TechParent: Glubble
As I noted in Friday’s report, even those that think they are protecting their kids sometimes need to take another look. Well, I was doing just that when I found Glubble. Glubble is a sort of hybrid social network like front end tied in with a Parental Control product like NetNanny. It seems to run the idea that “the family” all uses one computer, and wants Glubble to act as its private Social Network, with “family messages” available through the front end, and a Family Home Page.
Glubble sets its heights very high, and expects that everybody in the family will want to live with this kiddie front end. Of course, that is also its greatest downfall. It contains its own version of Bookmarks (Warning: It wipes out yours in the process), it has a predefined whitelist of products that it has predetermined are OK for your child. While changing these aren’t difficult (it is only basically a whitelist), it is a bit tedious and more work that it should be.
If you and your children have different profiles, then this Firefox addon need to be installed and configured in each profile. This in therory can save the parent from being stuck with Glubble, but then it blows the whole point of the “social” and “family” aspects of the program.
The final nail in the coffin is that the program has reports of breaking (and/or removing) other addons as well as slowing Firefox itself. Finally it modifies Google results, and doesn’t allow you to use other search engines (yet, but the company claims to be working on that). Glaxstar, the company behind Glubble has published several other very popular and sucessful Add-ons for Firefox… And given enough time, there is certainly some potential for it as a unique child friendly front end and Parental Control product.
If you are not using Firefox yet… why not? You should be… just not with Glubble. It just isn’t there quite yet. Hopefully, there will be a version 2.0 with better control for the user over how it takes over your browser.
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4 Responses to “TechParent: Glubble”
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Thanks so much for the warning. I’ve got far too many things bookmarked for various reasons to go losing them now. Egads.
Hey
Thanks for the heads up, we are listening to you, wow, real concern about the bookmark issue, we’ll get back to you with an update on that asap.
Your right, we do know a thing or two about building pro-add-ons for Firefox, Glubble is our own project/cause that became out own product/mission.
are you running Firefox 2 or Firefox 3 RC1 ?
Thanks for the help.
Ian Hayward
Founder, Glubble & Glaxstar.
ps. did you know that Glubble has automatic roaming profiles built in? Meaning install the add-on on any Firefox installation and your child is automatically good to go.
one more question please to clarify your bookmarks issue you mentioned.
Are you referring to the bookmarks not being visible when running in the “Child Interface mode”?
If so you will discover they are still present in “helper mode”
Hi, I wanted to clarify some things that are not correct in the post.
Glubble never wipes out your bookmarks. Glubble disable your bookmarks if -and only if- a child is using the browser or if you lock the browser. It means that if you sign in as an adult/parent, then you will have your bookmarks there, intact. Reason? Well, quite obvious: you don’t want your child to have access to your internet banking site with a saved password, and start playing with it, right?
In you lock the browser or use it in child mode, Glubble use prevents some other unsafe things, like the history menu (so that the child can not see which sites his parent was visiting) and the installation of other Mozilla Firefox Add-ons (to prevent child to install unwanted software in the browser).
The same Glubble family can be used in several computer at the same time, so the parent can have Glubble in his machine, and the child can have Glubble on his small PC. If the parent is the only one using the browser, there is an option that is shown while signing in, that allows the parent to use the browser as they always do, with no locked mode page, etc, but they will still be notified about the requests coming from the child.
Also, about search engines: you can allow your child to use any search engine. By default we filter content inside Google, to prevent your child to see unsafe sites. However, you can grant her access to other engines, such as Ask4Kids, Yahooligans, Creative Commons, etc: this is all up to the parent.
Finally, yes, the 2.0 version will be definitely much more fun, but … why not give version 1.0 a try and learn how to use it?