I love the New Years and new beginnings. It offers a set time to initiate change in our lives. It is a beautiful opportunity to draw a line in the sand, making yesterday and yesteryear the past and today a brand new chance at life.

As a part of any new beginning, one of our priorities is to kick bad habits and destructive behaviors. Be it smoking, eating or the like, we all generally have something we want to gain victory over. It is no secret that the rage of online pornography has gripped our society with a death grip. It is destroying marriages, future marriages, and the innocence of our young people.

Listen to these statistics:

• 43% of all internet users view pornographic material
  • 1 out of 3 are female
• “sex” and “porn” are among the top 5 search terms for kids under 18
• only 3% of adult web sites require age verification
• 61% of parents check browser history, but only 32% use parental control software. Chances are your kid can delete browser history. (SafeEyes)
• Over 1/2 of divorces mention online pornography as a cause. (SafeEyes)

These were numbers I pulled from two credible sources in less than 5 minutes. In the last few weeks I have heard of former UN officials being busted in sex stings, a University of Florida staff member being charged for child pornography, and even a PA sheriff accessing pornography from his work computer. Sure, these are all people far away from us, and you’re family is probably different…No, not at all! It’s present in our families, our church, and our community.
Over the last several months I have been promoting an internet filtering software called SafeEyes. It is an annual subscription that offers a variety of filters and protections for your family’s internet usage. If you download it from the company’s site it is just $49.95 per year and is permitted for up to 3 computers. If you use the following coupon code (“tweet10”) you can receive 20% off. This is certainly worth purity of your family.

This program will allow you to:

• Filter unwanted material from your computer and searches
• Monitor the activity and usage of those in your household
• Block certain users from certain programs
• Establish usage restrictions and time limits
• And, much more

It’s not to late to get your family on the right track. Let’s take this issue seriously. It is affecting our families, our church, and our community.
If you would like more information, feel free to contact me.

iPhone App store is doing a great job keeping things PG! Now with Safe Eyes Browser, users will not be able to surf inappropriate sites. Internetsafety.com created and released this app recently and you can access more info at http://www.budurl.com/3q3b

Choose from a variety of categories to make sure the protection is enabled across an assortment of visuals. This app is being accepted by families and embraced by those that want to keep their content viewing experience clean. 

Great job, Safe Eyes!

A month ago I started wondering if my most viewed posts on this blog, regarding Safe Eyes, had gotten the attention of Safe Eyes or their parent company. My Safe Eyes posts account for several hundred views to-date, and literally every day I see the search phrases used to find my posts. Some are very funny!

I was out on my nightly walk last night when I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. Turns out it was one of the founders of Internet Safety, parent company of Safe Eyes! He wanted to personally reach out to me about my bad Safe Eyes experiences on the Mac platform.

We talked for maybe thirty minutes where I was able to set a much more conversational tone to my posts. In the time since my posts I had also arrived at a big-picture conclusion to by brand experience: A general lack of curiosity on the part of Safe Eyes.

This is the theme that occurred over and over – I’d make my issues known to Safe Eyes on my Mac, and instead of curiosity, I heard “Well it works fine on my/our Mac(s).” I think a simple asking of deeper questions would have prevented my blog posts and ultimate removal of Safe Eyes from our Macs.

I should note that we did get some advice for solutions on at least two occasions from Safe Eyes, but the ideas were so obviously not from long-time Mac users that I just rolled my eyes. Even yesterday there was a posted reply to one of my blogs, and while the advice would be appropriate for a Mac newbie, it’s the kind of thing that a long-time Mac user knows and does already (permissions repair).

But all that aside, the reaching out of one of the founders (name escapes me) was huge. I will certainly give Safe Eyes another trial try a year from now once a few more versions have come out, and that will give the developers more time to get accustomed with the Mac.

As I’ve said before, I think Safe Eyes is a great product at its core. I think it has the potential to market itself as a resource for business owners who want to keep their employees off of Facebook or Myspace, etc. in order to keep productivity up. Until the Mac version is stable, those benefits will be for someone else, but I’m looking forward to giving Safe Eyes another shot.

Preface: For those finding this while researching, this blog is written by a business owner using Safe Eyes. We use only Mac computers, and I have no idea what Safe Eyes is like in a Windows environment.

