatar clothing, and more backgrounds, while parents get the ability to block individual sites, and can view an unlimited history of the child's browsing. Parents who upgrade can also add Web sites, such as a personal family site, that they approve of on their own through the parental control panel. Upgrading also gains access to a Homework Helper feature, too, divided by subject and academic level from pre-school through eighth grade.
There's no such thing as perfect software, and KidZui is no exception to the rule. I noticed that when you're using the program in Windows, you can use the ALT+Tab hot key combo to access other concurrently running programs. On Vista, this can be used to gain access to the desktop. Walt Mossberg found a somewhat circuitous way to turn up a story on the Eliot Spitzer sex scandal when he looked at the program when it launched.
Even with these holes, KidZui looks as effective as anything I've seen at balancing the dual concerns at play when trying to educate kids with and about the Internet. It's important and difficult to give them the freedom to explore and learn how to use the Web while creating an environment that parents can feel they have control and influence over. KidZui beautifully manages to navigate those concerns and their implications, and is a must for any parent with children under the age of 13 to check out.
Parents on the lookout for carefree, unintimidating ways to urge the sprout of their young kids' creativity ought to take a look at Ten Amazing Fruits. As the product name suggests, Ten Amazing Fruits stars a sampling of botanical characters, including the frequently miscast tomato (hurrah!) These are not, however, your garden-variety fruits. Each outsize organic possesses arms, feet, and a blank face upon which children can attach, Mr. Potato Head-style, a variety of digital features and appendages. A posh voice recites object names when the cursor mouses by, but a quick trip to the options can put an end to it.
Hidden in the branches of the app's help manual are instructions on playing the loosely defined game, and an accompanying story written cheerfully in passable English translation. The goal? Help the fruit escape certain death-by-digestion by dragging and dropping on eyes, ears, and noses so they can find their way out of the fruit bowl. Yawn. Without the app's interaction, it's much more satisfying to dream up new stories for each character, and save the fertile faces to the computer as BMP or proprietary FRD files, or print them out to adorn the fridge.
While light-hearted fun, Ten Amazing Fruits is no study in sophistication. Woefully short on graphic finesse, additional backgrounds and accouterments, and space to type new stories, the app nevertheless offers a whimsical and wonderfully silly way for young kids to personify produce.
And at the very least, an early lesson on the tomato's true horticultural alliance. My dapper three-eyed Mr. Tomato, vested in black hat and bow tie, would surely agree.
Tense, nervy parents, it's time to relax. Kids Web Menu is a new, free solution for letting young kids surf the 'Net, chaperon-free.
How is that possible with all the dangers! And predators! And viruses out there!? By strictly limiting the tykes to 40 preapproved partner sites, that's how. Kids Web Menu takes the sandbox approach in an icon-rich app that lets parents approve content, and password-protect their choices. What's left for children is an interactive layout of either slowly rotating 3D blocks or a scrapbook where apps appear like photos, such as Webkinz, Sports Illustrated for Kids, Sesame Street, and Cartoon Network.
While kids do get the full range of site functionality, begging their parents to add a site not on Web Kids Menu's list is futile--the app only partners with its Barbie and National Geographic sponsors, who are also in-app advertisers. Minimizing the software is also out of the question, perhaps to keep rugrats from hopping between browsing experiences, but it makes it hard for adults to quickly check their e-mail without locating the Kids Web Menu page anew.
Kids Web Menu makes a fine introduction to the Web for children ages 5 and under, but older kids may find it overly restrictive or simplistic. However, its freeware status makes it enticing to try, and there's enough in the Web site offerings for budding gamers to princess-lovers alike.
Kids Web Menu shows off participating sites in two themes, scrapbook and 3D blocks.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
After a recent attack on Power Downloader's home system, Power wanted to find a way to monitor or block usage on his computer while away. Ideally, Power wanted a program that could block usage of certain applications and record usage if a bad guy somehow accessed his system. With the holiday season just around the corner, Power knew that he would probably need to take extra precautions.... Read more
(Credit:
JumpStart World)
Summertime conjures visions of endless outdoor activities, but what protects a kid's brain from melting in the day's heat? JumpStart World, 2nd Grade (there's also a kindergarten version) is one of CNET Download.com's many educational software programs to keep students' brains sharp over vacation.
From the beginning, JumpStart World reminds me of a Second Life for second graders--the download and installation are lengthy, and slurp up quite a bit of memory. Users begin by registering, choosing an avatar, and entering an interactive 3D world replete with an orienting tutorial. The main difference is that kids go on "hero" missions at their virtual summer camp, earning shields and gems--the in-game currency--for following instructions, doing good deeds, and mastering fun games.... Read more
