Well, I am happy to report, I have found Glubble.com which is a Mozilla plug in which allows you to restrict websites from the browser.  I am trying it out and will let everyone know how it goes.  So far, it is great for my kids which are all 8 and under.  It might be too restrictive (or cumbersome for the “helpers” or adults) for kids older than that.

The things I like about it:

-Only allows them to see sites which I allow.

-Has a built in, approval process for sites they want to see which is easy for them to use.

-Has built in “safe” groups which they can use right out the gate

-(THE REAL GEM) Restricts the results that GOOGLE searches return to ONLY the sites in your approved list.  So searches with otherwise innocuous words to them are sure to return “safe” results.

Hopefully someone else finds this useful as well.

CHAD

1. Get “Parallels” or “Boot Camp” and run Windows too on top of your MAC. This is to ease the transition from Windows to MAC since there is a slight learning curve.  You can’t go cold turkey and immediately get “off the sauce” of Microsoft.
2. Know that there will be some challenges with learning the “MAC way of doing things”. The single button mouse can be a challenge to get used to (where is my right mouse button).  But you eventually get used to the “Apple” key and the two finger mouse click (to simulate the right mouse button).
3. Find a friend. Things are easier if you know someone who has a MAC.

Though it is a little more expensive to go this route, it is worth it.  I recently ran a slideshow presentation for my family at a family reunion and my MAC saved me.  It was the only reason I was able to do it.  Some of the presentations came from MACs and Windows didn’t have the proper codecs to play it out of the box, so I used my MAC.  And on the slideshows which were produced with MS Powerpoint, I used my Parallels instance of XP to run it.  My MAC saved my bacon.