Monday, 24 March 2014

Dark side of the Web

Basically, nobody can argue today with the fact, that the Internet is an extraordinary tool which has extremely big potential for those who seek knowledge and information. They can also use it to play video games, download music or watch videos. Recently, most of them are hanging on various kinds of social media websites like Facebook, instagram or twitter. However, we must remember that our children are usually very careless, and they might find on the Internet a way different kind of materials that we would wish for them.  Apart from that, the Internet is used by many evil people, who intend to harm our children.
What we should really worry about
One of the most frightening and dangerous things about the Internet is that it is widely used by numerous kinds of sexual deviants like pedophiles. They use different platforms on the Internet, like chats, communicators or social media websites to search for their possible victims. They often try to become friends with children, which may lead to very dangerous outcome, like kidnap. Due to researches made by PCWebControl, there are over one million pedophiles online every day.  Another disturbing fact is, that about one of every ten children have been approached by sexual predators on the Internet. What is even more disturbing, only about 20% of children who have been exposed to unwanted sexual material have ever informed their parents about such situation. It means, that about 3 of every 4 children never said anything about sexual harassment they experienced online.
Bullying online
Another part of the dark side of the Web is called cyberbullying. Over the years, children have always been victims to various kinds of bullying. Either it was at school or after it. Together with the development of social platforms on the Internet, bullying appeared even online.  Some incidents like these may even end tragically, when the children would rather kill themselves than continue being harassed.
Possible remedies
What can we do as parents to prevent such situations to happen? First thing we need to do, is to have an honest and straight conversation with our child about the dangers that may lurk in the Web.  We can show them for example, how they can protect their identity and other sensitive data using simple privacy settings on social media sites or communicators. Next step could be installing parental control software on your computer in order to monitor our children’s activity. Programs like these can offer multiple options ranging from blocking certain websites with content that we will find inappropriate, like porn sites and so on, to setting on time limits. We can also receive daily or weekly reports about all activities done on the computer that has the parental control software installed.
Summary
As we can see, we have plenty of options that can help to shield our children from the dangers of the Web. Most important thing should be mutual awareness about such dangers. Communication with our child should be followed by equipping our computer with guardian programs. Such measures shall make you more comfortable when you know that your child is safely surfing on the Internet.
PCWebControl is parental monitoring software. It is extensively used by both private and public customers. If you want to know more, visit www.pcwebcontrol.com

Sunday, 23 March 2014

Tips And Tricks On Google Maps

Google Maps
Google Maps, provided by Google is a web mapping service application and technology which powers several map based services inclusive of the Google Maps website, Google Transit, Google Ride Finder and maps which are embedded on third party websites through the Google Maps API. It offers a route planner for traveling by foot, public transport, street maps, car, bike (beta) and an urban business locator for various countries across the globe. Google Maps with close variant of the Mercator projection does not show areas around the poles but a related product is Google Earth which is a standalone program offering more globe viewing features, including polar areas. Google Maps providing high resolution aerial or satellite images for many urban areas worldwide and is the world’s current satellite imagery which is over five years old. 

Google Maps – Android Staple
 
Google Maps is an Android staple and when one is exploring a town or any location of the world, they can plan their trips and get the most of their journeys done easily with the help of Google’s easy to use tools. There are several options in utilizing these tools which could be of immense help and benefit to the user. When the user looks up a destination, they can slide the information from the bottom of the screen to reveal the call, save and share buttons. Users would get to see the street view of the area, ratings as well as reviews. The silhouette icon could also be tapped at the far right hand side of the search bar to get instant access to the map data which provides reviews, saved addresses for home as well as work, and saved places, nearby offers together with recent searches.

Local features replaced with Explorer
 
The satellite and traffic layers have been placed to a general menu and by just tapping on the gray tab at the bottom left side of the app, the menu will then open to enable the user with the desired layers. Besides this the local feature has been replaced with the Explorer and to find the Explorer banner, you can press the search box at the top and scroll down the page. This leads you to the options like drink, eat, shop, play and sleep besides which there are other options to find nearby places without the need of knowing its exact name.

