How I love the Interwebs – Page 10 – Postcards from the Mothership

More thoughts on keeping kids safe online

Now that my boys are five and (almost) seven and are regular users of the computer and the Internet, I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about online safety. Conveniently, I’ve also been offered a couple of blog tours lately that touch on the same subject. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about NetSmartz efforts to keep kids safe online, including a list of tips for safe surfing. This week, I’m looking at a new tool called Norton Online Family, designed to help parents monitor and modify their kids’ online behaviour. (Disclosure: I’ll receive a $20 gift card from Amazon for being a part of the MomCentral blog tour supporting the launch of Norton Online Family.)

I wanted to be a part of this tour because I’ve been curious for some time about the “net nanny” tools that are available. Symantec’s Norton Online Family lets you set up a personalized family account with information about each member of your family, and offers the following services:

Check a child’s activity or modify a child’s profile, preferences, or time allotment anytime and anywhere using any Internet-connected device.
All online activities are reported in chronological order and only show the Web sites a child intended to visit – eliminating all the extra URLs, like ads, from Web sites.
Easily view what words and phrases a child uses to search and where those searches lead online.
Control the Web content that flows into the home by prohibiting more than 40 topic categories.
Track, report and prevent personal information that a child may purposely or accidentally try to send via e-mail, IM or social networking site.
Monitor activity on social networks like Facebook and MySpace with the ability to see how kids represent themselves, when they login and how often.
Built-in messaging allows parents to have real-time discussions with children about activities and better understand their intentions when visiting a Web site.
Children are able to view the “house rules” they established with parents at any time and are notified when Norton Online Family is active, so there is no “stealth” mode.
Parents can customize e-mail alerts to address urgent events so they know immediately when a child has reached a time limit or visited a blocked site, etc.
An easy-to-use time management feature that – if parents find it necessary – gives each child a “curfew” that will limit computer usage.

I have to be totally honest here: when I first signed up, I liked the idea of having some sort of filter to keep the scariest parts of the Internet at bay (we’ve been caught off guard with searches as simple as “Star Wars Lego”) but I stopped about half way into the process of setting up an account for this service. It’s a great service if you want this kind of monitoring and control — but I don’t think it’s right for us, at least not right now. I’d much rather set the kids up with a few favourites, and help them find new sites when they are looking for something. Maybe in a few years, we’ll need this kind of scrutiny and monitoring, but this seems a little bit too extensive for our needs right now.

If I had a little more time in the day, I’d’ve likely gone ahead and played around with the service a little bit more anyway, and with a sponsored review I would have liked to be more thorough. It’s not that I don’t think this is a good tool — I just question whether it’s the right tool for our family at this moment in time.

On other hand, I was totally impressed yesterday when I stumbled across this: Kid Rex, a safe-search engine from the people at Google. From their “info for parents” page:

KidRex is a fun and safe search for kids, by kids! KidRex searches emphasize kid-related webpages from across the entire web and are powered by Google Custom Search and use Google SafeSearch technology.

Google’s SafeSearch screens for sites that contain explicit sexual content and deletes them from your childâ€™s search results. Google’s filter uses advanced technology to check keywords, phrases, and URLs. No filter is 100 percent accurate, but SafeSearch should eliminate most inappropriate material.

In addition to Google SafeSearch, KidRex maintains its own database of inappropriate websites and keywords. KidRex researchers test KidRex daily to insure that you and your child have the best web experience possible.

This is the tool that we need right now for our family. Love the idea, love the interface. If you want to keep a closer eye on what your kids are doing online when you aren’t able to be there, the Norton Family Online service looks like an excellent choice. But if you just want a kid-friendly search engine, I’m highly impressed with KidRex.

What do you think? Beloved and I have been debating our need for parental control software. He thinks the Norton Family Online service is an excellent and necessary tool. I think itâ€™s our role as parents to provide this kind of filter, especially while the kids are very young. Then, again, he also says theyâ€™ll â€˜neverâ€™ be allowed to have a Facebook or MySpace page, an argument I suspect heâ€™ll lose sooner rather than later.

How do you balance trust, autonomy, and teaching your kids to make the right choices against the possibility of exposure to some of the undoubtedly ghastly stuff out there on the Interwebs?

BBC Books meme

(I filched this meme from a couple of friends’ Facebook pages. According to the original meme, the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 important books here. Thing is, I went looking for the original source of 100 books, and couldn’t find it anywhere. There’s this BBC Big Reads list from 2003, but it’s not the same. But hey, since when do we allow a little thing that factual sources stand in the way of good blog fodder. On with the meme!)

