My 3 year old daughter Lil (her blog nickname) recently started to game on our family PC. As a Microsoft mom, I’m proud she’s learning how to use a computer and has quickly become comfortable with controlling the PC at a basic level. Granted, she isn’t doing much other than going to Nick Jr.’s website (saved into our favorites in IE) to play Dora the Explorer, Backyardigans and Yo Gabba Gabba! games. Even though her online time is short, I want to ensure she stays safe, avoiding advertisements and websites not meant for her little eyes. I’m in the early stages of having to think about online parameters, house rules and talking with my kids about proper online behavior, but this is a good time to start asking questions about tools available and how to establish some proper online safety etiquette for our household.

As this is a big topic, I plan to write a few times on keeping your kids safe online over the next couple months. To kick things off, I wanted to share what I was able to do in my house very quickly to ensure my kids are protected, with just a few easy steps using Windows Live Family Safety. Note that Family Safety is the replacement for MSN Parental Controls which is no longer being updated. I’ve never had to monitor other accounts in my household and even though I knew the capabilities of Family Safety, I had never actually applied the product. What I discovered is that setting up parameters for my house was really easy, so I wanted to share how to do this and encourage other parents to use this product to help protect your children, which will help you breathe a little easier. And remember, Windows Live Family Safety, part of the Windows Live Essentials suite of products, is FREE! You can download the latest beta here.

What does Windows Live Family Safety do?

• Gives parents control over when Windows will let your child use the computer, what games your child can play, and what programs your child can run. If your children use multiple computers, the choices will roam with them to each computer; they simply need to log in with their username and password to any PC in your house already configured with Family Safety.
• Filters images, which is helpful if your child visits websites that allow other users to upload images. This feature works best on Windows 7 machines with faster processing power.
• SafeSearch is locked for Bing, Google, Yahoo! and other popular search engines to prevent your child from seeing adult content in search results.
• Has contact management, which provides parents control to monitor or restrict the contact list for their child in Windows Live Hotmail, Messenger and Spaces.
• Provides requests management, which allows requests from a child to a parent to be aggregated in a single daily email allowing you to manage them more efficiently.
• Restricts ads, which means children’s Live IDs that are added through Family Safety and logged into the Windows Live network, will not see advertisements when using Windows Live services.

Examples of how I’m personally using Family Safety in my house:

• I set up a rule in my house for using the Internet, which includes blocking downloads, which I only had to do once. The choices I made for Lil on the Family Safety website apply to any computer she uses in our house, as they are all configured to run Family Safety.
• Since I work during the day and I have at-home childcare, I’m not always aware of how much time Lil spends online gaming. I can now (from any online location) log into the Family Safety website and view activity reports to see how much time she’s spending online gaming. The report also contains websites my child visited.
• I set time limits so she can only game during certain hours of the day and can restrict how much time she spends on the computer.
• I mentioned that I allow Lil to go onto Nick Jr.’s website to game, though Family Safety also offers a list of child-friendly websites to visit which I’ve started to explore with my preschooler.

How easy is this really? You’ll be amazed! Here are the simple to follow steps to get you started:

• Download the latest Windows Live Essentials beta.
• Once installed, go to the Windows start button and type in Family Safety in the search bar.
• The Family Safety screen will pop up. Note, you will need to sign in with a Windows Live ID to set up Family Safety. If you don’t have one, click here. The main screen will show which accounts are set up as Standard Users, and which have Admin rights. Make sure you add your kids as Standard Users, if they aren’t already there. Microsoft recommends that each child has their own Windows account so you can customize different settings for each child.
• Once you have completed this, click “save.”
• The main screen will then show you a link to the Windows Live Family Safety website, providing you with all the latest information on the accounts you monitor and allowing you to customize all your settings.
• Since this is all linked to your personal Windows Live account, the great thing is that you can monitor your kids’ online activities anywhere. This includes the ability for your children to make requests to visit websites and add contacts, even when you’re not at home.
• You can also view detailed step-by-step instructions on the Family Safety website located here.

In an upcoming post, I will interview a program manager for Family Safety to go into further depth on things you should know about keeping you kids safe online, including how to get the most out of free tools available to you. If you have questions about Windows Live Family Safety, please post comments. I will be picking from the top questions to include in my upcoming interview. Follow me on Twitter @WinMommyLisa.

As promised, IntelliAdmin Enterprise Remote Control Beta 1 is now available for download.

For those of you in a hurry, here are bookmarks that will allow you to jump to the information you want

Description

Instructions

Pricing

Download Links

Bug Reports

Description

What is it?

