Responsible parents are interested in protecting their children when they go online.

How can you enable them to use the Internet and explore subjects that interest them, without exposing them to danger; whether individuals who would do them harm, or information that is inappropriate for children?

Well, there are things that you can do, but you must consider these issues:

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www.dropbox.com – A friend sent me a link to this.  Dropbox gives you 2GB of storage space free (you can pay for more, or get up to 5GB by referring others), where you can synchronize files.

A folder on your desktop works like all your other folders, but a little (green) icon tells you whether the version in your Dropbox is synchronized.  You can then access that file on any other computer, either in the same way – through a folder – or by logging in using a web browser.

You can also share folders with other people, which makes Dropbox an easy way to share large files with friends and colleagues around the world.

Edit 28/9: If sharing files with others is what really interests you, this post shows you how to share a Dropbox folder.

I’ve heard about similar services before (like SugarSync and drop.io), but not investigated.  This looks pretty good, particularly as it is cross-platform (Windows, Mac and Linux) unlike Ubuntu One, which seems to be similar, but only for Ubuntu.

…by preference I’d probably prefer to use something written by Linux/Ubuntu programmers, but cross-platform support is a real advantage.

mozy.com – Online backup.

Mozy gives you 2GB of free backup space (for home users), and you can upgrade if you want/need more.

As I’ve mentioned before, backup is a must.  If you’re comfortable about having your data on a remote server somewhere (as with Dropbox etc.) then this service might be worth considering.

http://disposablewebpage.com/ – I was listing something on eBay, and I wanted to add some extra text and photos for the inquisitive, but not bore people who just wanted a quick run down on the item.

I didn’t want to link to one of my websites and give away more information than was necessary to eBay, so I looked for something that would give me a temporary web page and here it is.

You can create a page quickly, without giving away any personal information (obviously your IP address is logged etc.).  It lasts for up to 90 days (plenty for an eBay auction) and then disappears.  Exactly what I was looking for.

Clients receive a weekly email which gives some basic information about the status of their domain / website.

To the untrained eye, this might not mean much, so here’s some “eye training” 😉 …

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Over the last few days I’ve visited some sites I’d never been to before.  Some I’d heard about, others were new to me.

Here they are.  These aren’t necessarily endorsements, as I’ve just said, they’re new to me too.  But if they are all legitimate, and there aren’t any ‘gotchas’, then they may offer a useful service.

1. http://disposablewebpage.com/ – blog post here.
2. http://mozy.com/ – Online backup.  Blog post here.
3. www.getdropbox.com – Folder sync/backup.  Blog post here.

I found out something new the other day; how to copy text out of tables in Firefox in the way I want to copy it.

Before I used to simply select the area with my mouse, which may or may not include a whole bunch of text I didn’t want or need.  Say for instance, I just wanted the column “Why not try” on this page:

Notice how, if I drag, I can’t avoid also selecting some of the text in the left hand column.

I used to work around this by pasting into another application first and deleting the text I didn’t want.

The other day I found that if you hold down the Ctrl key while clicking table cells, you can select any individual cells you want to copy:

Right-click > Copy (Ctrl + V) and the result:

I didn’t know this was possible, and on my system it looks as though it only works in Firefox (I tried Chrome and IE, but haven’t tested in other browsers yet).

Next, I want to be able to select text (not an image) by dragging a rectangle over it and getting the text (as with Block selection in OpenOffice.org).  Perhaps there’s an Add-on for doing this, but I haven’t found it yet.

Time flies.  Had someone asked me how long it had been since I last posted, I would have said “a couple of months, 3 at the most”.

Well, the evidence says it’s 5 months.  I have a list of topics about which I’d like to write here, but had been waiting that I could do them justice.  I’m also aware of some updates that are needed, so hopefully there’ll be another flurry of activity soon.

Right now, I’m trying out a new CMS on one of my demo sites: www.toseebefore.co.uk.  So far all is looking good.

I needed somewhere to keep this (the original page where I found it disappeared)…

Every character that we use in our html has a html number equivalent. This list is useful when writing code that requires special characters to display correctly.

A while back I mentioned that Firefox (Fx) is my browser of choice.

I like to have another browser available (other than IE, which I hardly ever use any more), so that I can sign in with 2 different accounts on the same server, or for other reasons too numerous to list here.  I have Opera installed, which used to be the only other well-known alternative, but there are others…

Recently I downloaded and tried some other browsers that I had heard of, but previously hadn’t tried; or had tried but found to be lacking in features.  This time I was pleasantly surprised.

This isn’t going to be a review of these browsers, but you might like to check them out for yourself.

K-Meleon is an extremely fast, customizable, lightweight web browser based on the Gecko layout engine developed by Mozilla which is also used by Firefox. K-Meleon is free, open source software…

I found K-Meleon has many configuration options, and it is very fast 😀

Flock is “the social web browser”.

When using Flock, people can easily discover, access, create and share videos, photos, blogs, feeds and comments across social communities, media providers, and popular websites.

So, if you regularly use sites like flickr, youtube, gmail, twitter, WordPress, facebook etc. then you’ll probably find Flock’s in-built features useful.  AFAICT Flock is like a highly customized, skinned version of Firefox.  So I think you could do everything Flock can do in Firefox, but you’d need to set it all up yourself

I don’t use those sites/services extensively, but I still like Flock, why?  It’s compatible with Firefox add-ons.  Any add-on you find on addons.mozilla.org for Firefox will also work in Flock.  This is especially useful if there’s an add-on you’d like to try, but you don’t want to bloat your Firefox install, or you’re not sure what effect it will have.  Or perhaps if there are 2 add-ons which claim to do the same thing and you’d like to compare them side-by-side.

So, if you’re looking for another browser to try, download Flock.