Webware

With the holiday shopping season creeping up, you may have a child on your shopping list who longs for a special toy. However, you may worry that the toy you are considering is unsafe for your child and perhaps the environment. Thankfully, there are resources online that offer advice on which products may be unsafe to your child.

If you're a parent, this set of resources is definitely worth checking out.

Keep Kids Safe

Consumer Product Safety Commission There is probably no better place to go first when looking for safe children's toys than the U.S. government's Consumer Product Safety Commission page.

When you get to the CPSC site, you'll be able to search for all the recalls and issues that have arisen with toys. You can also see some of the most recent recalls by simply clicking on the appropriate month above the search box. In either case, the site lists all the recalls during the specified period, why it was recalled, and information on how to return the item. The site also features images of the products to help you determine if the toy you've purchased is of concern. Even better, you can follow the CPSC on Twitter or Facebook to receive updates on new recalls as they are announced. The CPSC Web site, while poorly designed, is a must-see for any parent.

The CPSC Web site has all kinds of recalled products.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

GoodGuide If you're looking for data on what you should be providing your kids with, GoodGuide is the place to be.

GoodGuide offers a listing of healthy foods, household products, and toys that are suitable for children. GoodGuide's Toy section lists the level of lead, mercury, chlorine, and other harmful chemicals in the toy. Green means the toy doesn't have contain the respective harmful chemical, while red means that there are high levels of a chemical in a toy. You can also dig down into each listing to determine if the company that created the product has a good reputation. I was impressed by the number of toys GoodGuide offered. I think any parent will like GoodGuide.

Find out how healthy a toy really is with GoodGuide.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Although some of us remember life before computers and the Internet, there's a new generation of children who don't. From an early age, they're on PCs, playing games, and in many cases, learning about the Internet.

That's why it's so important to safeguard your children while they're surfing the Web. The Internet can be a scary place, but these resources will help keep the bad stuff away:

Glubble Glubble bills itself as a family "social network" and browser. Although I'm not entirely convinced that it's a social network, it does do a fine job of ensuring your kids stay safe online.

Glubble lets you upload content like photos, videos, or special moments for your family to see. But where it shines is in controlling what your kids can do on the Web. All the sites they can browse are approved by you. Whenever they go to different sites, it's recorded so you can see what your kids are up to when they use the computer. Glubble provides your kids with several activities, including games and puzzles. It's a nice app for both the family and the children.

Set up your kids in Glubble.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Kido'z Kido'z is an Adobe AIR application that safeguards your children as they browse the Web. But unlike normal browsers, Kido'z determines what your kids can and cannot view.

After you download Kido'z, you'll be brought to a page showing icons for a handful of popular franchises for children, including Mickey Mouse, Dora the Explorer, and others. When you click on one of those options, you'll be brought to the subject's respective Web page within the app. You can click around as you would if you were using Firefox. Kido'z works well and it will help keep your kids safe from some of the Web's dangers.

Choose between these services to help keep your kids safe.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

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.

There are dozens of movie recommendation engines on the Web. Some require little or no input before they give you titles, while others want to find out exactly what your interests are. I've been using 10 movie recommendation engines on both sides of the equation. They're all different, but some are definitely better than others.

The Top 10

Netflix makes recommendations pretty, but...

(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET Networks)

10. Netflix Netflix asks you to rate movies to determine which films you'll want to see next. And although it does make it easy to rate movies and it does return huge lists, there's too much duplication in the results and the ideas it gives you aren't all that strong. It's easy to use, but it's not the best way to get movie recommendations.

9. Rotten Tomatoes Instead of telling Rotten Tomatoes which films you like, you can tell it what kind of films you enjoy, which actors you want to see, and other criteria to help it find the best movie for you. There's a lot of variability in the quality of Rotten Tomatoes recommendations but it's also a nice way to find the right film for any mood.

8. Movielens Movielens is ugly. But what it lacks in beauty, it makes up for with a great recommendation engine that evaluates your tastes based on ratings to films you've seen before. Once you rate 15 movies, it returns recommendations that, based on my testing, were quite accurate and certainly more relevant than results from Netflix.

7. Flixster Flixster is the pretty version of Movielens. The site allows you to rate films and it returns recommendations that are about as good as Movielens. Beyond beauty, Flixster beats out Movielens because it offers extras like film quizzes, the capability to monitor friends' ratings, and more. It's good for people who want more than just movie ideas.

6. IMDb Instead of asking you to input ratings or to tell it what movies you like, IMDb automatically recommends similar films to the movie you search for. At the bottom of the page, a "Recommendations" section explains that if you liked a respective film, you'll like the handful of other films being displayed, based on information gathered from an IMDb database, which examines films to find similarities and differences. It's a great way for people who don't have time to rate movies to find some films worth watching. Even better, the recommendations are solid.

