When I first started this blog, one of my favorite topics was that of new sites. I loved, and still do love, finding websites offering us a new, simpler way of doing things. As I have mentioned several times, my career shifted and, to this day, takes an abnormally large chunk of my time. Therefore, the time I allocate to such posts has dwindled. At some point that will change.
In the meantime, I am going old school here and I am actually writing about a new site that I quickly fell in love with. Had it not been for an email its founder, I never would have come across it.
The site is named
Totlol and its specialty is video - specifically, videos for kids. While you may naturally think that Youtube can show your kids these same videos, they cannot offer protection from inappropriate videos. In fact, my 5 year old daughter was watching a video on YouTube a couple of days ago and because some keyword or tag matched, one of the related videos (just to the right of the viewing window) was horrendously inappropriate. It's not YouTube's fault really, they were built for the masses, not for kids.
Totlol solves this problem entirely. Totlol takes the children's videos from YouTube and provides a safe watching environment. In addition, and this is the key, nothing makes it to Totlol without being handpicked by a a parent. What you end up with is a site that shows only those videos that parents choose as appropriate. It is remarkably good at what it set out to do.
Here are a few of their words:
"Totlol is a community-moderated video website designed to be enjoyed by those between the ages of 6 months and 6 "years.
"Totlol does not restrict content source. The current version makes all videos available on YouTube also available on Totlol. While this is not "all that is out there", it is a pretty big collection to choose from."
I love this site because my daughter can watch the
Gummy Bear song and not somehow get to a terrorist execution video. If you have kids, share this site with them, sit back, and relax.
-Jay