It is a remote administration solution that allows you to find and control computers no matter where they are located. Got a sales team that moves from state to state? As long as they are on the Internet, you can get to their computer in seconds.

No need to look up an IP address, or open firewall ports – best of all, no monthly fees

Lets do an imaginary walk-through.

You are working at an insurance company. A user named Joel moves around to different branches during the day – sometimes he even works at home on his laptop. At any given time he might call you with an issue.

With stand alone remote control software you might have to find his IP address, or open ports on a firewall to get to that computer. Depending on Joel’s ability with the computer – this might take a long time.

With Enterprise remote control it can all be done in a few clicks.

You launch the client, and click the find button:

Start typing the user’s name, and the computer pops right to the top:

Double click, and you are able to see his screen and fix the problem quick.

One thing to note here. This information is updated in real-time. A user logs on to a computer, and within seconds the username is updated in the find window.

What about those laptops that are not connected to your domain? Seems like it would be hard to find those since the user name might be “Owner” or “Dell User”.

Tell the user to click that icon down by the time and they will see an easy to read System-ID:

Just start typing that six digit number into the find window, and you can drill down to that computer in seconds:

This works in the opposite direction too. You could be anywhere with a laptop, and still easily support computers on your network – all through a secured 256 bit AES encrypted connection.

Instructions

Server Setup

So how do you get this thing running on your network? First you need to setup the reflection server. It manages all of the connections. It will be the central point for all remote control activity. Start out by preparing a computer that has a static IP, can Listen on port 443 TCP/UDP, and is reachable by all of the computers you want to control (For example, it is directly on the internet, and port 443 can be reached from a public IP address). You can install the reflector on these versions of Windows: XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, and Windows 7.

Download and install the Enterprise Reflector Server on that computer. You can get a copy of it here

Run the install. A setup wizard will ask you a few questions.

Pick the port that the server will listen on:

I highly recommend staying with port 443. If you want to reach users that are on the road, this port is almost always left open at hotels, coffee shops, and airports.

On the next page you will select the initial user account that will have access. You can pick a Windows user account, or even select a Windows group – then all members of that group will have access. If you don’t want to use a Windows account, you can setup a stand-alone user account:

Click Next, and the server is setup. You can check the status, or manage the server by going to the start menu and clicking on the settings application:

Agent Setup

The agent is installed on the computers you would like to control. Download the agent software from here

During the install, a setup wizard will walk you through the steps:

It will ask for a description of the machine:

These are pre-filled with the settings in Windows. After the agent is installed, you can change them at any time by going into the computer settings on the reflector.

The next page you fill out your reflector settings. Make sure not to forget the port number for your reflection server. See the example in the screen shot below:

The user and password is the account you granted access when setting up the reflection server. Please note that the user and password information is not stored locally on the PC, and is only used to register the computer.

Press next, and the agent will register itself. After you press finish, the agent will startup and try to go online.

The agent will show its status by the color of the icon down by the time. If it is blue, then it is online with the reflector. If it is red, it is still trying to connect:

The beta is currently limited to 100 agents. Don’t think you will be installing that many yet, since when beta 2 comes out you will need to upgrade them manually to get the automatic update feature.

Client Setup

Great. You have your reflector setup, and at least one agent connected. How do we get to it? By installing the remote control client.

You can get your copy of the beta here

Install the client, and launch. Go to the settings button, and click on the “Reflector” Tab:

Enter the IP address or host name of your reflector server. Be sure to include the port by putting a colon and the port number after the IP address – the client is not smart enough yet to default to 443

The username and password is the account you setup when installing the reflector. Click OK, and now you can connect.

Simply click on the Find button, and your agent will show up.

Double click on it to connect.

Congratulations. Your setup is complete. Now you can remotely administer those computers from anywhere you can find an Internet Connection.

Pricing

This is the first question many of you asked when we announced the beta. Right now, almost all of the competing products are service based, and require a monthly fee.

With our Enterprise Remote Control, you pay a one time fee to purchase the software, and then run it yourself. No monthly fees that will break the bank.

Lets look at what some of the big boys charge:

Big Competitor #1: From $49 a PC to $40 a PC, depending on volume, per year
Big Competitor #2: From $179 a pc to $100 a PC, depending on volume, per year
Big Competitor #3: From $39 a pc to $50 a pc, depending on volume, per year.

So if you had 20 computers. It could easily run from $1000 to almost $4000 – per year!

Note that these are monthly payments that go on forever. Yes, they do provide a service for you, but what if you want to run it yourself? You got the server, the bandwidth, the smarts. Why pay a monthly fee?

