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This weekend we had a house full of children for our 10 year old daughter’s birthday. When they asked to use her computer I was thankful we use an internet filter and didn’t have to hesitate to let them use it.

Anyone who’s ever surfed the web knows how easy it is to stumble upon inappropriate content. Parents have an obligation to protect their children inside and outside of the home.

Thankfully, there are some great applications parents can turn to for help. My favorite, if you have younger children, is K-9. It’s best for younger children because it’s free and doesn’t have all the options that pay programs do. That being said, K-9 is still an excellent internet filter that we’ve been using and promoting for the past couple years.

With K-9 you have 6 different levels of protection and 60 different categories that you can choose to block or not. You can also limit what times the computer can access the internet. You’ll also be able to view the internet surfing history broken down by categories to see what sites your children are visiting.

Blue Coat recently released a new Beta version that runs on Mac’s as well as Windows, it works in more browsers, and more search engines. I highly recommend K-9 and created a video to help parents install and set-up the program.

For older children I’d recommend Net Nanny, CyberPatrol, or Safe Eyes. They’ll run you $40-50 per year but all of them provide great protection and have more options than K-9. CyberPatrol gives you the most options, Safe Eyes is best if you want to install it on more than one computer, and Net Nanny is the easiest of the three for parents to use. Net Nanny also beat its competitors in reviews by a slight margin.

All three of these programs have different features so I’d recommend that you view each of their websites and purchase the one that best meets your needs.

It should be said that no internet filter is perfect and there are ways around internet filters. It’s a well known fact that kids in schools and libraries use proxy avoidance to get around the filters. If you, as a parent, have any inclination that your child is using their computer inappropriately you have two choices. Either you can put the computer in a public place in the house and/or take it away altogether for a period of time. Don’t worry, it is possible for them to live without it..

If you have children that use the internet in your house, an internet filter is essential. Get one today!

-Bert

By day I’m an application developer but on most evenings and weekends I fix other people’s computers. No matter what’s wrong with a computer I fix, the one thing I do to every one of them is optimize it. 

Most computers are loaded down with junk software, so even if it’s brand new, it still runs slower than it could. Also, over time Windows collects a lot of junk that accumulates and slows down your computer even more.

A while back I made a video that shows exactly what I do to every computer to speed it up and optimize it. If you watch the video and take these simple steps your computer should boot up faster and run faster.

The best part is I’m making this video available for free. For how long, I haven’t decided yet :)

Here’s the link:  http://fix-my-slow-pc.com/

Enjoy!

-Bert

A good friend of mine told me a story not long ago. His 10-year-old daughter was doing a school report about baby chickens. Turning to the Internet for help with her report, she innocently typed “chicks” in the search engine. My friend was shocked when his daughter yelled, “what are all these naked ladies doing on the screen?”.

If you have kids on the Internet at your house, and especially young children, you need to know how easy it is for them to find inappropriate content & pictures. Just like my friend’s daughter, a child doesn’t even have to go looking for it, it will find them. Something as simple as an Internet search or misspelling a web address can expose your child to things even you wouldn’t look at.

I don’t believe that choosing to do nothing to protect children online is an option. The most important thing we can do as parents is to start talking and teaching our children about the good parts and the bad parts of the Internet while they’re young.  Even if they’re older and know more about the computer than you, it’s never to late.

A really close second to communication is putting a web filter on your computer to filter out things like pornography, violence/hate/racism, illegal drugs, etc..

If your kids are a little older and you can afford it, I’d suggest you spend $39/yr for Net Nanny. PC Magazine awarded Net Nanny its Editors Choice Award in Feb 2008. Net Nanny can be configured differently for each user who logs into the computer. Also, besides just Internet content filtering Net Nanny includes Instant Message monitoring, time scheduling, remote management and some other neat bells and whistles.

If your kids are younger or you don’t want to spend the $39 for a yearly subscription I highly recommend a free Internet content filter called K9, which was created by BlueCoat. BlueCoat has been providing world class filtering products to fortune 500 companies for several years. They created K9 as a way to give back to the community.

I’ve been using K9 on our home computers for a couple of years and am extremely impressed with the quality of the filtering, the simplicity of the program, and that it doesn’t slow down your computer or internet searches. You can choose to block or just track up to 60 different categories of websites. And, you can set time limits on Internet use. You can’t modify the settings for different users, but as the Admin, you can easily make any necessary adjustments.

This is one area I don’t believe any parent should ignore so I’ve made a free 10-minute video that walks you step-by-step how to install and configure the free K9 web content filter.

It’s nice not having to worry if our 9-year-old daughter will see or read something inappropriate on the Internet. Don’t wait on this one. Get some “peace of mind” today!

Regards,

Bert

Since I’m often asked about how to speed up a slow computer I created a 30 minute video that walks you through exactly how I do it. In the video you’ll be looking over my shoulder as I walk you step-by-step through the process.

Here’s the URL: http://fix-my-slow-pc.com

Regards,

-Bert