guards

Just under two weeks ago, I was sitting at my desk here at CNET when I saw a bulletin online that a ship had hit the Bay Bridge. The bulletin was very short and to the point, and really just said that there was no structural damage to the bridge. We laughed about it for a few minutes and moved on.

I didn't think more about it until the next morning when I logged onto SFGate. There, I read that, in fact, the damage that had been done by the so-called Cosco Busan accident had been to the extremely … Read more

Toshiba has announced new ranges of hard drives that it believes are larger or cleverer than anything that came before them.

First up is EasyGuard, which is all about hoarding and protecting your data. The first product in the range is an external 2.5-inch laptop hard drive with a massive 320GB capacity and a 'freefall' sensor that protects the read/write heads in the event of shocks or drops.

The second EasyGuard product is a "ruggedized" (but not freefall-enabled) external hard drive with a fingerprint reader (pictured). The idea is that this'll keep your data secure, … Read more

In my last posting about DropMyRights, I used the Trend Micro Transaction Guard utility as an example of a Java applet installing software while running inside a restricted instance of Firefox.

Transaction Guard was only used to illustrate a point, the reference was not an endorsement of the product, which I have hardly any experience with. Since writing the last posting, I have tried to use Transaction Guard many times from three different Windows XP machines over the space of two days. Not once have I been able to install it. It consistently fails with the "network connection not … Read more

This week 3,400 Army National Guard members in Idaho learned they were the potential victims of identity theft. A USB drive containing personal information was stolen out of car in suburban Boise, according to news reports.

Police attribute the theft to a rash of car burglaries in the neighborhood and speculate that the thieves might not have realized they had stolen the guardsmen's personal data. Additional information can be found here.

The market timing for products like the "Tele-Data Guard" couldn't be better, coming on the heels of the recent spate of spy movies such as The Good Shepherd, Breach and The Company. We can think of no better way to heighten people's sense of paranoia.

Besides, who hasn't had their phones tapped as part of international conspiracies? That's what this device is aimed at detecting (well, maybe not the conspiracy part), by flashing a green light during conversation if someone is eavesdropping on your line, according to Uber-Review. It supposedly works on faxes and … Read more

If you've seen one too many reruns of the Thomas Crown Affair (the original version with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway was far superior), and you're of the paranoid ilk like us, you may very well be tempted to try out something like this to protect your precious oils and water colors. The "Guard Alarm" aims to provide security for hanging artwork directly at the source, rather than wiring the room they're in.

It screws into the wall, serving essentially as a "smart" hook--if a painting is removed, it sounds a "piercing, … Read more

So you've gotten a "Weemote" to limit your kids' TV hours, but what happens when they get bored of Nick Jr. reruns and want to go online? Even if they've exceeded their allotted time, you know they'll try to find a way to sneak in a few games, especially if they're boys.

Those are situations that could call for the "Best Net Guard," a parental control device that comes in the form of a remote similar to one used to lock and unlock the car. If you're doing dishes in the … Read more

Farecast, an airline ticket prediction and purchasing service, has launched a new Deals section that helps people find the best prices on tickets within a 90-day window. Unlike the recently launched Fare Guard, the Deals section is completely free and competes with other discount travel sites like TravelZoo and CheapTickets to aggregate flights that sell for a fraction of their typical cost. The service is currently limited to 38 major airports in the United States.

The search results are separated by the best deals, last-minute flights, weekend and weeklong flights, and flights for families. There's also a section for … Read more

Getting burned on airline ticket-price increases stinks. Today, the ticket-price guesstimating site Farecast (our initial Farecast coverage here) rolled out a new feature called Fare Guard. This $10-per-ticket service lets you lock down the lowest price provided by Farecast for seven days. If the price of the ticket goes up during that time, you can still purchase it at the original, locked price.

In essence Fare Guard is ticket-price travel insurance. Unfortunately, while the service covers any fare increases, it recompenses your expenses after the fact. That means you'll be waiting for a check in the mail from Farecast … Read more