Safety on the Internet is a concern that we all have – and as a soon to be parent it’ll be my main concern when little Ross is old enough to use the computer.  There are many programs out there which can help protect your child on the Internet but many cost money and operate on a ‘blacklist‘.  Ie. Inappropriate sites are added to a list which the browser then stops you seeing.  This is how most school systems work.

Glubble however is a little different – first it’s totally free and second it operates on a whitelist. Ie. It will only allow you to visit sites that have been approved.  While this might seem limiting at first it’s easy enough for the adults to add sites to the whitelist. Glubble enhances Firefox to make sure children can’t see the whole World Wild Web instead they can only see family friendly parts of the web, its like their own little world on the web.  It is even able to limited trusted for your child on search engine results in Google or Yahoo!  For adults the look may change slightly, but after authenticating yourself you will have full functionality.

Although this program is currently in Beta already the potential is fantastic – and – this could work really well in a schools that have Firefox installed – not in it’s current state but with a few alterations I can see this working better than the blacklists that currently operate.  Don’t allow your network administrator to claim that Firefox can’t be locked down anymore!

I’ll be following this software closely to see how it develops and the potential for primary schools.

Link: http://www.glubble.com/index.php