Does your kid have an iPhone? My nine-year old nephew has one - a hand-me-down from his mom when she got her shiny new 3GS. While kids will most likely use it to play games, you have to keep in mind that they can also use it to surf the web.
As on the PC, you'd like to keep them off from objectionable areas of the internet. Problem is, Safari offers zero parental controls on that end. As such, they're pretty much free to wander about cyberspace unrestricted.
The Mobicip Safe Browser fills this gap, giving you options to block out unsavory websites from being accessed on your kids' iPhones. Yep, it's an alternative browser that's actually approved by the App Store, because it does offer something that the native Safari client doesn't - a child-safe surfing environment.
Before you can force your kid to use it instead of Safari, you'll have to disable the latter manually: Settings -> General -> Restrictions. It would have been better if this could be handled right from the app itself, although being a one-time change, it's no biggie.
Its main strength is that it functions and looks nearly like Safari, making the transition from using one to the other seamless, with no required learning curve. The lack of a facility to import bookmarks is bit of a letdown, though.
Mobicip itself costs $4.99, which gets you the child-safe browser plus a free account for their filtering service. Any URL accessed from the app gets filtered through the company's servers, which decides whether to either allow or block it. Free accounts get three levels of filtering: elementary, middle and high school.
If you want more detailed control of your child's surfing habits, you can also sign up for a Premium account for $9.99 per year. This gets you plenty of latitude, including the ability to blacklist and whitelist specific pages and categories, download activity reports and manage multiple devices from a single dashboard.
