These features may not be enough for all parents, however. Windows Live Family Safety 2011 expands the controls to include web filtering and activity reporting, among other things.

Installation & Setup

To obtain Family Safety 2011 you need to visit the Windows Live Essentials website and download the package. This package contains a wealth of software, but you can choose to only install the Family Safety features if you’d like.

Once installed, you’ll be prompted with a screen that lets you choose which accounts you’d like to monitor. As you can see above, I’ve chosen my example “Child’s Account” for monitoring. In addition to this, Windows will recommend that you disable guest accounts, since they can be used by anyone as a means to bypass account monitoring. Alternatively, you can add a password to the guest account.

Now Family Safety is active, and the accounts you specified during setup have been given some default settings, as shown above.

Web Filtering & Contact Management

Although the Family Safety software must be installed on the PC you’d like to monitor, the settings are adjusted via a web interface made available online through the Windows Live website. There are two specific categories of settings that are now available which aren’t included in the standard Parental Controls.

Web Filtering is the first, and provides a way to automatically prevent your child from accessing certain websites while using his or her account. There are five default settings that can be utilized, ranging from extremely restrictive (only websites you approve can be accessed) to completely open (all websites can be accessed). It’s also possible to block specific websites based on their URL.

The other category, Contact Management, makes it possible to control your child’s contacts when they’re using a Windows Live ID. For example, you could make it impossible for him or her to chat online with anyone you have not approved.

Requests

Although Web Filtering works to prevent your child from seeing unapproved sites, it doesn’t prevent them from entering the URL. Doing so brings up a request page instead of the actual website. Your child can use this page to request access to a specific site.

For example, I limited my Child’s Account to allow Child-Friendly content only. When logged into the Child’s Account, attempting to access a new site like CNN results in the notification below.

Any requests made will show up in the web interface, where they can be approved or denied.

Activity Reporting

Perhaps the most powerful feature of Windows Live Family Safety 2011 is activity reporting. This does what it states. Using the web interface, it’s possible for a parent to see what is happening on a child account.

This includes the websites that are visited, including when they’re accessed, as well as important computer activity such as when the account is logged in and the programs that are used. In the case of web activity, all sites are reported even if they are blocked, and those that are blocked can be approved.

Although the standard Parental Controls allows for parents to proactively stop children from using certain software or accessing a computer at certain times, Activity Monitoring makes it possible to make sure the rules aren’t being stretched. The fact that the interface is web based is also a boon, since it’s possible for a parent to keep tabs on a child’s account even at work or on the road.

Conclusion

Windows Live Family Safety is an impressive software suite, particularly when the low price of free is considered. Although there are other paid solutions available, the default Parental Controls combined with the advanced Family Safety features should provide everything a parent needs to keep tabs on their child’s computer use.

This might encourage a parent to police a child’s use constantly, but this is tiring for both parent and child. A better alternative is to use parental control software capable of locking access to certain software. Windows has these controls built in, and they’re easy to learn.

Giving Your Child An Account

Windows uses accounts as a means of restricting user access to certain parts of the operating system. This function has more to do with security than it does parental controls. By restricting the access of people who don’t have administrative privileges it’s more difficult for hackers to take over a Windows machine.

However, the accounts system is also well suited for parental controls. When you access the Parental Controls menu in the Windows control panel you’ll be presented with a list of users. You may have already created an account specifically for your child, but if not, find the “Create a new user account” link at the bottom of the list and click it.

You’ll then be asked to put in a name for the account, and you can also require that the account input a password when it is first used. I don’t recommend this with younger children, as they’ll likely forget, but teens should be able to remember the password.

Once you’ve created the account you’ll be sent back to the Parental Controls menu. Now you have an account that can be used by your child.

Defining The Rules

Now that your child’s account appears in Parental Controls, click on it to access the account’s settings. By default, the controls will be turned off. Simply click the On radio button to activate them.

Now you’ll have access to three different rules: time limits, games, and allow and block specific programs.

Time limits are not used to limit the amount of time the account can be used but rather when the account can be used. Access to the account is not allowed during the blocked time periods, and the account will be logged off if active in those time periods.

Games lets you decide if an account can be used to play games, and decide what games your child can play based on the rating of the game. It’s also possible to block specific titles. While these are excellent controls, keep in mind that ratings are only a guideline. What one parent finds acceptable may be intolerable for another.

The final control makes it possible to define the specific programs you’d like your child to have access to. If you want to block web access, this is an easy way to do so (by blocking all web browsers). It’s also possible to block potentially damaging software. For example, I wouldn’t want a mischievous teen to have access to TrueCrypt.

