locks

Twice bitten: Acts of stupidity can lead to identity theft

A British TV presenter has learned the hard way that identity theft is serious, and in the process, become the joke of the moment for privacy bloggers. More importantly, this is the second time in just one year that such a thing has happened. This blog post explores the latest incident, looks back to the past, and then concludes with a more broad analysis.

Jeremy Clarkson, host of the BBC show Top Gear, recently wrote an article for the U.K.'s Sunday Times in which he ridiculed the uproar that had occurred after the British government admitted to losing … Read more

Predictions for 2008: Sharepoint will disappoint, Google will seek omnipotence

CMS Watch makes 12 predictions for 2008, two of which stand out based on things I've covered on this blog. The first has to do with Sharepoint, that lightweight Microsoft portal and content repository that seeks to lock enterprises once and for all into Microsoft. CMS Watch predicts a backlash:

The backlash will be two-fold. First larger enterprises will exhibit major compliance and litigation discovery issues across numerous unmanaged and unaccountable SharePoint locations. You will also see a backlash against sizable development costs and times to build maintainable applications in the MOSS environment. With the more complex SharePoint projects struggling to launch, customers are realizing a disconnect between Redmond's heavy promotion and the realities of a product that is significantly less out-of-the-box than most expect.

But we expect this from Microsoft and eventually from its customers. The more frightening prediction concerns Google, the data-hungry "do no evil" company that CMS Watch predicts will find new ways to pull users into its cloud:… Read more

Laptop gets a bicycle chain alarm

While others fret about people breaking into their digital equipment, we often have more immediate concerns. Maybe it's a comment on the Wi-Fi coffee shops we frequent, but we often find ourselves worrying about the computer being stolen altogether--and, in those cases, older tech might be more effective than the newer stuff.

Case in point: an alarm for your laptop. Belkin has developed a USB security device that works kind of like a bicycle chain with a built-in alarm. Basically, you secure the base to a desk or something else too large or heavy to be carried away without … Read more

Start YELLING! It's CAPS LOCK DAY!

Do you know what day it is? DO YOU? IT'S INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY! YAY!

This little-known holiday, according to geek lore, is an ironic little tradition stemming from the perceived overuse of capital letters in online conversation. But even though today is a day for celebrating/lampooning the keyboard key that can turn a simple hello into a verbal strike, we at Crave will resist the urge to yell our way through this post. Being the highly sensitive geek souls that we are, after all, we try to live by the old adage: type unto others as you … Read more

When all else fails, plug the port

Sometimes, the simplest solutions are the most effective. As computer companies cater to the paranoid among us with such USB security devices as fingerprint readers and handwriting analyzers, this little upstart from ThinkGeek takes the most basic approach: plug the hole.

All you need to do before leaving your machine unattended is insert one of four "blockers" included with the gadget into your USB port, which prevent foreign flash drives or anything else from gaining access through that connection. The blockers can be removed only by the master key.

No complicated software or equipment to go haywire, though … Read more

Folder Lock's interface should be locked up

Folder Lock does a lot of things right, but its interface makes me want to rip out my eyes. It's great for 1998, but nearly 10 years on you'd think that since we'd all gotten away from animated icons on Web pages, that the goofy UIs publishers try to foist on us would be gone, too.

But you'd be wrong.

The trainwreck-waiting-to-happen that is UK government IT spending

My CEO, John Powell, spoke at a United Kingdom government IT event the other day (along with my friend from Microsoft, Nick Mcgrath, who looks a bit like Hugh Grant, though without the same moral problems :-). In the course of the event, it was mentioned that 85% of the UK's government $24 billion IT budget is tied up in eight (8!!!) vendors.

Think about that. Think about what this means: eight vendors have a tremendous amount of leverage over the taxpayers of the United Kingdom.… Read more

Trapdoor for the gas cap

As much as we hate to think about gasoline--its ever-rising prices, more specifically--this is an item that could save a good bit of mess at the pump.

Gas caps can be a pain to use, especially if you're as forgetful as we are: We've left a few of them behind by accident, next to the coffee on the roof. But there's an alternative called the "InStant Fill," a device with a "trapdoor mechanism" that allows you to insert the nozzle without removing the cap. Book of Joe notes that it's also an … Read more

Get the door from anywhere on Earth

In the Digital Age, the postman never needs to ring twice. That's because of inventions like the "GSM Doorbell" from Dutch start-up Waleli, which will automatically call your mobile phone if you're not immediately available to greet visitors--and you can unlock the door remotely just by punching in a designated number.

As Gearlog points out, it's really more of a smart system that includes an intercom, electronic lock and SIM card for your handset. Waleli says the system, which works with any phone on an international GSM network, has already been on the market in … Read more

A remote for the front door

We can't count how many times we've wished for something like this. If car makers have long known the convenience of an electronic remote key, why haven't homebuilders figured out a similar concept for the front door?

Locca Access is one such remote system made by a U.K. company that can unlock your door from up to 50 meters away. (That's about 164 feet to us Yanks.) It can store up to 19 keys and promises to work even in a power outage, running on its own battery for 48 hours.

The kicker? Red Ferret … Read more