parenting

Parents are often a little tipsy on power.

Where the real world leaves them powerless, family life affords them a little elbow room to show who's boss.

As a consequence, poor little children must suffer being trapped in the ultimate role of underling.

Please consider how cheesed off one poor daughter of Wisconsin must have been when her parents took away her phone for alleged insubordination.

Her brother, Reddit user AustinMac, was so moved by what her parents did next that he had to share it with the world.

For he claims they took pictures of themselves and posted … Read more

One of Apple's newer features in OS X is the Dictation service that was introduced in Mountain Lion, which allows you to speak phrases and have the system enter it as text in entry fields. While useful in certain situations, some people who have tried using the service have found it to be unavailable on their systems.

When accessing the "Dictation & Speech" system preferences, instead of being able to click the on or off buttons, these options are grayed out, even in administrative accounts that ought to have full access to system services.

The Dictation service … Read more

Keeping kids safe while using an Internet-connected computer is an ongoing concern and a challenge for parents and technology companies alike. To help make it easier for parents to see and control what kids are doing on a PC, Microsoft has added some new parental control features to Windows 8.

Family Safety, as it's now called in Windows 8, can send activity reports via e-mail, set Web filtering levels, monitor and restrict apps from the Windows Store, and set time limits. Here's how to set up and use Family Safety for Windows 8:

Turning on Family Safety When … Read more

After updating to OS X 10.8.2, a number of people who use Apple's Parental Controls feature have reported that it is rejecting all Web sites that use the secure HTTPS protocol, which can include financial and educational sites, but also some popular commercial sites like Google.

Parental Controls allows an administrator to set time limits and content filters for a specific user account, including restrictions on Web access. Since secured Web sites that use the HTTP protocol cannot be properly examined for approval by this service, when site filtering is enabled they are blocked by default and … Read more

Kids can't do it alone. Parents can't do it alone.

Making sure children have safe access to technology requires the participation of hardware vendors, app developers, service providers, educators, industry leaders, and the media. But ensuring the safe use of tech products by children begins and ends with parents.

They're the ones who gauge how much technology the child can handle, who establish the parameters for the child's use of computers and phones, and who keep a close-but-not-too-close watch on how the child is using the technology.

Monitoring your children's use of the family computer … Read more

The biggest game changer from Amazon's Kindle Fire announcement yesterday wasn't the pricing, dual WiFi antennas or Dolby Digital Plus sound. Rather, it was that Amazon became the first major tablet maker to allow different people to have their own accounts on the same device.

Think how commonplace this is for traditional personal computers. Mac or Windows, both platforms allow multiple people to use the same machine, logging in with different accounts that are linked to their own settings, data, applications and perhaps even special restrictions. But for tablets, it's been the dark ages.

I've found … Read more

Every parent fears losing his or her child. Whether you're shopping at a department store, or visiting a theme park -- a lost child is a very real possibility.

A new iOS app, Lost Kidz, wants to help reunite parents with a lost child as soon as possible. iOS users can install the app and set up an account, free of charge, to receive alerts of missing kids nearby, based off of their iPhone's current location. The alert will contain a photo and information about the child to help you quickly identify, and reunite the lost child with … Read more

Most teenagers use social-media sites and parents are wise to it, "friending" their kids and monitoring which sites they visit at an increased rate, according to a study presented at an educators conference today.

Seventy-six percent of teens are on social-media sites, with most -- 93 percent -- of them on Facebook, according to the Pew Internet study that examined the behavior of teens online.

And the usage increases with age -- a sign that parents are sticking tight to a rule that only teens 13-years-old and up can go on social-media sites, something such sites have been dinged for failing to police in the past. … Read more

The bottom line: Bitdefender Total Security 2013 remains one of the best high-end security suites around. This update gives you a fully isolated Web browser for secure financial transactions.

Review: Bitdefender Total Security 2013 presents a convincing alternative to its better-known competitors. It's a strong program, with all the major tools that users expect, and some additional useful tricks in its arsenal. When it comes to efficacy, Bitdefender isn't the best in every area, but it's definitely competitive.

Editors' note: Portions of this review are based on CNET's review of Bitdefender Total Security 2012.

Installation Bitdefender … Read more