The Best Web Filter Is…

We’re used to saying that the best web filter is the watchful eye of a parent.

We believed that to be true, and that is why we didn’t tackle web filtering in ComputerTime. A number of filtering solutions already existed when we created ComputerTime, and none of them seemed to do the job adequately.

ComputerTime tackled the problem of monitoring kids’ time, and enforcing the limits that parents decided on. We advised moms and dads to keep the computer in a public place in their home. If they are concerned about what their kids view on the Internet, then having a direct line of sight to the screen when the kids are on it should work well enough.

I’m not sure that is the best advice anymore. We’re seeing laptops flourish, so it’s harder to keep those screens in a public part of the house and the screens don’t usually face outwards into the room when the kids are sitting on the couch.

So maybe it isn’t a bad idea to employ a web filter that does a good job of blocking the nasty stuff. While many were deemed inadequate a number of years back, I believe there is a solution that well enough for me to recommend it. It’s called OpenDNS.

Six Reasons Why You’ll Love OpenDNS

I’ve been using OpenDNS for a while now. I love it and recommend it all of the time. If you want to filter out inappropriate content, here are some reasons I think you’ll love it too.

1. It’s Free: In this economy, what’s not to love about free.
2. Easy Setup on Your Router: They provide really simple instructions, with screen shots, for most of the popular routers. All you have to type in are a handful of numbers into the fields that they tell you to. You really can’t screw this up. Click Save and you’re done.
3. Entire Network Protected: That one simple setup on your router means that every computer on your network should now be protected by the filter.
4. No Software To Install: The fact that you just change a setting in your network configuration, preferably on your router, means that there is nothing to conflict or degrade your computers performance.
5. Up-To-Date and Accurate Filter: New domains and websites come and go every day. This is what made it hard for so many of yester-years filtering solutions worthless. The databases of what to block would be out of date in a matter of days and weeks. OpenDNS has input from thousands of users who are constantly tagging websites into categories. With an OpenDNS account and a bookmarklet you can install on your browser toolbar, you can contribute too if you would like, or you can just rely on the wisdom of the crowds of others that do all the tagging. See a sight that you think should be blocked as inappropriate? You would click on the bookmarklet, check off the categories and submit.
6. Two Versions: Easy and Easier. Both are free. If you want control over what categories get filtered, choose the standard OpenDNS, set up a free account, and enter in the DNS server numbers they they instruct you to. Don’t want to get that involved, choose their new Family Shield, and simply punch in different DNS server numbers into your router and be done. Family Shield is configured to block “Adult Content”. I assume this means things like pornography, nudity, gambling, chat rooms, erotica, violence, guns, etc. Family Shield is OpenDNS, just without the finer control. Want to have more control, use their (still free) OpenDNS and create an account.

SoftwareTime, and myself personally, do not have any relationship whatsoever with OpenDNS. This is just a hearty recommendation from a satisfied user (me!) of their service.

I’ll add that I think that if you’re using ComputerTime, or thinking about using ComputerTime, OpenDNS or Family Shield really round out your parental control toolbox.

Can I get away with saying that ComputerTime now offers free web filtering? ;-) Probably not. But the net affect is the same. Go give OpenDNS or Family Shield a try.

More on the Family Shield announcement here.

Imam worries about effect of PC games on children.

An imam here expressed concern over the impact of computer games on children, saying the portrayal of gods as well as heaven and hell in these games could potentially confuse them about the concept of the hereafter.

Chief Imam of the Usamah bin Zahid Mosque in Wangsa Maju, Ustaz Murshidi Abdul Hamid, said although these were merely games, if left unchecked, it could negatively impact the minds of the young people.
…

“Parents should prohibit their children from playing certain games if they contain elements which are against or derogatory to Islam,” he told Bernama.

While the rest of us are concerned about excessive gaming and it’s affects on our children, Imam Hamid is apparently mainly concerned about offense to Islam.

Meanwhile, a lecturer at Universiti Putra Malaysia’s Communications and Media Studies Faculty, Ishak Abdul Hamid [A different "Abdul Hamid" than the Imam mentioned above], said exposure to negative elements in computer games could also affect the children’s psychological development.

“They become obsessed with playing computer games to the point of neglecting their studies,” he said.

