Written on May 3, 2008 – 2:09 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just the Valley), exciting new technologies and inspiring entrepreneurs. If you're new here, you may want to read our '
About' page and subscribe to our
RSS feed.
If you came here from Digg it would be great if you could actually Digg us too! Do you have a start-up that we should write about?
Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!
You’ll probably recognize this. My less web-savvy friends are sometimes really surprised when they see me searching for something on the web. They had no idea one could do it so fast. Yet what I’m doing is not that special, e.g. using terms like AND or NOT. For them it’s one of the many mysteries the new digital age brought along.
The people behind the Boolify project stumbled upon a similar problem. Teachers and librarians told them they had a hard time teaching kids to search. Which actually surprises me, as I had figured kids pick up new technologies pretty fast. Anyhow, Boolify has developed an overlay service on Google’s “Safe Search STRICT” technology that illustrates the logic of search, using colored puzzle pieces. These visual cues help children to create a mental model of the search they’re performing. Eventually, it should learn them how to sift information from all the web noise.
So imagine you’re an English kid from Birmingham, looking for a playground. Yet you’re afraid of dogs and totally dig the swing. So you start using Boolify. But after the first keywords, only stores that sell ‘playground equipment’ keep popping up. Apparently they know their SEO. So you exclude them as well. This is how it will look:
Thanks Charles Knight from Altsearchengines for the tip.
Written on January 12, 2008 – 1:59 pm
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck
Have you ever seen a 12 year old behind a computer? It is amazing what the youngsters do and how they communicate. Ten different chat screens open, chatting and sharing pictures at the speed of light, while playing a game and browsing through their friends’ photos on their social network. Beep-beep… text message number 351 of this month just came in.
Most of the times the chats and websites visited are harmless, but kids have access to some things you, as a parent, don’t want them to see. Enters Glubble. Glubble is a free add-on to Firefox that keeps your children away from all ‘unsafe sites’. I have been playing around with it, and after I finally decided that my future son should be named Beppe (don’t ask me why), I got started.
Basically, you have a Firefox browser where you can make multiple identities for your children (and maybe your wife). As a parent you can make full use of the web and if you’re on a site that may be seen by your children you can ‘glubble’ it. When a child tries to visit a site that it not approved, they are blocked and instead the parent gets a message asking them to approve the site. I can already see a new weekend to-do thing for couples, instead of accepting ‘friends’ on Facebook, you’re approving websites your son and daughter want to see…
To speed up things you can team up with other trusted parents, this is the social aspect of Glubble, and then all trusted websites are shared. Search engine results are filtered as well.
It will be interesting to see how this will evolve. Their target market will probably be Internet Explorer users who don’t have a clue how their kids are using the web let alone how to install and use Glubble. Another problem I can foresee is that children might not accept that they are limited in their browsing behavior and this might end up in big discussions during dinner. They will have their share of challenges to face, but a good team and a fair amount of money could do the trick.
Glubble is backed by Morton Lund and Soren Kenner and word goes around that Dutch multi millionaire Marcel Boekhoorn invested in the company as well. It is founded by Ian Hayward and Willem Jan Schutte. Ian worked at Firefox and is the brain behind the hugely successful Spread Firefox campaign. They have a development team in Costa Rica, Birmingham and Amsterdam and offices in San Francisco and soon New York.
If you don’t have children, but do want to get rid of your online gambling addiction and other adult stuff you always deny watching at, Glubble might be of help.
They are now in closed-beta, if you want to be one of the first beta testers once they’ll go in private beta, leave a ‘child friendly’ comment and Heleen (Glubble Biz Dev) will make sure we can give them to you.
Email
Twitter
Facebook
Netlog
Linkedin
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
