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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!
HEYnetwork: Private family community (Feb. 4, '00)
On the HEYnetwork, a family can create a closed online community for itself. Though "public" features on the site - news, sports, weather, stock quotes, horoscopes, and e-commerce - are available to all users, the parent administrator controls what individual family members experience on the site. Children get their own user name and password so that, when they log on, they don't see ads in the HEY site, and their email comes only from parent-allowed parties. Like other children's communities on the Net (e.g., Surf Monkey, Headbone Zone and FreeZone), kids' communications at HEY are run through an automated profanity filter. As for e-commerce, each family has its own "electronic wallet" whereby the parent administrator manages children's e-commerce experience (it's a bit like ICanBuy.com's e-commerce solution for kids).
Besides HEY's e-wallet and gift registry features, the concept of a private family area - with message boards, chat, and calendar - is not particularly new. It's also used at FamilyShoebox.com and other family-community services. But the HEYnetwork is multilingual, available now in English, French, and Spanish (it says more languages will be added this year), and there's an effort here to give parents more control over children's online experience. However, we don't believe this service replaces more far-reaching filtering products and server-based services.
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