Tuesday, October 28, 2008

ICU Version 2 Now Available

The latest version of ICU is now available for download. Version 2 is a major upgrade to ICU. On top of the normal bug fixes there are quite a few new monitoring features that I'm hoping most people will find useful.

1. Rolling Monitoring - Captures an image every 20 seconds which can then be played back using the custom viewer. This really helps when there is something a bit dodgy in one of the standard e-mail reports but you're not 100% sure. A quick flick through using the rolling viewer can usually clear up whether what you are seeing is a problem or not.

2. Program List - Records the programs that are run during the duration of the standard report. If you get an e-mail every half hour then it's the programs your child has ran in that half hour. Have they had a sneaky 5 minutes on a game whilst supposed to be doing their home work? More importantly this report will also show the titles of any browser windows open. This corresponds to the titles of the web pages they have been visiting.

3. MSN Messenger Conversations - Whilst ICU captures the screen in order to record MSN Messenger conversations in context this new feature captures who your child has been speaking to (not what is being said). I've already found this priceless. My daughter has a rule that she's not allowed to speak to anybody on MSN that she doesn't know in real life. This report has busted her a few times.

Besides these I've also added a "Stay Alive" version. This is aimed for parents of tricky kids who think it's funny to use the task manager to stop ICU running. This optional version doesn't allow that to happen. :)

All in all I'm quite happy to release version 2 now but be warned that it's not perfect. There are a few minor bugs in there and the interface will be updated at some point soon (hopefully). Truthfully I just wanted to allow people to use the new features that I've been using for months. Besides it's free software so there is no issue with just updating it as and when I make any changes!

Thanks and enjoy!

Paul

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1 comments:

Michele said...

That's a good thing to do. I used to chat all the time with people I didn't know from random chat rooms. Nothing bad ever happened to me, but I am still friends now with a guy I started chatting with when I was 15. (26 now.) I've met up with him twice and continue to be friends even now that I'm married and he's engaged.
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