We just wanted to make a quick announcement that we have expanded our line of family-friendly products with our new app for the iPhone and iPod touch. It is called Cartoon Creator and with it you can easily create your own animations with genuine cartoon sound effects and 3D!
It’s only $0.99 USD for a limited time. Check it out!
http://www.mycartooncreator.com
You can also join our Facebook fan page here:
Cartoon Creator 3D Facebook Fan Site
If you are a Facebook user, it is worth reminding you that advertisers can, without your permissions, use your profile information and photo within their ads. The advertiser’s hope is that a friend of yours will see you in an ad, resulting in you looking at the ad and hopefully clicking through to their site.
I’ve seen my friends and co workers in ads. It’s funny how they usually show up in ads to meet singles in our area. Yet we are all married. Many were astonished to hear me tell them I saw them in an ad. They were even more astonished when I showed them the ad with their mug in it. Imagine your vegan buddy being in an ad for your local meat market.
Facebook provides a way for you to opt-out, but it is buried a few clicks deep. You can find the steps at the end of this post, but I would like you to consider an idea first.
I think Facebook needs a new feature that pays you a percentage of the advertisers bid price when an ad runs with your mug in it. I think between ten and twenty percent might be a good starting point. So if an advertiser is paying $.10 per thousand impressions, you should be paid $.01 for each ad that you are in. If the ad gets 100,000 impressions with your face, you get a buck. If the advertiser pays a dollar or more by the click, you get between $.10 and $.20 each click. While it may not sound like much, it can add up. Heck, Facebook thinks it’s good enough for them.
We all know that the actors in commercials get paid. I say we should too! If you find this idea interesting, send a link for this blog entry to your friends and family. Post it on your Facebook wall. Re-tweet it on Twitter. If we get enough traction, maybe we can make it a reality. Or at least get Facebook to start acting a wee bit more honorably with our information.
Oh, and if you want to opt out of the ads, here’s how:
This article from PC World says that you likely do. It states that 4 out of 5, that is 80%, of parents that use parental control software don’t even enable it. Can that really even be considered use? What’s more, the article goes on to cite that 52% of parents don’t even bother to configure the software!
The question this raises in my mind is: Why?
This additional article offers a reason: most parents who want to monitor their child’s online activity don’t know how to do it. The article goes on to state “Parents need to become more tech savvy first before they can start educating their kids on what’s right and wrong.”
And there is the problem. Parents already know what’s right and wrong for their kids; they just need the right tools to help them protect their kids. Effective parental control software must be designed, built and maintained so that parents DO NOT need to become tech savvy in order to keep their kids safe online.
When we started development of Guardrail we understood that many parents didn’t know how to configure their parental controls so that they were both effective and functional. With this in mind, we decided that our key differentiators would be to make Guardrail the most secure AND the easiest to use. After all, if you don’t use parental controls software it doesn’t matter how secure it is. And you won’t use it if it is too difficult to do so.
We encourage you to learn more about how Guardrail is more secure and easier to use by visiting our web site. You can even try it free for 14 days. Sure, we’re the new kid on the block, but we’re here for the long haul. And we don’t think you need to earn a Computer Science degree before knowing how to keep your kids safe online.
Benjamin Franklin once said “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” In today’s always connected society, this quote is especially relevant. Technology, and the world wide web in particular, have made it easy for nearly anyone with a computer to publish their thoughts online. But like any other tool that can be used for good, it can also be misused.
Microsoft has developed a reputation, dare I say notoriety, for quirky software that is full of bugs and easy to exploit by hackers. Apple even takes advantage of this notoriety in their “I’m a Mac” commercials. But here is a dirty little secret about those bugs: they don’t generally cause any harm unless someone with malicious intent sets out to exploit them. So to make software more secure, they use what is known as the principle of least trust. That is, their software is designed to distrust input and then explicitly check each input to determine if it is safe and then appropriate. This can get technical so I won’t bore you with the details.
The world wide web works in the same way. There are web sites you have identified as appropriate and trustworthy, others that are inappropriate or untrustworthy, and then there are others you just don’t know anything about. These are the sites that you don’t even realize can do damage to your computer by spreading viruses or installing Trojan Horses. They can also do intangible damage by showing content that is inappropriate for many, with the intent of making a buck regardless of who it harms.
Sites like Facebook, My Space, blogs, etc. operate and thrive on what is called “user-generated content”. What this means is that it is difficult and potentially counter-productive for them to verify every input (i.e. ad, blog post, story, photo, video, etc.) While much, of the content is fine, it’s extremely easy for someone with malicious intent to publish inappropriate or downright dangerous content, because that input is trusted and not verified as appropriate and safe.
For example, when I have used Facebook, I’ve seen multiple ads with photos of people in sexual situations. These ads were embedded into the Star Wars Figures application. This in an application that you would expect kids to play with. I’ve also seen ads on my page to meet sexy singles in the town I live in, but I’m happily married, faithful and my Facebook profile has indicated this from the very beginning. So why did I receive these ads? Because someone wanted me to see them. Always remember: advertising is targeted. If there are inappropriate ads in a kids application, they are there because someone paid to have them there. I’ve seen many such ads in that application as well as others.
Going back to our friend Mr. Franklin, my point is that it is better for a parent or guardian to block access to all web sites and then take the time to review and approve them on a case-by-case basis. Sure it may take a little more effort on your part, but aren’t your kids worth it?
If you are one of those who believes that such an approach is too much work, I ask you this question: Would you let your kids run wild and unsupervised in the city, visiting any business, hotel, back alley or meth lab they like?
Of course not! So why would you let them do the same online?
