Maveron, the venture capital firm led by Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz and former investment banker Dan Levitan, is among the backers of new service called KidZui that is designed to help kids find useful and compelling content on the Internet.

Other investors in the La Jolla, Calif. startup include First Round Capital and Emergence Capital Partners, with a launch slated for this Spring.

The KidZui service includes more than 500,000 websites, images and videos that are approved by parents and teachers as suitable for kids.

Others have tried to crack this nut over the years, including Bellevue's InfoSpace which unveiled a kid-friendly search engine called Zoo.com in late 2006 that filters out adult-oriented Web sites.

Seattle's N2H2, which after hard times was acquired in 2003, created an Internet filtering product that was sold to schools and libraries.

Maveron's Debra Somberg serves on the KidZui board, along with Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital and others.

The startup is led by Clifford Boro, who also serves as chairman of the Maveron portfolio company VideoEgg.