Good thing they are taking these steps, because we wouldn’t want Muslim kids being exposed to anything that would affect their psychological development in a negative way!

If only you would stop spending 4.5 hours a day in front of your screens!

Get your bodies moving!

Attempting to buy children’s affection with TVs and computer games… not a good idea.

Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said increasing numbers of children failed to respect authority or consider the needs of other pupils after leading “isolated lives” at home.

…

“Often it’s the well-off middle classes that buy off their children through the computer and the TV,” she said. “That then isolates them within the home, and then they’re surprised when their child isn’t coming to school ready to learn.”

Last year, Dr Bousted raised concerns that families were leading separate lives under one roof instead of sitting down to dinner together, with youngsters spending hours watching TV alone in their rooms.

The Whole Story.

When my son was about half his age, he started to get online to play a few, fairly harmless online multi-player games. No big deal — except that these games included a “chat” feature where you can communicate with other players, which I hadn’t noticed.

I learned about the chat feature only after my son came to me frustrated that he couldn’t log into his account on the game anymore. Turns out that he got bored with the game, and decided to give away his earned points and skills to another player by giving the other player his password. Ugh.

We had a talk about sharing information with strangers online and we revisit the topic from time to time. Luckily, he didn’t give out much more personal information in the chat room.

You’re Not as Private as You Think, an article by Caroline Knorr at Common Sense Media, has a nice list of tips that you should consider and discuss with your kids. Especially with younger kids, they can be very naive about the risks of giving out personal information.

Have any additional tips you’d like to share?

by Andy Rementer @ Techno Tuesday

It’s getting harder to find clean television programming that doesn’t contain offensive language, according to the New York Times in the article More Than Ever, You Can Say That on Television.

Ever since George Carlin laid out the “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” in 1972, television writers and broadcasters have been digging more deeply into the thesaurus, seizing on new ways to titillate, if not offend. And while the word “douche” is neither obscene nor profane — although this usage is certainly offensive to many people — it seems to represent the latest of broadcast television’s continuing efforts to expand the boundaries of taste, in part to stem the tide of defections by its audience to largely unregulated cable television.

I added the emphasis on that last sentence.

Rather than striving for better quality entertainment, the broadcast networks are striving to keep up with their cable counterparts by competing in the art of pushing the boundaries of bad taste. They are actively trying to offend, in order to garner more attention.

I’m all for freedom of expression — in the right context, and in the company of adults, movies and television programs can be raw and realistic.

The 10:00pm boundary should be respected so that parents can make a choice. If you don’t want your kids being subjected to offensive language and suggestive or explicit images, knowing that television is safe before 10:00 would be comforting. A firm boundary lets parents set limits. If you don’t want your kids soaking up that stuff, then you have an “off by 10:00pm” rule.

Music and radio isn’t really much better. I’ve filed complaints with the FCC in the past over local pop radio stations that my kids in middle school had been listening to. Songs with offensive lyrics and morning DJs that talked openly and joked about celebrities and sexual themes. Yeesh! I was driving my pre-teens to school for Christ’s sake!

What are your strategies for combating these offensive onslaughts?

by Andy Rementer @ TechnoTuesday.com

He’s clearly a brilliant guy with some very significant accomplishments behind him. Ray Kurzweil offers predictions on where we will be with technology in the future.

In Kurzweil’s estimation, we will be able to upload the human brain to a computer, capturing “a person’s entire personality, memory, skills and history”, by the end of the 2030s; humans and non-biological machines will then merge so effectively that the differences between them will no longer matter; and, after that, human intelligence, transformed for the better, will start to expand outward into the universe, around about 2045. With this last prediction, Kurzweil is referring not to any recognisable type of space travel, but to a kind of space infusion. “Intelligence,” he writes, “will begin to saturate the matter and energy in its midst [and] spread out from its origin on Earth.”

The article didn’t elaborate on what you’d be able to do with this off-site backup of your life’s worth personality, memories, and skills. If you bump your head, will you be able to do a restore operation to put it back?

Will we be able to wipe one person’s brain clean and download somebody else’s thoughts into it?

You can now read Families and Technology on Your Kindle!

