Talkcast tonight + follow-up on Mac parenting show

We're back tonight at 10 pm on TalkShoe for the weekly talkcast; it's news of the week and general conversation tonight with the usual suspects, so put down your barbeque fork and your malt beverage and tune in if you can. Got specific questions or concerns? You can slide them into the comments below or send us an @tuaw on Twitter pre-show.

As we noted a few weeks back in the Mac Parenting show, we did have a few questions to follow up on for listeners and readers:

• One caller had questions about locking down the Dock to avoid inadvertent removal of application shortcuts. While we strongly encourage setting up limited accounts for your kids and having them work in those accounts exclusively, it is possible to lock the Dock plist file and have it reset to your permanent config on each login/logout.
• In a similar vein, another caller wanted to know about controlling the iChat conversations that kids can have -- specifically, who they can or can't chat with. In Leopard, there's a parental control for notification on new chatter requests so that you'll get an approval email when the kids try to chat with someone unfamiliar.
• I suggested that Apple's Workgroup Manager administration tool could provide more detailed control than the Parental Control system preference, which was a source of some amusement for a few listeners. You can learn more about WGM from TUAW, macenterprise.org or this tutorial series.
• Some other products and websites mentioned in the show:
  • Broderbund's Living Books series
  • starfall.com for reading instruction
  • tumblebooks.com for story time
  • Kidpix and open-source alternative Tuxpaint

For more tips and hints check out our Mac parents wiki page.

As always, you can listen to past shows via our podcast feed, on the TalkShoe page, or live in the handy widget.
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