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.

[Mobicip for iPhone]

Curious what Apple turned up for the reveal of iPhone 3.0?  About 100 or so new features that can really make user experience on the phone so much better.  Here are the highlights:

• Copy And Paste. Believe it or not, it's finally here - copy and paste for the iPhone.  It's not just for text, but for photos too.  Even better, the copy-cut-paste feature works across all applications!
• Universal Spotlight. If an application has been written to support the new Spotlight, all of its data will now be available for search from its interface.
• Stereo Bluetooth A2DP. iPhone with the 3.0 OS will now work with compatible Bluetooth A2DP speakers and headphones.
• MMS. You can now send images, audio and a whole lot of other media (except video, presumably) to non-mail-enabled phones, like you can do with pretty much any handset many years ago.
• Landscape keyboard. You now get a landscape keyboard on all apps that can really benefit from it, like Mail and Notes.
• 3G Tethering. As expected, OS 3.0 will now allow you to connect your phone to your laptop, using its 3G service to access the internet.  Whether the carriers will allow you to (and how much the privilege will cost) is a whole other question entirely.
• Peer-to-peer connectivity via Bluetooth. A new API will allow peer-to-peer connectivity for two iPhones over apps, which opens up many possibilities, especially for the phone's impending use as a premium gaming platform.
• 1000+ Other APIs. Yep, apart from the Bluetooth peer-to-peer functionality, over 1000 new APIs were released along with the OS 3.0.  Notable ones include browsing of remote content (from other iPhones), Maps, push notification, voice communication over apps and more.

iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPod Touch owners can upgrade to OS 3.0 during the summer.  It's free for both iPhone handsets although a one-time charge of $9.99 will be required for iPod Touch users.

Photo Credit: SFGate