Advanced Controls

Near the bottom of the Parental Controls menu you’ll find a section labeled Advanced Controls. This is where you’ll be able to make changes to advanced tools like web filtering.

These advanced controls are not installed by default, however. You’ll have to install some other software to access them. Microsoft itself offers a free program called Windows Live Family Safety that can be easily acquired as part of Windows Live Essentials.

Conclusion

The built-in parental controls found in Windows are a great boon for every parent. Monitoring a child’s usage of a PC can be tiresome, and at times not feasible. By learning to use the controls above you can protect your child even when you’re not present.  Let us know what you think about them in the comments.  Is Parental Controls in Windows effective?

Parenting can be quite isolating at times, since you’re often stuck at home while kids sleep. So the Internet is the ideal way to quickly reach the rest of the world and regain some much-needed laughs and perspective.

Dooce

Dooce is, well, Dooce. There’s an extreme personality lurking behind this blog and if it’s not for you you’ll know within seconds of arriving on the site. But those who love Dooce find themselves strangely addicted. There’s a reason this blog is still massively popular 10 years down the track and I’m certain that’s more to do with the personality than the poop. And really, there’s a lot of poop.

As far as the blog itself goes, Heather is a professional blogger and mum living in a regular household of chaos and making sure the gory details are laughed at by more than just the people within her home.

Note I managed to find a screenshot which didn’t involve any mention of poop. I hope you’re proud.

Theta Mom

Not the alpha mum, or the beta mum. Theta Mom is a blog for those who come a little further down the super-mum ranks and can honestly think of more than a few recent screw-ups to prove their position. In other words, it’s for most of us. This blog is all about balancing work and parenting roles, offering plenty of sound advice and a few funny anecdotes. It’s built a community to support working parents and allows members to write the occasional guest post for the blog.

Baby Rabies

Baby Rabies is purely a stay-at-home-mum blog at the moment, but that’s not to say it’s not as valuable as the working parent perspectives. The writer is a 30-year-old mother of two who writes in a candid, often hilarious style about her new life as a mother. She’s the sort of person who used to be a career woman who loved her heels and Starbucks, but got an incurable bout of Baby Rabies and wound up mothering.

Mushbrain

Mushbrain describes itself and the mental state of the writer and readers perfectly in one completely invented word. It’s all about the craziness of life, motherhood and the strange things you find yourself doing. Occasionally mentioning the horrible bits of parenting you wish you’d never experienced, this blog mainly laughs at how different parenting looks from the parent’s side of the picture.

Dagmar’s Momsense

Dagmar’s Momsense is all about parenting from a frugal, green and generally sensible perspective. Dagmar rants about everyday parenting issues, such as balancing work and family. She’s a little opinionated at times, but if you’re open minded it can serve to enlighten you of new perspectives.

GeekDad

Wired’s GeekDad is much loved by geeks and dads worldwide. It blends a classy mix of geekiness with cool things you can do with your kids. There’s lots of DIY projects, games and sci-fi fanaticism.

If you’re looking after kids and trying to juggle freelance work or a home business alongside, these posts are for you:

• 5 Legitimate Online Self-Employment Opportunities
• 10 Free Android Apps A Busy Mom Will Love
• How To Get Paid Sponsorship For Your Blog
• 10 Awesome & Inspiring Blogs for Entrepreneurs and Business Owners
• Earn Referral Payments By Posting Relevant Job Listings On Your Website

Obviously there’s many more blogs for parents out there. Let us know of your favourite parenting blogs in the comments!

Even though parents understand the risk, many don’t understand the technology enough to install or enable the appropriate filters. A lot of people use parental control software, like the 5 that Varun previously covered, or other programs like FamilyShield or Visikid, which Tim covered.

The only problem with most of the existing techniques or applications is that they require a fair level of knowledge and computer ability to configure and get running properly. However, if you are like the many parents out there that would simply like to block a few specific sites you know about that you absolutely don’t want your kids visiting, then a program like Any Weblock may be perfect for you.

Setting Up Any Weblock

Any Weblock is one of the simplest applications to use, which is why I recommend it for parents that are not at all computer-savvy. Setup is a very brief three step process – install and configure, add the websites to blog, and then activate your changes. The first step is pretty straightforward. The first time you run the installed application, it will ask you what you want to set up as the administrator password.

Make sure this is something your kids, or whoever you’re trying to block content from, cannot easily guess. Obviously, using your name or simple passwords that you use all the time is not a good idea. The next step of configuration involves setting up the websites that you’d like to block. Now, if you want to bring in existing blacklists, just click on the “Import” button.