I’ve written about Safe Eyes a couple of times, one of which was a rant about how poorly this product has been programmed for the Mac. I’ve had several phone and email exchanges with SafeEyes regarding continued problems with the software, and I’ve done all of the things one should do when software behaves badly.

Except the final action: Uninstall and move on.

Today that’s what I will be doing: I am going to uninstall SafeEyes, and move on. But first a post about why.

As I’ve mentioned before, SafeEyes is a program with great intentions, and based on the way it performs I assume it works wonders in a Windows environment. For me, the core product benefit that caused the purchase of SafeEyes was productivity.

I work from home full-time, and I needed a tool to aide my self-control with regard to spending too much time Facebook, sports sites, political sites, etc. I also didn’t want to be tempted by porn or let it in my office/home, so SafeEyes performed those things that I needed.

But then the quirks began. Quirks that, in a twist of contextual irony, actually diminish productivity. SafeEyes is now actually causing me to spend more time working around it – even with loose filtering – than when it wasn’t on my Mac to begin with.

For instance:  I’ll be working hard and look down at my Dock to see that the SafeEyes icon is red, which means that my computer is totally blocked from the internet due to SafeEyes automatically blocking all internet activity if idle for more than 10 minutes. This is not good because I depend on getting the new mail tone to let me know when a client needs something from me, and often times the need is time-sensitive or urgent. So I find myself either having to mentally disengage from work every 10 minutes in order to work around SafeEyes to retrieve email, or apologize to clients for not getting their messages in a timely fashion. In this way, SafeEyes causes a breakdown in efficient productivity.

Then there’s my previously-mentioned interruptions where I will be working on something only to have SafeEyes interrupt my task so it can do whatever it needs to do… without warning. In the year 2008, why is this still happening? Can’t software work in the background without causing me to be interrupted?! Is that too much to ask? Most freeware has this very elementary fuctionality. Not sure why SafeEyes does this, but SafeEyes Customer Service tells me that it’s needed, yet can’t explain why.

A new headache has come up, now that I use iPhone as one of my work tools. iPhone is a great addition to help me stay on top of my growing business. It allows me to get and respond to emails while I’m out at meetings, view most attachments, and it syncs right up with my MacBook Pro for contacts, calendar, etc. It really is a great business tool.

But one thing iPhone needs to do is use the internet through iTunes for some updating, which SafeEyes absolutely does not work with… at all… no matter how loose the filtering is.

We first found this out when we installed SafeEyes on another computer in our home, the primary media machine. Even with nearly everything allowed in SafeEyes, iTunes would wig out when SafeEyes was running. We called and talked to Customer Service, and then to a nice man in tech support, and were told to reinstall. We did. Same problems, so we uninstalled, and the iTunes problems went away. So now my iPhone is having the same issues.

I’ve talked through blogs and email with one of the Mac developers, as well as on the phone with tech support about every issue I have had. I also completed a customer survey detailing every issue I’ve had with SafeEyes, and got the auto-generated generic message back from a suit. The core problem with SafeEyes, IMHO, is that it was first and foremost a Windows application that was later adapted for Mac users, without starting from the ground up.

All of the things I’ve complained about throughout the course of this miserable experience are things that a Mac user would find annoying. In other words, I’m saying that the Mac development of this product is not being implemented by someone who uses the Mac every day for everything. I simply cannot believe that all of these bugs are OK with another SafeEyes Mac user. The interruptions, alone, should have been something to be ironed out in version 1.1, yet they persist.

The bummer is that I wanted to use SafeEyes for my business as we grow. As we add more employees, grow into bigger office space, I wanted to bring SafeEyes along and use it as a productivity tool. But the bottom line is that I can’t trust this product anymore. It’s totally unstable and not worth the headaches it causes me. I couldn’t imagine giving an employee a Mac with SafeEyes installed, and expect him/her to be as productive as is possible. It’s as though I’ve replaced one anti-productivity problem with another, and we’re done.

I hope that anyone planning to buy SafeEyes for a Mac, and might be doing some research, finds this blog and calls up SafeEyes to see if these things have been worked out. If you get a runaround, keep looking. It’s not worth it at all. Reason being, when you get SafeEyes, you’re committing to a 1 year subscription, and I’m cutting out at only 9 or 10 months use. They have my money, and that’s probably the most important thing to SafeEyes – it’s certainly not product development.

