Designed for children.
Easy way to approve contacts.
Low cost.
Go ahead spread the news, safe email for children!
Please send email enquiries to support@mifrenz.com.
Like most parents I started by just letting my children use my own email account under close supervision, however I soon got tired of that!
I definitely did not want to give my children their own email address; they were too young to deal with the emails that I got in my SPAM folder.
I found companies that provided a website specifically for children’s email. They provided a very child friendly interface particularly for very young children. However there was a yearly subscription for this service.
Microsoft's Hotmail does provide a 'sub' account linked to the parents account for children. The parent can keep control of whom the child can email and who can email the child. This is a start, but doesn't really do the trick.
The email interface is still the same as that for adults - complete with dating adverts.
Apple also provides parental control but again, they haven't followed through with a decent interface for children.
One company just provides an email client, complete with child interface, but has the major drawback (apart from the expense) of only being able to be used from one computer and only on PC's.
Other software is designed to spy on your children. Surely that is not the way to build a long term trusting relationship with your children. No what we need to do is provide a safe environment that helps our children to enjoy the wonders of the world.
As far as I'm aware this feature isn't offered by any other product.
I'm not sure what your children are like, but mine never seemed to get the email address of their new friends (perhaps they are all using Facebook - more on that later) so if their friend sent them an email, Mifrenz would just block it.
This was not a great solution so I decided that if an email came from an unknown email address, Mifrenz would pass it on to me, so I could decide if I should allow it to become a contact - I might need to talk to my child first to find out a bit more about the person.
To avoid me having to deal with not only my own SPAM but now that of my child’s, I also added a feature that first gets the 'unknown' person to confirm that they are a real person. To tell you the truth, I started with this as the default action but this may not be popular with your child.
Also, as I said before, I didn't want to spend lots of time being my childrens' personal assistant and so designed Mifrenz to allow me to do much of the administration with just a few key strokes from my own email account.
Also, you may have noticed that someone might be your child's friend one day, but they can fall out and your child no longer regards them as a friend, but just wait a while and it's all back on again!
To solve the administration, I added the ability for the child to disable a contact themselves, so blocking all future emails from this person.
Just in case there is bullying going on, Mifrenz will send an email to you, to let you know about the any change in friendship status. Another first for Mifrenz?
Facebook's own guidelines say that it is not for under twelve year olds.
If you're reading this, you probably already know about the dangers of Facebook and I really don't think children under 12 should be using it.
Just to get back to the idea of spying on our children. I really think that is a bad idea. Surely it is better to educate our children about the dangers of being online and provide tools to help them keep safe.
Once we decide whose house we are going to take them to play with, we don't then attach a hidden microphone to them to listen to what they say! Hopefully we don't read their diary (if they keep one) and I also think we shouldn't be reading their emails.
That is why, Mifrenz is not designed for you to read their emails - of course you can if you wish as you have their password, but I really think you should reconsider!
Mifrenz is written in Java and hence although originally created for Windows, I was able to package it up to be used with Mac OS.
I imagine you Mac lovers, will be able to tell that it hasn't been written in Objective C, but I think it does a reasonable job - I'd be very happy to hear your suggestions for improvements.
Right from the start I wanted to make Mifrenz fun for children.
Apart from making the interface easy to use, I added the ability for children to create, share and collect jokes.
Another fun feature is the text to speech reader. Yes the voice isn't the best of quality but then it is a bit of a laugh to hear how it pronounces your name.
I claim Mifrenz can be used in any language - yep.
What I've done is create multiple resource files (that was a bit more geeky stuff - sorry) each containing a separate translation - to start with, most of the translations are those created by automatic translation tools.
I've also provided the ability for parents to create their own translation (or just modify the one given) so in theory you can have Mifrenz in any language you desire.
I'd be very keen to hear from you if you create a translation (or modify one) so I can make it available to other parents.
I haven't stopped there. I'm investigating the idea of adding some educational tools to Mifrenz (having just done a course on teaching literacy). Now I don't want this to be boring, but I think I could slip in some education about new words watch this space.
Yes you can download Mifrenz for free, but please don't let your children use it before you buy a license.
The main reason for this, is that until you've bought and installed the license key, every time Mifrenz is used, an email is also sent back to Mifrenz Ltd with some information about what features were used and if any errors occurred.
This is just to help me with development, and absolutely no content of any email is sent. But, I do not want to (and obviously shouldn't) collect any information about actual usage.
My wonderful daughters, Rebecca and Isobel have done much of the artwork for this website and the application itself.
Well apart from not paying my daughters for their artwork (!), I teach computer programming and have developed this application as part of my research (so I've been paid anyway). I could give it away, but then a little bit of extra income doesn't do any harm!
But beware of free email for children, chances are that they will be trying to make money by advertising to children. I hope your children have as much fun using Mifrenz as mine have had.
Regards
Tim
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