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Please note: The reports in this section are not product reviews or tests; they're meant to spotlight options for you to consider, as well as milestones in children's online-safety technology development. Comments from readers on their own experiences with these products and services are most welcome - and, with your permission, we publish them. Do email us your own product reviews anytime!
Once a product, now an online-safety service (for parents)
We first wrote you about Josh Finer and his product X-Detect a little over a year ago. X-Detect is still available, but - as you know - times have changed. Dot-coms and e-commerce aren't doing very well. But Josh, now just finishing up his MBA at Pennsylvania State University, is bucking the trend. He's not taking a job at IBM; he's courageously going ahead with his young Internet company, Finer Technologies.
But instead of simply selling his own monitoring software (written when still an undergrad), he's begun providing what he thinks is a much greater service to parents: reviewing and selling "the best" hand-picked, programmer-tested online-safety products. The service (and Web site) is called Software4Parents.com.
"I discovered that not that many people were buying [X-Detect]," Josh told us, "and realized that just about every software manufacturer had a Web site selling a single product - no one wanted to give the customers their options, or information on other products. So I keep trying to find new and better products every day. That's what I spend most of my time doing now."
We think he's on to something. For one thing, his site gets about 500 visitors a day, he says. But what's unique, here, is a programmer is reviewing and testing these products, and selling only his top picks. The site, a work in progress, could use a little aesthetic help, but that's minor compared to the useful information it provides - for parents who want to add technology to their family Net-use solutions. For example, take the at-a-glance comparison chart for two well-known filtering products: Cyber Sentinel and Cyber Patrol. Very quickly you see why Josh picked the former: price, low number of updates needed, and the technology used. (See our March 23 feature on Predator Guard by the same company.)
"There are products out there that are very much alike," Josh said, so after he tests and chooses, he looks at value and ease of use. "Most of my customers are parents who aren't by any means computer experts." Other criteria he uses:
- Flexibility/Technology - whether it works for email, chat, IM, etc., rather than just the Web; whether the blocking actually works; that it's not too restrictive or too free; whether it's somewhat "intelligent"; depth of options it gives parents.
- Licensing flexibility - e.g., "$29.95 gets you all of your computers in the home for Stop Watch - many parents inquire about multiple computers these days."
- Downloadability - "At this time we will not carry a product that is not available for direct, instant download."
To make decisionmaking easier, Finer Technologies helps parents figure out what product is best for their particular family via live chat on his site (accessible at the top of the screen that pops up whenever you click on "Leave a message").
Software4Parents.com is still small, but that's probably a good thing! Someone else more qualified than most of us parents has narrowed the field for us, and the information stays up-to-date. Only two filtering products (a third to be added shortly) have qualified so far, and five monitoring ones ("Our emphasis has been on monitoring because I wrote X-Detect and I've never felt filtering, with its flaws, was the best way to go," Josh told us). But he's been interested to see that, three-to-one, his customers want filtering. So he's beefing up that part of the site. It will be interesting to follow the progress of this service; no one else has stepped up to the plate quite the way Finer Technologies has.
Parents, now it's your turn: What do you think of this resource? Is it needed? What are you looking for in terms of online-safety parent support? Do email us, via feedback@netfamilynews.org.
Other resources:
Two monitoring products not mentioned at Software4Parents.com are…
Lighthouse - Texas-based GuidingLightSoftware.com says this software product monitors email, chat, and instant-messaging, as well as Web surfing and offline computer activity. They add that it's easy to use and configure and works with any filtering program.
Reflect Monitor - MyndAtEase.org, a new California-based online-safety nonprofit organization, promotes and is funded by Reflect Software, makers of Reflect Monitor. The "monitoring and surveillance" software sends information to Reflect's server, which customers/subscribers can access remotely to find out about online activities on their PC. The focus seems to be on secrecy, rather than up-front monitoring used as a deterrent (being up front would be our preference, fostering open family communication).
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