Here is the pricing – only for beta testers, and at any time we could stop this deal, so get it while you can.

If you pre-order a license, before the beta ends, you can get an unlimited license for $599 US. No limits on the number of computers. A flat fee of $599, and you can get to those computers without ever paying a monthly fee again.

After the final version is released, the pricing will be per computer, and will start at $59 per computer.

Visit our online store to purchase a license today

Downloads

Reflector Server: Download Now

Agent: Download Now

Client: Download Now

Warning: This beta does not include an automatic update for the agent. It is quite possible you will need to re-install the agent on all computers in the final release. Keep that in mind when deploying this software. You will need to upgrade by hand. Beta 2 will include an automatic update

Bug Reports

This is the first beta, so we will be expecting those bug reports to come flooding in.

Please send them to:

beta@intelliadmin.com

That way we will get them in our bug tracking system and we can start working on them right away.

Red Bull Flugtag was on Saturday, and I’m proud to say that the Phoenix flew 62 feet!  45 of those feet were straight down, but who’s counting?  Have a look at the video (the photographer got our name wrong, but that’s ok)…and pay attention to the mind-blowing dancing.  I’m the one in yellow:

The actual flight wasn’t a huge success, but the event was.  People were cheering their hearts out for us and for Microsoft, and I know I speak for everyone on the team when I say that it was really cool to be part of something so totally off-the-wall crazy.  I think my favorite part of the flight was the reaction from the crowd when we played our launch music, which we laced with system sounds from Windows 7 and Windows XP.  When the Windows XP startup music played, the crowd immediately got into the groove.  Everyone knows that iconic noise and it instantly made the Flugtag/Microsoft connection for the 105,000 people who were watching.

The Windows Project Phoenix Team celebrating the completed craft & tower

We’re all safe and sound and in one piece (I smashed into the wing on the way into the water and banged up my mouth, but nothing major), and happy to be back in Redmond with our friends, families and co-workers.

Below are a few more of my favorite photos from launch day and we’ll be posting many more stills and video clips on our Facebook page over the next few days.  Thanks again to everyone who supported us – we really couldn’t have done it without you.  And be sure to keep an eye on our Facebook page for information on our next crazy adventure.  I’m pretty sure that Project Phoenix will rise again!

Three words: Mad. Dance. Skills.

Seconds before the “flight”.  We were running at full-tilt to get the Phoenix up to launch speed.

Our engineers, Mike, Lucas and Brian, worked their hearts out (and butts off) on this project.

The team with one of our fans.  Support for Project Phoenix was off the charts.

Jay, Ali and Ryan working the crowd.

Hello from Long Beach! I’m writing this from inside the Flugtag hangar where we’re putting the finishing touches on the Phoenix.  Excitement is in full swing with less than 24-hours to go before flight time.

Just a reminder from me and the entire Windows Project Phoenix team to please help us take the Red Bull Flugtag People’s Choice award!  All you need to do is text Team 15 to RBull (72855) anytime between now (noon Friday) and 11am tomorrow.  Tired of hearing this from me?  How about hearing (and seeing) it from Ryan and Ali?

Every vote counts, and you can vote multiple times per number, so warm up those thumbs and get texting. And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter for the latest event updates!

Back in 2007, I wrote an article about an error that you get in Outlook when you have too many attachments of the same name:

Even Outlook 2010 has this problem.

In the article, I walk you through deleting these files by hand.

It is not an easy thing to do. You need to open the registry, find a key…then use that key to find a random folder name.

I thought it would be cool if we could build a utility that would do this for you. So, that is what we did:

It will automatically scan your registry, find all Microsoft Outlook attachments, and then display them to you in the main window.

If it all looks like stuff you want to remove, you just hit the “Clean Up” button and it will delete them for you.

Here comes the bonus. You can run it silently from the command line.

What would you need that for?

You might have user that opens lots of attachments, and runs into this bug all the time.

Here is how you can have it run without any prompts:

OutlookCleanup.exe /SILENT


It will quietly scan through your registry and find the temp folder and empty it. Throw this in a batch file and have it run at logon – you will never have to deal with this problem again.

Another thought came to mind while working on this: This is a security problem too.

While email is on your Exchange server…it is relatively secure. Not knowing this you might open a sensitive document, read it, and when you are finished – delete it. Unknown to you, Outlook has just made a copy of it and it is sitting right there on your hard drive. Waiting for someone to grab.

Until MS provides a fix, you can use this little utility to keep your Outlook attachments clean. I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for an update – this bug has been around since 2002.

Get your copy from our free downloads page