Protect Your Kids Online

We are heading into summer—in the northern hemisphere anyway—which means a lot of kids will be spending more time at home during the summer break from school. Unless you are teacher, or a stay at home parent, chance are you don't have the luxury of being at home too, so putting some parental controls in place to block websites or applications you don't want your children to see, may well be in order.

Monitoring children online has been a hot topic for a while now. Parents have cause to be concerned about everything from inappropriate content to predators and cyber-bullying. A program like Verity Parental Control Software can't solve all problems, but by making it easy to block websites based on keywords, or domain, block applications, put time restrictions on computer use, and monitor all activity so the parent can look at statistics and screenshots of what their children are doing on the computer, it makes it much easier to prevent potential problems. You can see for yourself if something isn't right from the web control panel, so you can have peace of mind that your children aren't getting into things that are inappropriate when they are online.

Track Your Hours and Time Spent on Projects

Eliminate the tedious process of creating time sheets after the fact by tracking your time as you go with HourGuard time tracking software and track not only your total time spent working, but the time spent on individual projects or tasks. This makes HourGuard ideal for freelancers and professionals who bill by the hour.

Simply create a list of tasks and sub-tasks. When you start working on something, select that task from the list and click the green Start Task button. Switching tasks will stop timing on the current task and start timing on the new one, or click Stop when you're done. Later you can generate reports for a period of time to see a breakdown of the time you spent on individual tasks.

FlexiServer in the Spotlight

Check out the June issue of Smart Computing, a US magazine covering smart computing and consumer electronics in plain English. One of the software programs they chose to spotlight in this issue is our very own FlexiServer Productivity and Attendance Software: a "no more time-cards" business solution that tracks employee check-in and out times, whether they are working in the office or from home.

The Importance of Parental Control Software

The Internet has become an invaluable asset to us in the last decade. It has expanded our world and allowed us to access information to an extent we never imagined. Schools use the Internet and computers for many aspects of our children’s education, from research to learning games. However, all of this technology presents some common safety issues that parents constantly have to confront as well. Some of the most frequent parental fears are:

• Children coming into contact with dangerous people. Chat rooms, social media, and instant messaging are all ways that children interact with others. Unfortunately online predators lurk in these areas as well.
  
• Web pages with inappropriate content. These can be pornography sites, gambling sites, pages that are violent or promote drugs & alcohol, or include tactics for cheating.
  
• Online shopping. Kids might not always realize that it is not okay to use our credit cards to purchase products. Blocking some of these sites can help contain the problem of those unexpected charges on you monthly bill.
  
• Exposure to Cyber-bullying. Chat rooms and social networks can allow your children to talk to their friends, but even classmates can have very harmful things to say. Cyber-bullying has become a dangerous and all too common activity.
  

There are times that we as parents cannot constantly monitor whether or not our children are on the Internet for longer than they should be. If kids are old enough to stay home alone while we finish our workday, it is hard to say whether they really did only spend 30 minutes on the computer, or if they actually spent 2 hours playing or on Facebook instead of working on that English essay.

Verity child monitoring software helps parents take control of these problems. After a quick setup, Verity will begin monitoring whatever you want it to. You can block certain websites by using the domain name or keywords, preventing pages from being opened. This way kids can still do school research without going anywhere they shouldn’t. You can also set up time limits on certain programs or on the computer itself so you know your child is not spending too much time online. You can save screenshots of what your child was doing and looking at to review later, as well as viewing usage and activity reports that show how long your child is on a certain website or using specific programs. You can even have alerts sent to your email so you can check on your child from your smart phone.

Protecting our children in today’s high tech environment can be a daunting task. As fast as technology is moving and progressing, it can be nearly impossible. But with the right tools like good parental control software it becomes much more manageable. As parents, anything we can utilize to keep our kids safe and happy is worth checking out.

Set A Time Limit On Computer Use

If your children wouldn't do anything other than play on the computer if given the chance, then the newest feature added to Verity Parental Control Software maybe exactly what you need. A new Time Limits tab has been added to Verity's Parental Controls allowing parents to set time limits on computer usage according to the day of the week or the time of day. You can also set program or website exceptions that won't count toward the allowable quota, so it will still be possible for your child to type a report in Word or practice their typing skills with KeyBlaze Typing Tutor, without eating into the allowable game time your kids crave.

Free Timesheet Tracking Software

From freelancers to lawyers, keeping track of the amount of time spent on different projects can be a necessary evil for many in the working world. So if you bill by the hour an easy-to-use program like HourGuard Timesheet Software to make this chore easier could be just what the doctor ordered. Reviewers at CNET have even called HourGuard among the best time-tracking programs available.

"We liked that HourGuard Timesheet Software lets you create base tasks and subtasks, making it easy to record what you're working on in detail. The program even has an intelligent tracking feature that stops the timer when it detects that you're no longer working, ensuring that you don't waste time making corrections after realizing that you've left the meter running."

– CNET

You can read the complete review or learn more and download your free copy of HourGuard timesheet recorder software from our website today.

