CNET brings to light on an application that I actually had not heard of.

Glide OS is a horizontal platforms that offer users the ability to e-mail, create and edit documents and pictures, and collaborate across all three major desktop computing platforms as well as almost every major smartphone platform. Glide 3.0 has just updated, introducing changes aimed at parental control and creating a kid-friendly environment.

The new e-mail filter allows parents to intercept all messages sent to a child’s inbox. Parents can then approve or deny the e-mails so kids can only see pre-approved messages, filtering out pornographic spam, phishing attempts, and other junk. Parents need to create a secondary e-mail account in Glide that they can control access rights to, similar to how Glide allows rights controls for attachments if you’re familiar with that system.

Both children and adult can take advantage of the new drawing and coloring tool. It works a bit like MS Paint, except with Glide’s collaborative tools built in, and a much more interesting interface. Colors appear as crayons in a box, and users can choose from preselected backgrounds, a blank canvas, or images in their own libraries to drawn on. Standard drawing tools are included, such as a freehand pen, line tools, typographic text, and shapes. Glide Draw also offers zooming and undo/redo. The tools can be accessed from the Draw text link at the bottom of Glide’s main interface.

As the father of a 4 year old, it is exciting to see products that I can let my son use and not have to worry about every little aspect of what he does. Not to mention having it run on Linux, Windows, and OS X means that he can use it on any machine in the house.

(Glide via CNET)