Safe Surfing with Child-Friendly Browsers
March 19th 2008 by Dr.MOZ in Family Safety, Tech and Web
There’s a new browser war brewing and believe it or not, your toddler is the target market. I kid you not (pun intended), companies like the newly launched KidZui aim to provide a safe online environment for your children by offering a subscription-based browser marketed for kids between three and twelve. That’s no typo…three-years-old! Their $10 monthly fee (or temporary $4.95 promotional fee) will include an easy to use interface with access to pre-screen web content, photos, and videos.
If KidZui’s price seems a little steep, TechCrunch’s readers suggest the free Firefox add-on Glubble. The Glubble add-on, helps parents activate websites (called “Glubbles”) that
their kids are allowed to visit. The Glubble crew has a collection of child-friendly links ready and waiting, not to mention “family homepage” and “family messaging” features.
So what do you think parents, are your toddlers ready for the web? Click on the comments bubble above to let us know how you keep their surfing kid-friendly.
Have fun and stay healthy,
Dr.MOZ
March 20th, 2008 at 12:07 am
Dear Dr. Moz,
My name is Bartel Scheers, and I’m part of the Glubble Team. I feel a bit odd to reply to your post, especially as a first commenter, but certain words in your post might give the wrong impression about Glubble, and I think it’s only fair to your readers, our users, and all of our Glubble Team to try to clarify certain issues.
Indeed Glubble is a free add-on for Firefox. And there’s is an important reason why it is free, We, as Glaxstar, the makers of Glubble, do believe that a safe access to Internet for young children should be free. Always! And that no child should be limited to use the Internet cause some company or person decided to charge money for the tool parents and children need to allow them safer access. A monthly fee of $10 might be a reasonable budget for some parents, but it is certainly not for many.
Also, to elaborate with your phrase “target market” it might be interesting to know how Glubble came to be. The Glubble project is not conceived as a commercial project with the youngest children as the target group in mind and to gain money. Glubble has started as a personal project of our Founder/President Ian Hayward for his own two young daughters. It was Ian’s personal frustration that no satisfying tool was available for him as a parent to allow his daughters safe and fun access to the best of the Web, that is not restrictive, not patronizing and that respects his family’s standards by putting control over what their children see on the web into their own hands.
This idea caught fire with all of us within Glaxstar and many others outside, not the least the tens of thousands of parents that gave the Beta version of Glubble a try and shared their findings with us in our forums. This is what brought Glubble where it is now; a whole new way of surfing the Web for families with young children for free; build on the best browser available at this moment which is also for free.
And it will not stop here. We, as a team, are dedicated to keep improving Glubble, together with our users and other parents, to build a better web for all of our children to be inspired, to discover, to feel safe and to put control over the Web back into the hands where it belongs; with us, parents!
Kind regards,
Bartel Scheers
March 20th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Thanks for the great comment Bartel! As a devoted Firefox user (wearing a Firefox T-shirt this very moment!), I’m always excited to see useful extensions like Glubble listed in the “Add-Ons” list. This is why I always do my best to promote a free product like Glubble in posts that mention competitive products that many families couldn’t afford. Hopefully, our post will drive a few new families to Firefox and Glubble!
Best,
Dr.MOZ
March 21st, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Thanks a ton for pointing out this neat Firefox extension. I didn’t know something like this even existed.
But I do worry that it encourages parents to try to “set it and forget it.” It’s much better for parents to be actively monitoring and helping their children, especially with the internet.
March 24th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Thanks for the tip Doc! I seemed to miss the boat with the Firefox thing, but this Glubble extention looks like a great reason to give them both a download.
March 26th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Dear Dr. Moz:
My name is Cliff Boro; I’m the co-Founder and CEO of KidZui. Thank you for your posting regarding KidZui’s launch. The idea for KidZui came from my long-time business partner and KidZui co-Founder, Vidar Vignisson. Vidar has three boys (7-11) and he and his wife Shabana were frustrated by the limited (and unsafe) nature of their children’s internet use. The passion behind KidZui is to give children a safe and enjoyable way to independently search, browse, and discover the best child-appropriate content on the Internet. This is a labor of love for our whole team.
We’re big Firefox fans, and we encourage anyone to improve the internet for children. We’ve spent millions of dollars to hire more than 200 teachers and parents (working in 25 states, virtually round-the-clock) to personally review more than 500,000 websites, videos and pictures. We’ve also developed a completely novel kid-centric, graphical interface for kids to explore and use the internet. We’ve tested KidZui with more than 8,000 children before launching.
All of this costs money. After consulting with parents and witnessing what parents spend on Webkinz and Club Penguin alone– we chose the most intellectually-honest and straightforward business model that we know — namely, to create a new Internet for kids that is worth paying a subscription for.
We welcome all kids and parents to try KidZui — we provide a totally “no obligation or hassles” 30-day trial — and KidZui is only $4.95 per month. Thankfully — we’ve received an enormous amount of positive feedback from kids and parents — and many parents find that $4.95 is a very fair price for the value we provide. As KidZui matures as a company, we’ll take inspiration from our Board and investors (who have started companies like Leapfrog and Starbucks) — and we’ll do everything that we can to make KidZui available in lower-income communities and households. We’ve already made a commitment to provide KidZui to many Foster children in San Diego.
Everyone’s energies should be directed to making the Internet better for kids. We respect Glubble’s efforts and hope and assume that they will respect ours.
If anyone has any questions about KidZui, I can be reached directly at cliff.boro@kidzui.com.
Regards,
Cliff Boro
Chairman and CEO
KidZui
May 9th, 2008 at 8:35 am
Thanks for the Glubble tip. My five-yr old daughter is just beginning to use the Internet (with my help) and the sooner I implement a simple add-on like this to my Firefox, the better. I visited their site and the features certainly fit my requirements.