I am using a new design for the blog…again. What can I say? I’m a guy who gets bored easily with stuff like this. Needed a change.

And now for a very specific rant regarding a piece of software I use: SafeEyes.

I’ve written before as to why I use SafeEyes: It keeps me from spending any amount of time on Facebook and Myspace during work hours. Plus, as my business grows, I can get more seats on the license and prevent my employees from wasting time on social networking sites (other than Linkedin). For these purposes SafeEyes is a fantastic tool.

Yet it is my understanding that the Mac version of SafeEyes is new(er), and therefore some of the key developers for the Mac version of SafeEyes are not long-time Mac users.

There are a few things that irritate me to no end about SafeEyes, so hopefully someone from SafeEyes will read this and fix the bugs. I have had one email exchange with SafeEyes about these issues, where my reply to their proposed solution (which only aided my suspicion of Mac-newbee-ness) was not responded it. Apparently writing SafeEyes produces a single aloof response with no actual fixes.

So here is my rant…

Issue #1: Waking up a Mac.

When you wake up a Mac, and have Preferences set up so that you are promted for your password before you can see your desktop and work, SafeEyes does something that makes me want to punch the screen every time it happens. SafeEyes assumes its login box is more important than the wake-up login box, meaning that as you’re punching in your password, the wake-up box goes gray because SafeEyes has overtaken priority… BEHIND the black sleep screen!

So it goes like this: Trying to type in your password only to have y  r  passwo d interr pted by Sa eEy s. When you do this, the missing characters are actually being typed into the SafeEyes login screen behind the black Mac login screen. It’s as though the developer whom designed this never used a Mac sleep mode.

Mac users: Imagine how annoying this is. Every time I wake my Machine up, I have to play this cat-and-mouse game with SafeEyes just to get into my Mac!

After shaking my fist and cursing a lot, entering my password once twice thrice due to SafeEyes, I come to the second issue…

Issue #2: Auto-log out after X-mintues

Once back in the Mac, all those times SafeEyes decided it was the more important login screen were because SafeEyes logs out of the Inter Webs every X-number of minutes. So, naturally, when I come back from a sleep screen, I have to log back into SafeEyes.

Due to the nonsense from Issue #1, I now have the wrong password or username in the SafeEyes login box. Now I have to use the drop down menu, enter your password AGAIN, and only THEN you’re back online.

Issues #3: Waste Of My Time.

Once I’ve accomplished victory over Issues 1 & 2, I am finally able to send/receive email and get online. Or as some people call it: Work… Conduct Business… etc.

This is the systemic problem with these 3 issues: My productivity is halted due to SafeEyes.

The thing is, I am a patient man when it comes to technology. I have yet to encounter software or a machine that can think as fast as my brain can (in terms of switching between thoughts/processes – the brain is just too complex for any machine to outdo it, IMHO), so I’ll give any machine a cushion of lag time. But this… this is over the top annoying.

Making this even more annoying is that if I am not using the Inter Webs for more than 10 minutes, I get logged off periodically. That’s right, it’s not even consistent. Just sort of, “Whenever.”

To be fair, I did write SafeEyes about the problems mentioned above. This was the response I received:

“My first recommendation regarding your login issue is to first uninstall & reinstall Safe Eyes, ensuring you’re reinstalling the latest version (3.0).

Furthermore, I recommend turning the computer off @ night, or when not in use for more than 30 minutes, as your automatic logout of 10 minutes of filtering inactivity could cause multiple login screens to appear if multiple programs try to access the internet while you’re not logged into Safe Eyes. Updates are common culprits to this as Mac will periodically check for updates when your computer is in a dormant state.

Let me know if I can assist further. – Alex”

My Mac brethren, it’s as though the new-to-Mac or non-Mac users think I/we can’t sniff out a greenhorn when it’s obvious! My reply to the “advice” (notice: no actual solutions offered) was not replied to, and I have not heard from SafeEyes again. I think I have been, and continue to be very diplomatic and thorough about these issues. I have clearly identified a problem, and am simply asking for a solution in order to be productive.