I finally got to try Bing yesterday when it was made available publicly. Using my special set of queries (which I always use to compare Live Search and Google), I discovered that the search results returned from Bing are the same as those returned from Live Search…no joy in the hopes that Microsoft improved their search relevancy.
Then a friend of mine who works for Microsoft sent me this. We bantered back and forth about how parental controls and search engines work, or don’t work, together. So I tried it for myself. I entered some search criteria and Bing correctly blocked the content. So far so good. But then Bing walked me through, dare I say it held my hand, how to turn off the safe search feature. It was so easy a kid could do it. Literally.
This isn’t much different than other search engines, like Google. You can fairly easily turn safe search OFF. But what I found really disappointing is I couldn’t find an easy way to turn Bing’s safe search back ON. I scoured the pages, clicked on Advanced Search, etc. To no avail. Finally, when I typed “safe search” in Bing’s help window, it gave me some instructions on how to turn it back on:
So I went to the Bing home page and looked for the Options link. There is none. Effectively, once Bing’s safe search is disabled, it’s difficult to re-enable it. I’m still looking for way to re-enable safe search. When I find it, I’ll update this post.
Viewers of the TV show American Idol almost got an unwelcome surprise this week. The show decided to allow viewers to vote for 13 contestants instead of the normal 12. Unfortunately, the phone number for contestant number 13 dials a phone sex operation. Not only that, but the IDOLS-00 number dials a phone sex operation as well. Fortunately, Idol staff learned about this before they went to air and they chose a new number.
What I find interesting, and why I am blogging about this incident, is the tactic that the owner of the phone line may have used when ordering the phone number. It is quite possible that the owner of the phone number exploited the phone number pattern that Idol uses and banked on the probability that thousands of American voters would accidentally mis-dial.
This technique is also used on the internet. You may have read about it in my original post. It’s like digital mistaken identity; a numeric costume of sorts; a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Any way you slice it, it’s not intended for your well being.
If you don’t think there are predators lying in wait, using technology to snare you and your children, think again.
For those of you who have been following along, the parental controls now have a name! The official name is Guardrail. While this isn’t my first choice for a name, there are several factors that go into picking a name. It should be catchy. It needs a domain. It must be available for trademark. I like Guardrail because people get it, as evidenced by the feedback I’ve received from some beta testers. I also like it because of the potential tag lines such as…
“Keeping you out of danger on the information superhighway”
Enough about the name. I’m very excited to announce that the first phase of the Guardrail beta test is underway. In about a week we will make the beta available to a wider audience. Initial feedback on web site has been very positive, and we hope to receive more feedback, good or bad. After all this product is for you; WE WANT YOU TO ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT.
We have some new features lined up and they are super exciting. But we have to get this baby out the door, so the new features will be coming in a few months. If you have ideas for new features, please feel free to use the “Report a Bug” link on the web site, add a comment here or send us feedback. We want to hear your ideas.
Also, this blog is new, but we will be posting here fairly regularly to keep you updated on the product as well as other relevant issues. I encourage you to subscribe using your newsreader. Let’s build a community of like-minded people who want to keep our families safe online.
Ever since I was 10 years old I have been interested in computers. On my 11th birthday my parents gave me a Commodore Vic-20 and that’s when my passion for programming began. By the age of 21 I was designing, installing and managing several local area networks (LANs) for the local government. This is where my interest in networking and security started to take root.
I started my first business in 1996 with the intent of building software that made it easier for system administrators to manage multiple LANs. More specifically, this entailed making it easy to move users and their data between different LANs such as from an OS/2 LAN in New York to an Windows NT LAN in Tokyo. To pay the bills I did some computer consulting and custom programming, while working on the product in my free time. Long story short, consulting took more and more time and the product never got finished. The competition eventually delivered on my vision.
Around the same time, I was receiving hundreds of junk-emails per day. I kept these emails and eventually built a nice spam filter that I named “G Mail”. The name was intended to mean something like “G-rated Email”. I didn’t trademark the name, and several years later, Google took the name.
Fast forward to 2008. My boss tells me that he is going to sign up on Facebook. His rationale was that he wanted to see what it was about before his kids eventually started using it. Now I’m not one who cares much for MySpace, Facebook, etc. but I understood his logic and eventually signed up myself. It was fun for the first couple of months, until I saw an ad with my boss’ face in it. The add pulled his picture from his profile. Then I started noticing somewhat offensive ads that said “Meet sexy singles in Hollywood”, only instead of Hollywood, the ad had the name of the town I live it. Not only were the ads pulling information from my profile, but they were displaying pictures I’d care not to see, nor my family to have to see. After seeing more and more of these hijinks, I decided something needed to be done.
The next morning was a beautiful summer morning in the Pacific Northwest. I was checking my email before heading into the office for work when I heard my daughter scream “Turn around! Don’t look!” Next came a scream from my wife “You turn around too!” Before I could get out of my office and into the living room, the kids were gone and my wife was coming to tell me what happened.
The family computer is connected to the TV in the living room so we can monitor what our kids do online. My son, then in first grade, was learning to spell. He learned phonetics, but not homonyms. On that fateful morning, rather than clicking the shortcut we gave him to check email, he decided to type it…
W…W…W…{dot}…H…O…T…M…A…L…E…{dot}…C…O…M…{enter}
In an instant, my kids saw pornography for the first time. My son wasn’t looking for it. He didn’t even know what it was. He just mis-typed. My daughter was an innocent bystander. This was the further confirmation that I needed to do something.
So here we are in 2009 and I have the opportunity to combine my passion for programming, my experience with computer security and the need for online safety. It’s the perfect storm to bring about the next generation of parental controls.