You may have read my post early on about K9 internet filtering. K9 is a good resource to use in home computers, but I have recently found out that to put it on your church computers (i.e. business) you need to purchase a license.

You may want to check out OpenDNS. It provides similar internet saftety solutions and is completely free for any setting. I must admit that I have not used this yet. I plan on taking K9 off of one of my church computers and installing OpenDNS on it instead.

Have you had any experience with OpenDNS? Tell us about it.

I recently came across a program which provides a safe and entertaining web environment for kids. It’s called Kido’z. Kido’z is a great resource to pass along to your parents or to install on computers that kids may use in your ministry. You can read more about it here. It is in the beta version now, so you can get it for free. Eventually they will come out with a premium version with more features, but from their site, it looks like the free version is very usable.

Please let me know if you have ever used this program before. How did it work?

Do you know of any similar web environments for kids?

In the administrative-heavy world of Children’s Ministry, the files on your computer are precious. What would you do if you lost forever some of these valuable documents that you use year after year:

• Volunteer applications
• Pictures from previous ministries
• Parent and child letters
• Fall festival to-do lists

I would dare say that many of us are ministering daily with all of this information and more stored on one computer. How many times have you heard of a friend moaning of their computer crashing? What did you say? It won’t happen to you? That’s what your friend said! I decided several years ago, as I was accumulating these documents that I would ensure they were backed up on our church server.

That’s when I discovered Allway Sync. It is a free synchronization program that is extremely versatile. You can simply back up one folder on your computer to your church’s server, a jump drive or an external hard disk or you can go as extreme as creating automatic daily syncs or excluding certain types of files or folders.

I back up all of my children’s ministry files here at church and I back up my school files between my church laptop and desktop at home as well. This program has worked flawlessly since I installed it over 2 years ago. The license allows free use for any personal or non-profit situation and their End User License Agreement leaves the door open for church/non-profit organization use. Do don’t lose those files!

If you are like me, your ministry to children, families and volunteers does not end when you leave the office. There are few jobs in the world where you have to commit your whole life in order to be successful. Ministry is one of them. What this means is that you may have to access things at your office when you are in other places. I do this using a service called LogMeIn.

There are a lot of services out there to remotely access your desktop. Window’s XP includes a remote access component, but it is very finicky and runs through the operationg system rather than through the web. LogMeIn allows you to access other computers through your internet browser.

It is very convenient, but the drawbacks are that you can not transfer files (unless you opt for the paid version) and you have to install the program on each computer involved. The way to get around the file transfer issue if you are in a bind is to email yourself something to a web-based email client and then access that email from the remote computer’s desktop. Aside from that, I have found that LogMeIn is very easy to use and has been a lifesaver in many circumstances over the last 2 years. I even maintain my parent’s computer from it on a monthly basis.

If you would like to see some other options for remotely accessing your computer (i.e. if you are a little more tech-savy and could handle a VNC) check out this post at the tech blog Mashable.