So here’s where I’m at with this: Right now I’m signed up for a year’s worth of service. When the year is up I will not renew as of now unless these seemingly very simple things are fixed by Mac users, not “I saw a Mac commercial” guy, or “I have an iPod” guy. A Mac user.

I will say that I only write this rant because I WANT this to work. It’s such a good product in spite of itself. If these kinks get worked out, this can really be a good tool. But as a business owner, I simply cannot put trust in a piece of software that I, alone, am wasting way too much time on – and time = money! Multiply that withe employees, and it’s a no-brainer: SafeEyes is not productivity-friendly in its current state.

(And if a SafeEyes person is reading this: Yes, I’m on the most current version.)

Reden wir über das Schmuddelthema. Warum? Weil es auch immer wieder mal mein Schmuddelthema ist. Wie bei 60% der Männer. Und weit mehr in meiner Altersklasse. Also zwischen 30 und 40. Gerade auch bei denen, die für Gott arbeiten wollen. Warum drüber reden? Weil Jesus es anordnet und uns als Weg der Befreiung nahe legt: bringt die Sachen ans Licht (also in seine Gegenwart), dann kann es befreit und geheilt werden.

Nach vorsichtigen Schätzungen sind ein Fünftel der aufgerufenen (!) Seiten im Internet pornographisch. Das wäre in medizinischen Kategorien gedacht eine Epidemie. Wenn man denn Pornographie als krank bezeichnen und einordnen würde. Ist sie aber. Sie macht abhängig, degradiert Frauen und Männer, verdreht die Gottesebenbildlichkeit, ist Ausdruck einer tiefen Leibfeindlichkeit (!).
Vielleicht kommen wir hier ins Gespräch über die Gründe für den Bedarf nach Pornographie. Ich bin nicht prüde erzogen worden, habe kein verdorbenes Verhältnis zu meinem Körper und freue mich am Anblick einer schönen Frau. Und das ist auch gut so – denn so hat Gott uns erschaffen. Pornographie dagegen hat einen instrumentalen Charakter – sie steht eigentlich für etwas Anderes. Für den Abbau von Frust, von Aggression, von Langeweile, von Hilflosigkeit – letztlich: von einer mangelhaften Gottesbeziehung, in der es an Leidenschaft fehlt. Ich halte es mit einem Erziehungspsychologen, der einmal sagte: Wachstum und Reife entstehen am Aushalten von inneren und äußeren Spannungen. Das lernen Kinder immer weniger. Spannungsabbau – sprich: der leichte Weg der Befriedigung ist z.B. die Pornographie, aber auch die Esssucht u.a. – aber all diese Dinge halten uns infantil, binden uns und verhindern – christlich gesprochen – Vollmacht und Wachstum auf Jesus zu. Hilfsmittel? Bei mir sind das:

ein guter Internetfilter – safeeyes hat sich bei mir seit einem Jahr bestens bewährt – und läuft auch auf Mac. Die 40 Euro im Jahr sind bestens investiert, abgesehen davon, dass man mit dem Ding auch seine Kinder schützen kann… wer bereits die Anschaffung für sich verweigert, hat ein wirkliches Problem!

Offenheit – mit anderen Männern und der eigenen Partnerin (so vorhanden) darüber reden und diskutieren. Wer als Mann behauptet, noch nie innerlich eine Frau ausgezogen zu haben, der lügt sich was in die Tasche oder ist bereits in der Ewigkeit. accountability ist entscheidend – wie geht es dir bei der Pornographie? Die Frage von einem guten Freund oder Mentor ist wichtig!

Seelsorge – darüber reden und durchschauen, wozu die Pornographie bei MIR dient. Pornographie ist immer instrumental!

Bloss keine Fixierung! – denn dann wird das Thema zum Hauptthema. Sünde gehört aber besiegt bzw. ist eigentlich schon besiegt und der Sieg gehört gelebt! Zentrum sind aber Gnade und Jesus.

Es ist an der Zeit, das Thema anzusprechen. Denn es wütet in der Dunkelheit – und nicht zuletzt verdirbt Pornographiesucht wirklich erfüllenden und leidenschaftlichen Sex mit der eigenen Frau. Ich “investiere” an andere Stelle – was meiner Frau aber eigentlich zusteht. Reden wir darüber.