My thought on the Kindle (and e-book readers in general) is that they aren’t the same as other screens. They aren’t any more interactive than a book. They aren’t backlit, so they’re not stimulating. The e-Ink display does not support animation, so you can’t play games on it. What it does do is allow people to read words — lots of words.

And it is portable, so that means you can go outside… and read. :-)

Don’t want to pay full price for a Kindle? I am sellling a Kindle on eBay right now so you’ve got less than seven days to get your bid in! Started the auction at $1, but most Kindles are ending at about 2/3 of the price of the new ones, and this one is in excellent condition, like new.

A Google image search for texting while driving will turn up some pictures that will give you nightmares. If your kids text while driving, you might want to show those pictures to them. I am not inclined to link to them here because… they are gross.

But if it makes your texting teen rethink updating their Twitter while driving, then perhaps let them see what can happen.

A lot of adults aren’t any brighter than careless teens.

“My job has me out on the road for four to five days out of the week,” Anthony Perry, a director of business development for a Washington-based health care research firm, told CNN in an e-mail sent from his BlackBerry. “I don’t particularly think I am that good at texting while driving but I do it anyway, recognizing the risks.”

I don’t think he actually does recognize the risks. Mr. Perry, please have a look at those images I mentioned above. Only then can you say that you recognize the risks.

More stupidity follows:

Nevertheless, for many in business, it seems to be a matter of competitive survival.

“Now with e-mail and with the advent of the BlackBerries and hyper-accessibility, there’s this sense that if you don’t show that you’re always prepared and ready to respond and address an issue, then somehow you’re going to be perceived as not being conscientious or not keeping up on things,” said Tom Britt, a professor of social psychology at Clemson University in South Carolina.

“I could not imagine doing my job, or living my life, without the aid of a bberry,” Perry wrote. “I don’t know many who could who are in my line of work.”

In the context of an article about the modern workplace, devices and connectivity, that kind of attitude wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. But this is from this article about texting while driving. Are people seriously justifying the need to text while driving? Work demands are forcing you to put your life in great peril? Really? Or do you think that you’re that important (not to mention, indestructible)?

Mr. Perry. You only get once chance to become fatally distracted. Do that Google image search mentioned above. You’re job isn’t important enough to risk your own life or the lives of others.

Sending that message can’t possibly be that important. If it is, then it’s important enough to justify pulling over for a minute.

Kids, be careful about what you put up on your facebook pages. It could come back to haunt you when you apply for a job some day.

And grown-ups… heed the same warning!

Wife blows MI6 chief’s cover on Facebook

The wife of the new head of MI6 has caused a major security breach and left his family exposed after publishing photographs and personal details on Facebook.

Sir John Sawers is due to take over as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in November, putting him in charge of all of Britain’s spying operations abroad.

But entries by his wife Shelley on the social networking site have exposed potentially compromising details about where they live and work, their friends’ identities and where they spend their holidays. On the day her husband was appointed she congratulated him on the site using his codename “C”.

Unbelievable.

Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles

The rectangles even help Americans to successfully emote, often by using a combination of visual and aural signals to indicate when laughter or tears should be produced.

“Life would be very different if it weren’t for these magical squares of light,” cultural studies professor and social critic David Ostroff typed to reporters using one of his wireless messaging rectangles. “Sry. Have 2 go. Movie about 2 strt.”

On average, Americans interact with anywhere from 53 to 107 pulsating rectangles every week. For many, however, this is simply not enough. Despite having a leisure rectangle in every bedroom, along with multiple work rectangles, a rectangle just for the children, and one or two rectangles that can do the work of several rectangles in one, many citizens admit to being dissatisfied.

If Apple really wanted to be different, they would avoid building another rectangular device and do something insanely great, like give us a glowing nonagon, or a let’s get all retro and go back to the 1950′s style glowing squircles.

Have you ever measured how much time your kids are in front of all glowing rectangles? It would be an interesting experiment. I wonder if we actually did measure all of that time with TV, computers, iPods, and video games, if it would make us more likely to impose limits.

If you do come up with measurements, post them in the comments.

For my two kids, my son exceeds my daughter by a large margin. My daughter is mostly in front of her computer, while my son does a considerable amount of TV and iPod Touch staring in addition to the time he spends on the computer and it can consume an unhealthy amount of time.