Yep, Iron Man was a good movie.

(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET Networks)

5. Criticker Criticker is another one of those sites that places no stock in design, but it does a fine job of finding movies worth watching. Instead of just allowing you to rank films, the site compares your ratings to those of other users and employs something called the "Taste Compatibility Index" to see how closely your tastes match these other users. Once the service finds matches, you can view other users' profiles and see which movies they like. When I tried it, the other users' preferences were in line with my own on almost every film. Combining community and functionality, Criticker is a unique, yet worthwhile service to check out.

4. Clerkdogs Input the name of a film you like and Clerkdogs will return similar films. It's that simple. And it works. For both major movies and small films, it always found relevant recommendations when I gave it a starting point of a film I liked.

3. Nanocrowd At first glance, Nanocrowd looks like every other film search engine: you input the name of a film you like and it returns results. But the site goes well beyond a simple results page. Nanocrowd allows you to drill down into a more refined search with the help of a "three-word nanogenre." On the results page, you click which three-word category you prefer, based on keywords related to the movie you input into the search field, and Nanocrowd immediately refines your search to get the best film for you. Even better, the films it displays aren't always blockbusters.

2. Taste Kid If you want more than good movie recommendations, Taste Kid is the site for you. It's simple enough--you input a film you like and it returns results that offer similar action to your favorites. But it goes beyond just movies. If you really like "The Godfather," Taste Kid fills you in on what kind of bands you'll like to listen to, books you'll want to read, and "other stuff" that's related to that film. Taste Kid is a full entertainment recommendation engine.

Semantic search on Jinni is incredible.

(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET)

1. Jinni Jinni is the best movie recommendation engine on the Web. Period. Whether you want to search for films in the search field or you want to find films based on your mood, time available, setting, or reviews, the site has it all. I searched for movies based on my mood and followed that with a search based on my plot preference. Each time, films that I've watched and loved in the past, or that I haven't watched but definitely want to see popped up.

But perhaps the most compelling feature that Jinni offers is its semantic search. You can input terms like, "movies that have gangsters" or "films that show Chris Farley yelling" and the site will return films that match your query. It's mind-blowing.

Go use Jinni. You won't regret it.

Parents looking to entertain their children should check out Speakaboos. The site offers up popular story books, nursery rhymes, and lullabies, all read by celebrities like Kevin Bacon, Kelly Ripa, and rapper/actor Nick Cannon. There are also Flash games, e-cards, and coloring pages that can be printed out from PDFs.

Parents can provision special accounts for their children, which lets them limit the type of content that can be accessed. This also locks them out of the option to buy full-quality versions of the stories, which can be listened to offline--either on the computer or portable devices like the iPod.

In an upcoming release, parents will be able to record, either by themselves or with their kids, the narration track on story books. These are saved online and can be accessed from anywhere. This is being pitched as an easy way to put kids to bed, even when parents aren't present.

My only quibble with the site is that there are a lot of placeholders for videos that aren't there yet. If I were a kid browsing the site, I'd find this frustrating. Also, the player does not let you watch streaming videos on a full screen, which is a shame because many of them are very engaging.

Speakaboos' video player is simple and slick. There is however no full-screen mode which might let down the kiddies.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

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.

Recommendation tools are a dime a dozen these days. That's not necessarily a bad thing though--the more exposure you get to new content, the greater your chances of finding a new favorite. To aid in that search is newcomer Taste Kid, a search tool that provides simple recommendations for music, books, TV shows, and movies.

The tool uses previous user searches to figure out how terms are related, which means as time goes by the results are honed, and hopefully more accurate. While each of these results is missing links to purchasing pages and audio samples, each one has a YouTube video that you can view right from the results.

What makes the site particularly useful are the unrelated items that get stuck on the bottom of each exploration page. The site tacks on the most recently added and popular bands, books, TV shows, and movies, which turns each result into its own browsing experience. In just a few minutes you can peruse about a dozen videos to find something you like--and if not, a simple click on something you do like takes you to another recommendation page to start the process over again.

Where the tool loses some of its luster is the lack of a breadcrumb trail to get you back to your original search, or any sense that it's getting to know you better. Mufin, a music recommendation tool I took a look at a few weeks back does this, and it makes it a far more engaging experience. Ideally future iterations of the tool will keep track of this with a cookie.

[via TheNextWeb]

Start a deep dive into music, movies and TV show recommendations with Taste Kid, a simple recommendation tool.

(Credit: CNET Networks)