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Please note: The reports in this section are not product reviews or tests; they're meant to spotlight options for you to consider, as well as milestones in children's online-safety technology development. Comments from readers on their own experiences with these products and services are most welcome - and, with your permission, we publish them. Do email us your own product reviews anytime!
2 useful Web directories (July 21, '00 issue)
LibrarySpot.com has already earned a lot of recognition: e.g., it's one of Forbes's 33 best sites and among PC Magazine's Top 100. So this is just to make sure you're aware of this meaty Web reference library, which aims "make finding the best topical information on the Internet a quick, easy and enjoyable experience. It links to online libraries (government, law, medical, music, etc.), reference books (dictionaries, almanacs, atlases, quotations, calendars, associations), lists (spelling bee winners; prize winners; top 100 books, news stories, and languages), and even a page on how to cite Internet sources in research papers!
As you can probably tell, "Just What I Asked For" was designed to be self-explanatory! Probably the two best one-word descriptions of it are "spare" and "safe." Unlike in Yahoo!, you won't find a link in this directory to any Web material you wouldn't want your children to see. In familiar categories - Arts & Culture, Education, Entertainment, Money, Parenting, Reference, Shopping, Travel, and others - there are links to "large and small sites, well-known and obscure," says the site's Webmaster. All sites are screened for kidsafe-ness. The goal, he says, is to make it "easier to find things without all the clutter." The JWIAF directory is also compliant with disability accessibility rules (if users click on a button that allows them to have all pages displayed in one window, without frames).
If any of you try these and would like to comment on the experience, fellow subscribers would probably appreciate your perspective. Please email us.
Editor's Note: Following this report, a subscriber wrote us about JWIAF.com. Here's the item in the next newsletter....
A subscriber writes: JWIAF.com & not-so-safe search
Subsciber Christina in Virginia checked out the "Just What I Asked For" directory - one of the family Web resources we told you about last week - and had a good point to make. She tested the Google search window at the bottom of JWIAF.com's home page by searching for sex sites and got four on the first page of results. Her conclusion: "They shouldn't offer this search if they say the site is 'safe' for children."
We appreciate her making this point. What we should've mentioned in our report is that only the JWIAF directory itself can be considered a family resource - not the search gening JWIAF provides for further research (they're following the Yahoo! directory's example; Yahoo! uses Google too).
Few search engines on the Web are child-safe - with the exception of Ask Jeeves for Kids and Go.com and Lycos.com. And the latter two are only for children if parents turn on Go's "GoGuardian" and Lycos's "Parental Controls," which are links just below the search boxes on both home pages.
Thanks to all subscribers who send in useful comments!
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