PIC-PC
- Control Features
Far more
sophisticated than
a simple PC time limiter - you can set different rules for
game
play, web browsing, chat, educational use, TV, etc.
Screenshot showing typical rules for 'Overall PC Use'
Calypso has time between 6PM and 7:30PM reserved for revision. She has
1H15m each day computer time during schooldays, but homework on the PC
doesn't count towards this total because I've ticked the "Exempt
Creative and Allways OK' check box. We've set the computer to force a
maximum time of 1 hour between breaks, which must be at least 10
minutes.
The Activity Classification System
A key feature of this software is the ability to
classify programs and web sites into one of 11 activity
types. Every rule, restriction, and monitoring option can be
tailored for each activity. A special activity "Overall PC
Use"
can be used to set general rules that override any specific activity
rules. This 'Overall PC Use' activity will typically have a time
restriction to force them off the PC at bed-time. In addition
to the 11 activity types, there are two further activity
classifications - "Always Allowed", and "Always Banned" for which no
rules may be set, as their names imply.
Web-Based
Activities are
determined by looking for keywords in the web page title. We start you
off with a list of keywords, but you can modify and add to these
yourself. Therefore time spent on Miniclip and Cartoon
Network
web sites can be classified as games playing. Pages
with "chat room" or "live chat" in the title can be
classified as "Instant Messaging / Chat" and restricted or
monitored accordingly. Pages with Inbox or Hotmail in the title can be
classified as "Email"
What Restrictions Can You Set for Each Activity?
- You
can limit total time spent on each activity per day
and/or
per
week.
- You
can specify
different daily limits for weekends and holidays.
- You can restrict any
(or all) activities to set days and
times-of-day. Multiple time-slots can be defined, and varied by day and
on school holidays..
Security Restrictions
To prevent PIC-PC being closed,
and damaging or inconvenient changes
being made to your PC, you can set security options (on a per-child
basis) to prevent any combination of the following: Task
Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del), Control Panel, Registry Editor, MSDOS
Prompt , Running programs from removable media (CD, DVD etc.). In
addition to these restrictions imposed by PIC-PC and overridable with a
password, you can now also set a number of Windows 'policies' on
a per-user basis via our control panel. This additional layer of
security is for those with budding hackers (or who have friends who are
budding hackers) include such things removing the 'run..' command
etc.
How Activities are Classified
When
you first set up
PIC-PC (or after
installing new software) you ask PIC-PC to scan the computer
and take a first guess at what each program should be categorised as.
The programs it finds are shown in 'tree' structures that mimic the
start menu. It also produces a tree display of programs
anywhere on your hard drive, to catch any that may not be on the start
menu. Most common programs will be correctly classified at this point,
but you can go through the tree and categorise any we missed,
or
re-categorise those whose category you disagree with. One person's 'fun
game' could be another's 'violent game'.
Web -based activity is
classified by keywords appearing in web page titles. Because search
engines put great emphasis on page titles, they are a really good
indication of the page content - far more so than the URL (web address)
which is often quite cryptic - especially for the more dubious sites. Famous
sites such as Piczo, MiniClip etc. like to brand their sites by putting
their name on every page title, which serves our purpose very well.
You
can add to and amend the list of keywords, and change their
classification as you wish. For example, you may
want to
classify sites with words suggestive of porn as
"always banned",
or as the category "dubious" for which you might have some
special monitoring set up. As per our philosophy, we put you, the
parent, in control of what your child does, not someone the other side
of the world who may well have different cultural values.