Make Employees Happy with Flexibility and FlexiServer

I recently read a study on BNet looking at What makes people happy at work. The first thing on the list? Flexible work schedules. When I think about it this seems like an obvious answer. Being able to easily accommodate appointments, or working around class schedules or kids activities; I can quickly come up with a long list of reasons why a rigid 9-5 schedule just isn't the best solution for many employees out there.

So why aren't more offices allowing their employees a flexible work schedule? There are some where it might be difficult, like at a bank, a teller really can only work banking hours when the doors are open for customers to come in. But in an office environment it is more likely that there is resistance from management because having everyone at their desks at the same time makes it easier to ensure that work is getting done and everyone is putting in their hours. If that is the only thing holding managers back from letting someone work, say, Sunday through Thursday instead on the typical Monday through Friday, then there is an easy solution. Using a software program like FlexiServer attendance software for logging information about computer activity and monitoring hours worked based on computer logon and logoff times, managers can more confidently allow employees to work flexible schedules or from remote locations. FlexiServer also provides reports to help management gauge productivity without needing to be a first hand witness to an employee's time spent at their desk. So why not let a software program monitor employee hours for you instead of watching the clock and filling out timesheets?

Software to put the “Free” back in Freelancer

When you set out as a designer/writer/ artist/programmer on the freelancing path, you probably envisioned yourself working merrily at your home office desk. The word freelancing itself invokes thoughts of freedom—freedom from a boss, from a set schedule, from traffic jams and cranky coworkers. But you probably didn’t foresee all the details you would have to keep track of, and any freedom you may have hoped for was quickly squashed by the little things. The more successful you are as a freelancer, the more organized you need to be. Here are some software solutions that will put you back in control.

Timekeeper Software: HourGuard
Time is money, and your time is especially valuable. Not only will HourGuard track how much time you spend on work for each client, it’s easy to use, so your precious time won’t be spent trying to figure it all out. All you have to do is click the Start button when you begin a client’s work, and click Stop when the session is over. You can even set up a task schedule for large projects and track how much time you spend on each sub-task. When your billing period comes around, HourGuard will compile a time sheet, complete with what work you did, for how long, and when. You’ll wonder how you ever lived without this handy tool, especially after you download it for free.

Invoicing Software: Express Invoice
Stop using that sloppy-looking thing you call an invoice, and get organized with your finances. Express Invoice will not only generate professional looking invoices for you to send to your clients, it will help you keep track of how much money clients owe, past due payments, and how much money you’ve collected.

Customer Relationship Management Software: Reflect
If you’ve ever misplaced notes from your last phone conference, had trouble finding your client’s contact information, or lost the lead on a new job, you NEED this software! Use Reflect to create a complete customer record, complete with contact details, notes, event scheduling, and to advance your business. Reflect is free, so your ROI will be outstanding.

Business Card Creation Software: CardWorks
Getting new jobs is all about making great connections. Being caught without a business card is no excuse when creating your own business cards is this easy and free. CardWorks comes with a variety of pre-made templates for you to add your contact info to, then save to a pdf and take to the printer, or even print them out at home.

Depending on your line of work, you may find these other programs useful in your freelancing venture:

FTP File Transfer Software: Classic FTP For uploading your webpages, artwork, and code once your work is complete.
Disc Burning Software: Express Burn The easiest way to send your work, back up your work, or demo your work is still by creating a CD or DVD.
PDF Printer: Bolt PDF Sending professional PDFs of your resume, job bids, and other documents in PDF is the document sharing standard.

And be sure to check out our other Business Software to see all the business solutions we offer. Many of our business programs are scalable, so as your business grows, our software will grow with you.

Where does the time go?

I listen to a local radio station in the mornings when I am getting up and getting ready to go into the office, and I often catch their daily trivia question. The other day the question was about what the average person spends 14 hours a day doing? The answer? Sitting. We spend most of our days sitting. Sitting on the coach, in our cars, at our desk.

This is a crazy statistic, and it reminded me of a conversation we had in our office recently about how much time we spend doing different things. We use one of program, FlexiServer Productivity & Attendance Software, to track the hours of everyone at NCH whether they work in one of our two main offices, or are remote testers or support personnel. And one of the things that you can see with Flexi is the percentage of your time spent in various applications. I don't remember how the topic came up but one day most of us took a look at our personal; stats to see where our time was going. Not surprising most everyone in the rest of the office had one predominant application like Visual Basic for programming. While over in marketing I personally had no application getting more than twenty percent of my time but it was fascinating to see a breakdown of where I spending time. From Outlook for email to Internet browsers and graphics applications and notepad, and lots of NCH products to boot, it was readily apparent that my days are in no way monotonous. I would have a hard time explaining my typical work day to anyone since there are almost never two days alike on my side of the business, and personally I relish that degree of unpredictability and new hurdles to overcome.

What about you? What are your days spent doing? Does one application dominate your computer usage as you spend a large chunk of those 14 hours sitting at your desk? Where does all of that time go?