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘X’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.
Continue reading “BBC Books meme”

Poladroid: retro photo fun

The internet really is full of a lot of crap, yanno? For all the great things you can say about the internet — the wonderful information and connections and ideas and whatnot — mostly it’s just a giant time sink, massively full of drivel through which you have to wade hip-deep for days before you can find that one bright, sparkly bauble.

I want to show you my latest bauble. Pretty, shiny thing — almost entirely pointless, but undeniably clever and it made me smile. What more can you ask for? It’s called Poladroid, and it’s my favourite photo toy since Flickr.

You take an ordinary photo like this:

**pauses for oohs and ahhs of adoration to subside**

… and you drag-and-drop it into the little Poladroid widget that looks just like an old polaroid camera and sits pleasantly on top of whatever you’re working on, waiting to be of service. (You have to download the applet to your computer, but trust me, it’s totally worth it!!) When you drop your photo in, the Poladroid makes this satisfying old-skool click and whir, and then it spits out your digital polaroid. At first, it looks like a big sepia blur but as the image slowly resolves — just like a real polaroid — you can grab and shake your polaroid with your mouse. Too cute by half! And in the end, you get this:

Just the faintest tint of sepia, and how great are the textures? I love this, and now I’m actively looking for cool shots that need the Poladroid treatment. Fun!!!

Ah well, thanks anyway…

Congratulations to Katrina of Fickle Feline, winner of Mabel’s Labels “send a blogger to BlogHer” contest! Her award-winning entry is terrific, she seems like a lovely person, and I’m genuinely thrilled that she won.

Although I no doubt made a pest of myself with my multi-media campaign to garner your votes, I have to admit that I’m both disappointed and a little bit relieved to not be the big winner. The idea of heading off all by my lonesome to a girlie-fest of famous bloggers frankly scared the socially-awkward pants off of me, much as I really wanted to go. And I’d’ve fretted the whole time about leaving Beloved and the boys behind, sad though that may sound.

I owe every single one of you that voted for me a heart-felt thank you, though, and sloppy wet smooches to those of you who really stepped up by tweeting or even blogging to scam a few more votes for me. And I’ll gleefully thumb my nose at those of you who simply rolled your eyes and hoped I’d stop with all the embarrassing grovelling already. I had fun campaigning for your votes, and I hope you did, too.

Congratulations, Katrina, and thanks again to the folks at Mabel’s Labels! You should buy their stuff – I do!

Shameless, I am. Completely incorrigible.

I just can’t help myself!

Hey, if you won’t vote for me, do it for them. Don’t make my brazen exploitation of my kids be in vain! (Truth be told, they were great sports. Tristan’s developing a fine sense of humour, and as soon as I told him it was a grownup joke, he was in without question. I told Simon his sign said people should give him Smarties, and he was in, too.)

And hey, lookit that, because this is my lastest picture for Project 365, I can just segue into my weekly review of that project, too. See, multipurpose exploitation!!

When I could draw myself away from using my children for my own nefarious purposes (and really, why else would one have children in the first place?) I had a bit of an addiction to photos of the Parliament Buildings this week. They’re lovely in any light!

And (speaking of segues) I’ll likely have at least one more photo to add to the Parliament Building set today. Sounds like President Obama will be arriving on Parliament Hill just about the time I can take my lunch break. Got my camera and my scarf and mitts (it’s snowing, of course) and I think I’ll go check it out. This morning I was walking up Sussex just in time to see a motorcade pulling out of the US Embassy and heading toward the airport – no doubt the Ambassador heading out to greet his boss.

[Edited to add: I was there! Tried to get to Parliament Hill to get pix of people rolling snowballs to stand on to get a better view – does it get any more Canadian than that? – but by the time I left at 11 am pedestrian access was blocked. Instead, stood on the E&C patio at the corner of Colonel By and Rideau and shared an elevated planter with a little boy of 10 or so years old to get a better view over the crowd. Felt the lovely surge of excitement as the crowd cheered and waved when the motorcade past — but was too busy taking pictures to actually figure out which Cadillac One might actually have Barack Obama in it! Will post pix tonight!]

All that, and it’s my parents’ wedding 43rd anniversary today too, something that needs no segue. Happy Anniversary, Granny and Papa Lou!

Free 10-issue digital Pregnancy mag

Via RedFlagDeals, this offer for 10 free issues of Pregnancy Magazine’s digital edition. I loved pg magazines almost as much when I was pg as I did when we were infertile and TTC. Can’t beat the price at any cost!