Adding Websites To The Filter

On the import screen you can bring in XML list files that you exported from your other computer (making it easy to use one list across multiple PCs), or you can click on the external link and visit the AnyUtils website for external blacklists, such as Shalla’s blacklist, which has over 1.4 million entries.

Keep in mind that this many entries may hamper performance on some systems, so if you find that you can’t access any website after enabling such a long list, just click on the “Roll back” button to set things back to before you applied the filter and then try a few lists. If you have specific sites that you want to block, such as certain popular social networking sites that make kids lose track of time and not do their homework, you can do so by clicking the green “Add” button.

In its simplest form, you just type in the domain of the site you want to block in its entirety and click OK. That’s all there is to it. No DNS configuration, no control panel searching and no hacking skills required.

Once you click on “Apply changes“, you won’t be able to access the websites that you’ve added to your blacklist. This isn’t one of those applications that only works with IE. Once you add a domain to your blacklist, no browser will be able to access the website. If you try, you’ll see the following error.

The software is also flexible enough so that you can block subdomains without actually blocking an entire domain. This work swell for websites like Blogspot, because there are many websites hosted on the blogspot.com domain, but you may only want to actually block one or two of them. With the ability to block only subdomains, you can do that.

Visiting BlogSpot.com, you’ll see that you can access the main domain just fine. If you attempt to visit any of the subdomain websites you’ve banned, up comes the “Unable to connect” error.

Other Features

There are a few other cool features of this software. For example, as I mentioned briefly earlier, you can export your entire blacklist to any directory on the network or onto another computer. To do this, just select the export button at the top of the main screen.

The blacklist (or block list) file is exported as an XML file. Any other PC with Any Weblock installed can import this XML file, which makes it very easy to use matching blocklists on all of your family PCs.

Once Weblock is installed on a particular PC, the next time you (or one of your kids) tries to run it, they will encounter a password entry window. The only way to get into the software to configure or disable it is to type in this password – so when you set it up initially, don’t lose it!

Weblock is one of the fastest and easiest ways to initiate a website ban list for every web browser on a PC without the need for complicated configurations or tweaking every browser. Just install, create your banlist, and you’re off!

Image credit: Armin Hanisch

Since we have recently had a new girl, I wanted to share sites which were helpful to us, to you. After consulting with my wife, we came up with the following list of baby websites that are a great help to the expecting or soon-to-be expecting mom or dad.

General Pregnancy Sites

I consider all of these sites to be “General pregnancy” sites because they are a wide ranging resource for all things related to being pregnant. Many have articles on various aspects of pregnancy and forums with other parents (but mainly moms) looking for others for help on any number of topics. Each site has its own ‘vibe’ so I would pick which one you like the most and stick with it throughout pregnancy rather reading every article. Reading too much about potential problems is a great way to add unnecessary anxiety to your life.

the bump

The Bump is a spinoff of The Knot and The Nest message boards and publications. These sites are mainly female oriented.

babycenter

Babycenter is a site focused not only the pregnancy part but also after your child is born.

parenting

Parenting is a companion website to the magazine of the same name. They are one of the more well known players in the baby website game because of how established they are in the magazine world.

What To Expect

This is another companion baby website, but this time it goes along with the book “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.” Back when I had my first baby, this book was the go-to resource for many of our questions and was invaluable in helping us along during a confusing time. The website seems to keep this tradition alive with a wide variety of content

How To Name Your Baby

Once of the biggest decisions while pregnant is what to name your baby. You can go with a family name or poll your friends and family, but there are some great resources online if you are looking for (more) original names.

Top Baby Names from Social Security

The United States Social Security service has been keeping statistics on baby names going back to 1879. They are listed in their entirety on this website. It is a great way to look through tons of names quickly.

Nymbler

Nymbler is a good site and among my favorites for finding baby names. What you do is put in a few of your favorite names and it will start to recommend other names that are similar based on root and origin of the name. You can use it to recommend boys’ or girls’ names.

Name Voyager

The Name Voyager from Baby Name Wizard is probably one of the coolest visualizations of the bunch and it really appealed to a nerd like me. As you type in a name, the wizard creates a graph of any name starting with those letters plotting popularity over time. While not good for discovering names, it does give you a good idea of how popular a name is over time and whether is a waxing or waning in popularity.

During Labor

I can’t say there is much you can really do online during labor & delivery. My wife did use the baby website below to get a better idea of how far away her contractions were. If you are in labor, you typically should not be online.