Save Google Maps Offline 
 
Another options is by typing OK Maps in the search box in order to save Google Maps offline or you could just choose the Make this Map area available when offline `with link under the search box for quick access. Viewing an area of the map when not connected to the internet can be done by first opening the Google Map app and then zoom in the area of the map and search for `ok maps’, where after a few moments, a message appears confirming that the on screen map area has been downloaded and when not connected to the internet, the same can be viewed offline. Finally if the user needs to see the locations of friends, then they need to open the Google + app to choose location from the left hand menu.

Friday, 21 March 2014

Firefox 29 Beta With New Interface Released!

Firefox 29 Beta
Mozilla has released Firefox 29 in a first beta version, which already shows the new Australia interface. In addition to new tabs, especially the look of buttons and dialogs of the browser have been changed. In addition, the synchronization service of Firefox Sync is included. The new interface does away with the user interface and reduces the number of continuously visible buttons.

First, the tabs have been greatly changed and slide close to the upper edge of the browser. This saves space for the actual web page content. The active tab has strongly curved edges, while the outlines of the remaining riders are only hinted at and only then visually distinguished when the user moves the mouse over a tab. This affects the surface much tidier without the user mentioned in unknown territory.

Changes also have made in the shortcuts for the bookmarks, downloads, the home page and the main menu will be displayed. You are migrated next to the Google search bar to the right edge. The main menu has undergone the greatest changes and now shows for the first time in the desktop versions buttons for cut, copy, and paste elements.

In addition, new private and browser windows can be opened, saved pages, can take print of them. Also, the add-on sub menus and the developer tools are found in the same window. The Firefox cloud services under the name Sync and Profiles in the Cloud also can be accessed from the menu. With them, browser settings can be kept in sync together with bookmarks across multiple devices.

Anyone wants to use the new sync function, requires a new account. The final version of Firefox 29 will be release on 29 April 2014 The Firefox 29 Beta is available for Linux, Windows and OS X for download. In Google Play also the Beta version for Android has been released and available now.

Firefox 28 Is Available Now!

Firefox 28
After few hours of announcing that they stopped the development of a version of Firefox for Windows touch interface Metro 8.x, Mozilla Foundation has just made available for download the 28.0 version of their browser. This is necessarily very lightweight version with more novelties.

The most interesting news for the start of the new Firefox 28 concerns once again the absence of an announced feature. Available for Windows, MacOS and Linux, this new version does not offer any changes in its interface. And the rest of the additions can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

 Besides the usual performance improvement and correction of security holes, Mozilla Launches Firefox 28 with VP9 video codec, audio codec Opus and a finalized version of the Gamepad API programming interface to associate a joystick browser. New to Firefox 28 is the support of VP9. The priority was developed by Google video codec promises to consume only half as much data at the same quality.

YouTube has - not surprisingly - announced to set for the streaming of 4K content on VP9. The Firefox browser is henceforth able to video (WebM) with soundtracks in Opus format reproduce. On HTML5 pages there is a new volume control for audio and video playback.

In addition to various security updates, the new version promises to support the message center for web notifications for Mac OS X. In addition, Firefox 28 for Android should incorporate new buttons like “Quickshare" to simplify information sharing.

Gamble Against iOS Players Now In Google Play

Google Play Games
Many mobile games appear both in Android and iOS. Now bring Google to provide users of the competing camp playful together. Google Play combines Android and iOS gamers in multiplayer games so that they can bet and play together.

Google is celebrating the launch of this year's Game Developers Conference with new features for the Google Play Service. As of now, Android users give virtual game items to their Google Plus friends and look forward to a more detailed categorization of games in Google Play Store.

In addition, you may gamble against users of Apple's iOS platform in future. The new Google Play Services version 4.3 is now available and allows cross-platform multiplayer game between Android and Apple operating system.

That was already in individual cases previously possible, there are game developers now but apparently as a standard option. In this case, the official announcement, according to both the turn-based interaction as well as the online brawl in real time is possible.

If you want to directly challenge an iPhone user in his favorite game now. The game developers must implement in their titles individually. The same is true for cross-platform leader boards, trophies and cloud storage items that also allow the update.