timberHeap

my service person was erik.

approximately one year ago erik gave me a call that has been a little bit life changing. he called me because i'm the resident family geek and he wanted some advice on a technical problem he was having.

"i've got netnanny installed on our PCs to help protect the family from undesirable internet content, but increasingly the kids are getting on the net with mobile devices. is there any way i could put a protection where the internet enters the home?", erik asked

"well, yeah," i replied," if it were me, i'd get a spare PC and install linux on it. i'd then explore several opensource packages and find the best one that does what i want it to do. you could then use IP tables in linux to forward all traffic to the different filtering mechanisms and then out to the internet."

as i was telling him this, i realized how ridiculous i sounded. while what i was suggesting was certainly doable, it wasn't even a simple task even for someone like me who is a pro with linux and opensource.

another option was to use any number of commercial products that have been built for small businesses and schools. but i advised that he likely would not find anything that was within a reasonable price range. since these solutions had been built for businesses and bureaucracies, they are usually very expensive (over $1000 for the software and another $600+ for a standalone computer) and difficult/confusing to administer (they come with full feature sets which increases the complexity and learning curve).

i basically sent him on his way without a good solution. but the idea just cultivated in the back of my brain.

i realized that there was a need for parents to have an affordable solution that was very easy to setup and administer.

so i decided to build one.

i had three goals for the project:

1. the total solution had to be under $100
2. the setup had to be under 1 minute.
3. administration had to be braindead simple

i finally got the time to kickstart the project when my wife left town one weekend to offer support to her cousin whose husband had died tragically.

i spent over 18 hours that saturday working on the project trying to see if i could create a solution with a small, underpowered computer that was no more powerful than a common smartphone.

when i got the prototype working and ran some stress tests, i realized the first goal was done. the less-than-100-dollar hardware i was running on was working spectacularly.

the next two goals required a lot of custom software development. this is the part of the project where i really needed erik's need to push me. the prototype i had was working fine for me and i was tech-saavy enough to administer it well enough, but i needed a push to write the code to make it braindead simple to setup and administer.

and thinking of erik and his family gave me that push. i kept thinking that even if it were only erik's family that benefited from this solution, then it would be worth the effort i put into it.

i called erik to tell him what i was working on. i had realized that the solution that was right for erik was also right for pretty much anyone else who desired to protect their family. my main goal is to give the tools that parents need to protect their homes and as such, i wondered if going a non-profit route would be advisable. after some discussion and thought, erik convinced me that i'd be able to help more people by making a successful commercial product. so i decided to do just that.

i had to push hard for timberHeap to be beta ready by thanksgiving, but i wanted erik to be able to take it with him after the holiday. i had some other last minute problems that almost destroyed the thanksgiving deadline, but i actually finished it up on the saturday after thanksgiving ready to give it to erik as he went home on sunday.

there's still a lot to do as i've come to some realizations about the real power of the device. the real power is not in the ability to filter undesirable content, but rather in the ability to report and identify all internet traffic that is coming into your home. i'm currently working on that.

thanks to erik for giving me the impetus to solve a difficult problem and the drive to continue with it esp. when it got hard. if the solution only helps his and my family, it will be well worth it, but if it goes on to help others, then so much the better.