YouTube has announced today that they will be adding parental controls, letting parents filter certain videos and block their kids from watching them.

Some of the videos that can now be flagged inappropriate and filtered are those that show off violence or sexual content.

Scott Rubin, head of child safety policy for YouTube says the filtering will remain a challenge: "With 20 hours of video uploaded every minute to YouTube, we really count on our community members … to know our community guidelines, those rules of the road, to flag videos they think violate the rules."

The new parental controls are dubbed "Safety Mode," and it will limit videos flagged as containing nudity, narcotics, graphic violence and news containing violence. All comments are collapsed on open, and if the kids choose to view them, all comments with profanity are filtered. Safety Mode remains locked at all times, even if the user is logged out.

Safety Mode is browser-specific and must be turned on for all browsers that are used on the computer. The controls are also account-specific, and must be turned on for those accounts.

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Yesterday, Motorola noted that the long-anticipated Android 2.1 update was headed to the DROID smartphone sometime this week.

Today, they have detailed the update, with Droid users getting many of the top updates that were heralded on the Google Nexus One.

Multi-touch will be available for the browser, Google Maps and the photo gallery. Voice recognition is added, allowing for speech-to-text.

3D Gallery is added for photos, video and album art display, including a 3D stack that moves when the phone is tilted. Additionally, a new News and Weather app widget is added to the homescreen allowing for easy and customizable forecasts and headlines.

Battery life is expected to be improved as well.

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Google has announced that it will begin building an ultra fast broadband network to service up to 500,000 customers around the United States, with speeds advertised at about 100 times the current average speed for broadband connections.

The company will use fiber optic lines, and the entire network will be an experiment. The experiment is whether it can sell more Web ads, if it encourages citizens to be on the Internet more. Although the move would put the company in direct competition with Verizon, Time Warner, Comcast and others, a move to a standalone broadband business seems unlikely for the search giant.

Google says to: "Imagine sitting in a rural health clinic, streaming three-dimensional medical imaging over the web and discussing a unique condition with a specialist in New York. Or downloading a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes. Or collaborating with classmates around the world while watching live 3-D video of a university lecture."

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