Contraction Master

Contraction master has a free app on its website which allows you to time contractions. It is simple and no frills, but lets you time the length and frequency of the contractions which is one of the first things a doctor will ask you about when deciding whether or not to send you to the hospital.

Congratulations! You Have A Baby!

Baby Connect

We’ve covered Baby Connect before but it is definitely worth including in this list. It is one of the premier sites to help track all kinds of things about your baby. Nap times, feeding times, diaper happenings and more. It has both a free website to track this information and also iPhone and iPad apps (which are paid) that will synchronize with your online account.

It is a slick way to keep all of this information together and is useful for troubleshooting any kind of feeding or other problems with the baby. Basically it takes the place of having a paper log of this information.

KidMondo

Keeping a baby journal is a time honored tradition. KidMondo extends this onto the internet in an easy to use fashion and lets you type in milestones and data about your kid over time. After you are ready, you can print out the journal in a book format which is a great keepsake going into the future.

I was impressed with the depth of the site – it encompasses almost everything you could think of to put in a journal. From photos to height and weight measurements, it has it all. Because a laptop is not always at hand, the one thing I do wish it has is an iPhone app.

So that is a quick and dirty rundown of websites that should help you out when you are expecting. Let us know if you have any other web sites you think should have made the list in the comments below!

Image credit: Shutterstock

We, at MakeUseOf.com haven’t shortchanged them at all. From apps for kids to specific posts that cover fun sites, search engines, games, or inspiration, we try to do our bit. Because, more than the child, it’s also the parent who is searching for a safe corner on the web for unadulterated kiddie fun.

Video websites for kids is a popular search term on the web. Just as adults have the best of television and the online world when it comes to video, so should our kids. It’s just that there content needs to be more strictly moderated and should blend in subjects that are for kids-eyes-only.

So here are ten online video streaming websites for kids that are closest to a responsible parent’s heart, and of course the kid’s.

Kideos

Kideos.com and its collection of videos for kids cover their entertainment till age 10. In fact, you or your child can select videos by age. Then there are the child friendly channels like Harry Potter, Farm Animals, Space, Cute Animals, etc. to pick a video to watch from. Most of the videos are hosted on YouTube. Each video gets screened for appropriateness before it features on the online video site. If you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or an iPad, then there’s a free app available for download too.

Kideo Player

Kideo Player is YouTube website for kids. It is also probably has the most kid friendly way to view videos. It’s similar to a playlist of selected videos which the kids can go through with a press of the spacebar. The most popular ones are those which have the least spacebar skips. You can press “˜F’ for full screen view of the videos. The idea is to keep things super simple for the youngest among your kids.

KidMango

Kid Mango is a popular online destination for children’s videos – from preschool up to the age of 12. The site is run by GenMouse Inc. who host a bunch of kid-safe websites. Unfortunately, the videos are not available for my country (India). The KidMango Library has popular shows from some of the world’s best producers of animation and live action. It showcases over two thousand videos covering everything from Einstein to aliens and vampires to Leonardo da Vinci.

Kids Tube

KidsTube.com aims to join the lineup of child-friendly and family friendly video sites. Here, kids can also upload their own videos and socially network with other members. Children can also start their own micro-blogs. The arrangement of videos is like most video portals. The unique thing is that Kids Tube also runs a lot of contests around user uploaded videos. For instance, weekly contests around a theme. It’s a great outlet for perking up your child’s imagination.

Kidz Bop

Kidz Bop is a carefully moderated, child-friendly website for kids where they can make and upload their own webshows and videos, play games and get creative with music and art. On the free children’s website, you can create a series of episodes into your own webshow. If not a complete webshow, you can upload short videos. Your uploaded videos can also be turned into a contest for others to vote and enjoy.

National Geographic

National Geographic has a whole channel website dedicated to kids. From funny animal videos to videos that take you to wondrous places, the videos are excellent for education and fun. The free children’s website comes with the quality that’s the hallmark of National Geographic.

Discovery Kids – Beyond

Just like National Geographic’s offering for kids, Discovery Channel also has one of its own. A mix of education and fun, the lineup of videos is a reflection of what Discovery Kids shows on TV. The clips are kept short enough for attention spans of the little ones.

ZuiTube

ZuiTube is brought to you by the guys who developed KidZui, the free browser for kids. ZuiTube is a children’s website filled to the brim with videos that are approved by parents and teachers. Most of the videos are sourced from YouTube. It also advertises itself as the largest online collection of children’s videos.

