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Safe Family Browsing - Glubble revisited

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:59:00 GMT

Last December I made a blog post about an alpha release product for Firefox called Glubble. Considering the fact that they are in full-production mode, and it is now a regular part of the way that my family uses the internet, I thought it was time to shower a little praise on a really cool product! At the time of my first post, Glubble was in its infancy, and on my first pass I found it to be completely unusable, although conceptually I thought it was a great idea. Upon reading my blog post, Ian Hayward - founder of Glubble and contributer to the Mozilla project - contacted me and followed up to make sure I was aware when their 1.0 release hit the streets. The enthusiasm he displayed and the kind of personal attention he showed indicated that I should at minimum give it another look. I am really glad I did.

First, let me give a disclaimer. Glubble is not a solution that solves all problems. If someone is knowledgable and persistant, there are certainly workarounds to the restrictions that it provides. If you have a teenager that is trying to circumvent your processes, this is likely not the tool for the job, and you should look at a solution a little deeper such as firewall restrictions. However, if you have a child under the age of 12 and would like an easy to use and reasonably safe solution for allowing your child to be on the internet, I recommend Glubble. Rather than taking the approach of blocking specific keywords or sites, Glubble takes the approach that all content is blocked and that you can then allow your children to see specifically what you dictate. In fact, you can actually allow a site access to one child and not another if you desire.

Glubble installs as a plugin to Firefox. As a Linux guy, I honestly have no clue if there is any alternative for Internet Explorer users, but you shouldn't be using it anyway. :) When the plugin is installed and the browser is run for the first time, it prompts you through either logging in to an existing Glubble account or creating a new one. When you create an account, you become the proud owner of your very own "Glubble". Think of this as a specific hub that your family is attached to. As an owner you can add users, which by default are bound to the restrictions you set, but can also be promoted to manage your Glubble.

When you visit your Glubble home, you will see if your kids are currently online, where they last visited, and more. On the right there is a "wall" (think Facebook) that allows you to leave messages back and forth, and will display requests and approval/declines for new sites.

Here is a shot of my home (click for full size)

Glubble comes pre-setup with scores of children friendly sites which you can granularly enable/disable.

Here is a screenshot of the default sites that are included out of the gate (click for full size)

What's even cooler, is that within the built-in sites, you can even have further granular control of specific elements within them if you so desire. Take a look at this. (click for full size)

Pretty cool huh? As you can see I can allow or remove any particular section. As my children come across a new site that is not approved, they are presented with a screen that explains that the site is not yet allowed and then gives them the option to request it from one of the approved "managers" (aka Mommy and Daddy). Meanwhile, while I am at work and have a browser open, a small window displays at the top of my browser telling me that Hudson or Parker have requested access to whatever site they hit. I can then approve it remotely, which instantlly makes it available for them. Additionally, if I come across a site that I would like them to see and have access to, I can add it from my end. In the two screenshots below, I will add a site I created about my Grand Canyon hike with my dad.

When I click on the +Add button, I am prompted with this....

As you can see, you can quickly build a nice and manageable library of safe websites for your children. Another testimony is the fact that my kids actually enjoy using it. When I recently put a new Linux distro on my son's computer, one of his requests was for me to install Glubble. To him, it is an easy way to access the content he likes. To me, I like the content that he can access!

Firebug with Firefox 3 in Ubuntu Hardy Heron

Tue, 06 May 2008 14:42:06 GMT

Several months ago when I first tried out Firefox 3, I found that I couldn't get Firebug to work. At that time, I was still on 7.10 (Gutsy) and just rolled back to Firefox 2 and carried on about my business. Once I upgraded to 8.04 (Hardy), where its default Firefox is FF3, I tried again. I still had failures and no matter which "fix" I came across, I still was never able to open Firebug in a panel, but only in a separate window.

That all changed this morning! I was looking through packages and discovered that there is a Firebug package in the Ubuntu repos. I promptly uninstalled Firebug from the extensions settings in the Firefox and closed my browser. I went to terminal and typed:

$ sudo apt-get install firebug

... I then opened up Firefox 3 and BAM! It works exactly like it should. I have no idea what the difference is in this version of Firebug, but for whatever reason, my problems are solved.

Kid safe browsing with Glubble

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 21:00:57 GMT

My oldest son is starting to use his computer more and more as of late. He has recently discovered the Super Mario Brothers clone SuperTux, and after beating all the levels has started experimenting with the built-in level editor to create his own. The Google search built into his browser has made it so easy for him to start searching to find answers on doing that, among all his other interests (Webkinz, USB Funkeys, and whatever other commercial just happened to be on TV). Prior to a recent upgrade to Ubuntu Gutsy on his machine, he used Ubuntu Christian Edition which uses Dan's Guardian parental controls. I have been very happy with that, but the weakness is that it takes a blacklist approach, meaning only sites that have been added by Dan's Guardian will be blocked. As good as they could possibly be, I can't count on them to catch everything. On his new operating system, I was looking for a good solution and came across Glubble, which is a cross-platform Firefox plugin that allows parents to white-list known good sites and allow kids to only see sites that have been approved.

I haven't set it up yet, but I just watched the video tour and it looks impressive! If you are looking for a solution to this as I am, go check it out. I will post back results after setting it up on his machine tonight.

Photoshop contest: What else could this cake have said?

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 18:43:02 GMT

I was looking at the links on the most recent version of the ColdFusion Weekly , and saw the posting about the IE team sending a cake to the Firefox team congratulating them on their 2.0 release.

view here

It made me think... what else could this cake have appropriately said? To graciously borrow an idea from fark.com , I decided it might make fun blog post. If you feel like contributing, post a link to your hosted image (I recommend ImageShack ) in the comments and I will add it to this post.

Here is a blank to get you started.

And here is my first entry:

Submitted entries follow:

From Aaron Lynch:

OK, one more from me...

from Richard Collett:

One more from "Pie is better":

We have landed

Sun, 10 Jul 2005 05:00:00 GMT

Well, I have installed my blogging software. Time to play. :)