Working my social media networks

I spent the weekend spamming my family, friends, acquaintances, and more than a few random strangers, grubbing votes for the “Send a Blogger to BlogHer” contest. Since I work(ed) in social media, I’ve got a pretty good idea of how to run a social media campaign, and that’s more or less how I’ve been approaching this.

So far, I have:

sent notes to my Facebook “friends” – from the near and dear to the ones who I vaguely remember from the third grade;
skimmed the 657 contacts in my gmail account and spammed a goodly number of them with an e-mail;
sent out a few tweets on twitter;
posted notes to just about any forum, bulletin board or online community I could find my user-ID and password for; and
set up a table at the grocery store beside the Girl Guides selling cookies and the pee wee hockey team selling apples.

(Okay, so that last one wasn’t true. But I did think about it.)

Too much?

You guys have been great in supporting me. Nadine and Mad re-tweeted my message, Cooper and Emily endorsed me on the Motherhood, and Sara wrote a whole blog post encouraging people to vote for me. *smooches* Some of my girlfriends even figured out that you can vote more than once from different browsers, so I managed to vote for myself six times: once from each of IE, firefox and safari on the desktop and the laptop at home!

Any other ideas on how I can grub for some votes? I noticed that some of the other finalists were holding giveaways (i.e. “Vote for me to get entries into this draw! Retweet or blog to get multiple entries!”) and at first I thought, “Oh, I could do that! No doubt, everyone loved the iTunes giveway, and it would be a small price to pay to trade a $25 gift card for a free trip to BlogHer!” But to be honest – not to cast disparaging remarks at the competition or anything, but – the more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I was with the idea of “buying” votes. How is that different from asking you to leave a silly comment in exchange for an entry in any other giveaway? I don’t know — it just seems not quite right to me. What do you think? Would it make you more likely to vote, or would that be a line I shouldn’t cross? (I kind of hope you’ll vote for me regardless, but I’m also curious as to your opinion.)

Aside from accosting random strangers with BlackBerries – and there’s no shortage of those around here! – to beg them for votes, any ideas how I can drum up a few more votes and still love myself in the morning? I realize it’s a fine line between proactively campaigning for votes and annoying the hell out of my friends and “friends” alike, but when’s the next chance I’ll have an opportunity like this?

(And if you haven’t already, for goodness sake VOTE!)

Vote for me, vote for me, oh please please please won’t you vote for me?

**earsplitting squee**

Remember last week when I wrote that rather locquacious ramble through my own archives that masqueraded as an entry into Mabel’s Labels’ “Send a blogger to BlogHer” contest? I had such fun writing it, but it was really only a lark. I mean, can you imagine what Beloved would say if I ditched him with all three boys for a weekend to jaunt off to Chicago thsi summer?

But!

They! Picked! MEEEEEEE!!!!!! They picked me as one of the top ten finalists!!! Me!! Can you believe it?

*breathe breathe*

But now I need you, Bloggy Peeps. I really need you! I mean it was one thing when I was grovelling for your votes for the ego-satiation of the various blog awards, but this is a trip to CHICAGO, dudes. Seriously! Me, at BlogHer. The whole idea frankly scares the crap out of me, oh my god all the talking to strangers and being intimidated by the best of the bloggy universe makes me a little queasy just thinking about it, but now that I know it’s even the remotest possibility I want it with all my heart!

So I need you to vote from as many computers as you can lay your grubby little fingers on, okay? Vote at home, vote at work, vote at the school library and the community centre and your sister-in-law’s house. But you can only vote once per IP address, now through February 23.

You’ve got to vote for me, because I just know Beloved is going to be out there voting for all the other girls to win!!

In which she counts her bloggy blessings

Hey! Did you know Mabel’s Labels is sponsoring a contest? One lucky blogger will win a trip to BlogHer ’09 and be the chief correspondant for the Mabel’s Labels blog — which, by the way, was voted the Best Family Blog in the 2008 Canadian Blog Awards. And all you have to do to enter is answer this question: What have been the rewards and benefits of participating in the blogging community?

Oy! You’d think that one would be an easy question. Heck, isn’t the whole blog a testament to my love of blogging and especially my love of you, my bloggy peeps? I think it’s safe to say, with no amount of hyperbole, that blogging has completely changed my life. But I have no idea where to start, or how to summarize in a few succinct words what it’s taken me four loquacious years of rambling to express!

Blogging has stroked my ego in more ways than I can count. I’ve won accolades from the Weblog Awards and the Canadian Blog Awards, and blog has been featured in publications from National Geographic Traveler’s online magazine to Chatelaine magazine to a couple of newspapers and our local TV news.