Kidyos

Covering fun activities like videos, games, and music, Kidyos is worth a look if you have a child who is between 1 and 6 years of age. The site screens its collection from YouTube but also provides a few language options like German, French, Spanish, and Hebrew apart from English.

PBS Kids

PBS Kids is the online children’s website of the Public Broadcasting Service (U.S). What you get are lots of little videos on the characters from the shows that the channel broadcasts. You can Clifford the Big Red Dog, Dot’s Story Factory, Sesame Street, Curious George, and other shows on the children’s website.

Dedicated children’s video websites are not overflowing on the web unlike their adult counterparts. YouTube of course, hosts a lot of videos but YouTube is a soup of all kinds of videos, most of which might be inappropriate for young eyes. Drop a comment if you have a video website for children that you would like the kiddie world to know about.

Image credit: Wayan Vota

Browsing safe content is the single most reason for calling up search engines made specifically for kids. A search page that appeals with its looks could be the second. Letting a kid having the run of the web using a search engine for kids helps to lessen the worry load on a parent’s mind.

Of course, there is no guarantee that every search will be kid-safe, but there is a higher probability with the content indexed by these niche search engines for kids. You can tweak the search engine settings which every search tool worth its name has. On the other hand you can use these ten ready-made search resources.

Boolify

Kids are not supposed to understand the use of Boolean operators in search. Boolify makes it easier by providing the operators as colorful jigsaw pieces. All they need to do is drag them to center board and construct the search.

For instance, drag the “˜Word’ piece for entering the keyword, and then modify it by dragging the other pieces like “˜And’, “˜Or’, “˜Not’ etc to combine it with other keywords.

Quintura for Kids

Quintura for Kids is powered by Yahoo. It gives a more visual way of searching using a keyword cloud. You start off your search with a keyword in the text box and then modify it with any of the keywords in the cloud. Quintura displays five results per page. You may miss it, but clicking on the surrounding icons takes you to the five preset search categories ““ Music, History, Animals, Sports and recreation, and Games.

KidRex

KidRex is a custom Google search engine for kids. The interface is just like a child’s crayon drawing (the dinosaur stands guard). It uses SafeSearch and tries to keep all the results as antiseptic as possible.

KidRex also has its own database of inappropriate websites and keywords which further help to keep the results clean.

Ask Kids

Ask Kids is a search engine for kids from Ask.com’s pool of web resources. The search page resembles a school note book. Apart from the search box, five preset search categories – Schoolhouse, Movies, Games, Videos and Images, help out the kiddies research all kinds of stuff.

Kids can jump from the search results to images, narrow or expand the search, find related names and other information. It borrows the features from Ask.com and its regular search, but keeps it simple for kids.

KidsClick

KidsClick makes it clear in its About page that it is not an internet filter. It is a directory of good resources (a 600+ strong subject list) which kids can use for information or schoolwork. KidsClick is owned and run by the School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) at Kent State University. As the web resource links to a comprehensive collection of good, clean sites, the KidsClick interface is without any ads.

Yahoo Kids

Yahoo Kids is the doorway to Yahoo’s directory of websites and URLs exclusively for kids. The homepage is colorful, engaging, and full of cool stuff to keep your child engaged. So much so, that it’s quite easy to miss out the search box at the top corner. Search results are collated under three sections – Results in Yahoo! Kids, Results in the Yahoo! Kids Directory, and Results on the Web.

Study Search

Study Search is a customized Google search engine (with Google SafeSearch) for Australian schools. That shouldn’t stop the rest of the world using it. The search taps into the database of relevant sites created for primary and secondary Australian schools. The database of worldwide links has been built up by Australian teachers, librarians and site volunteers.

SquirrelNet

SquirrelNet is a kids only search engine that has Google SafeSearch activated. From the homepage itself, you can also access the Google directory of websites relevant for children.

Aga-Kids

Aga-Kids is a visual search engine for kids and one of the more colorful ones you will see. You can choose between a visual search and a text search. The search results come up as interactive and animated thumbnails.

The search results may be limited because the search engine searches only websites that are made for children.

Dib Dab Doo and Dilly Too

If any name shouts out that it’s a search engine for kids, then this is it. The search engine is again based on Google Custom Search and it tries to keep the content as children friendly as possible.

Custom search helps to keep out a lot of unsavory links, but it is definitely not foolproof. Most of the search engines for kids also display ads with some undesirable ones sneaking in. Parental control software in combination with these search engines can help to keep children shielded from the bad side of the web. It is a tough battle but parents can worry a little less. These ten search engines for kids are just the search tools for some unattended browsing around an unsafe web.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons