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        In Paul's own words:

Paul and LauraWhat started of as nothing more than a simple question from my wife,ended up in 7 months of development and a software solution to a problem that most parents are going to face at some point.

“What’s Laura doing on her computer?” was the question, “I don’t know”, was my reply. Laura was 10 at the time, and she had her own laptop in her bedroom, although she had full access to the family PC downstairs.  Laura was getting to that age where she liked her own room far more than hanging around downstairs with the olds! She was 10, using a tool that would allow her to communicate with ANYBODY in the world and I had no idea what she was doing. This didn't’t seem right, the switch had been flicked and I was curious and very nervous about what my little girl was up to.

I think if Laura had been a little younger maybe she would have been happy to only use the computer when either my wife or I was with her. As it was all her friends we’re using the computer alone and so she wanted to. I started of by searching the net for child monitoring programs, there were a few available but they all had at least 2 flaws. Expensive and overly complex, I wasn't’t interested in Laura’s passwords, what keys she’s been typing, restricting the websites and programs she was using (After all she only wanted to use social networking websites and instant chat. These presented the biggest danger as far as I was concerned). I knew exactly what I wanted, just simple screen shots of what she was looking at emailed to me. In order to get this I needed to buy all these extra features and install overly complex programs that wanted to take over my computer.

In December 2006 whilst discussing it with some friends, it was decided that I’d go ahead and write my own software. I had a very clear idea of what I wanted the program to do and as I was writing if for myself it made it quite a simple process in terms of design. The only thing slowing me down was nobody pushing me for a product and the fact that Laura wasn't’t using her laptop as much. However in late April this year all that changed, whilst running some tests on the screen grabbing part of the program I had the misfortune of seeing some of the Bebo profiles that Laura had been browsing. Now I have nothing against social networking, I’ve been around on the Internet since 1993 and have grown up with technology, but what I saw on the profiles of those 11/12 year old girls’ profiles was enough to poke me up the bum with the proverbial red hot poker. “How sexy do you think I am?”, “What would you like to do to me?”, I was fairly sure that the parents of SuperHotAndSexy96XX had no idea what their daughter was up to online!

After several months of hard work, a finished version of the program was ready.  In the end I’d settled on the name ICU Monitoring Software or ICU for short, ICU being a play on an Insight into your Children’s Unaccompanied activity.  I installed it on Laura’s laptop and the family computer, discussed with her at length of what was going to happen and left it at that. In the 2 weeks that I trialled the program a few small issues were found and resolved. In terms of monitoring my daughter there were one or two things she was doing that I picked up on and asked her to stop, the main one being her surfing social networks for the profiles of “famous people” (mainly Disney stars) and leaving comments! A quick discussion about how people might not be who they say they are and me asking her not to leave comments on profiles of people she doesn't’t know was enough to nip it in the bud. Laura completely accepted ICU, understood that I was only looking out for her, that I wasn't’t interested in what she was and wasn’t discussing with her friends and that I wouldn't’t ever mention what she was doing unless it was something that was worrying me. To this extent I make it a rule to delete the e-mail of Laura’s activity once I have checked it over. Of course once we had ICU then my friends and family also wanted it which presented new problems.

Not all parents are computer literate, many can barely turn on a computer. My family is the perfect example of this and that’s who was going to use the software next. I cut down on the number of options, made everything as intuitive as possible and even created a short video to demonstrate just how easy to use it was. The feedback I received was excellent, anything that could be made simpler was and at that point it was suggested that I might want to make it available for other people to buy. I’d achieved what I set out to do by writing a program that would help keep Laura safe online, my friends and family are very happy using it and I’d have nothing to lose so after some work (including the designing of a snazzy logo) ICU was released for general sale. The most important thing to me is that it’s a solution to a problem that I’m happy to use.

Laura is 12 now, using MSN Messenger to chat to her friends for hours at a time and she even has a webcam. Without having ICU there is no way I would be happy with this but now it’s not a problem because I know it’s very easy for me to look out for her.

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