Anti-theft system - Mac & Bluetooth

Ever wondered, when you enter your room and your computer welcomes you - "Welcome Master. Hope you had a wonderful Day" and starts playing music from the playlist you like, makes you a cup of coffee, switches on the fan/air-conditioner. Well we are half way there. Over a last few weeks, I had been playing around a bit with two applications that I downloaded from the internet - JackSMS and Proximity. Well there aren't very well documented stuffs about these 2 applications, but nevertheless they come in handy.

JackSMS, for instance is an application that I stumbled upon when I was searching for anti-theft systems. Its a free software and guess what it can do - when activated, it locks the screen and it'll sound an alarm when someone tries to pull off the power cable or close the lid of the monitor. Obviously if someone is trying to steal your laptop they have to do either of the two actions. And once the alarm has been set off, muting the laptop doesn't work. The alarm sounds at full volume. The only way to turn it off is to unlock the screen and turn off the alarm using this application. Wait, there is more to it. While the thief is trying to fiddle with the laptop, it secretly takes a snap of him and mails you his photo / sends you a text message. No one can beat that !

Proximity, the name implies that it detects the proximity of the owner to the laptop using bluetooth. All you have to do is pair your mobile device with your laptop. And write two scripts - one, when the mobile device is in the range. Two, when the device is not in the range. What my script does is that, when the mobile device is not in the range, it activates the JackSMS application so that the anti-theft system is ON, pauses itunes if it is running, sets my status message to 'Away' in Adium and locks the screen. Well, these scripts are fairly simple. There is no complex coding necessary. When my mobile device comes within the range, it deactivates JackSMS, resumes itunes, unlocks the screen, and sets my Adium Status message to Available and also welcomes me with a text-to-voice converter application.

As far as the coffee making and the switching on the fan is concerned, it isn't a difficult task either. All it requires is a circuit relay switch be triggered by a macbook and a simple script that does that. Or there might be something in the market already that 'switches' power to electric appliances from a computer. I haven't tried that yet. Will let you guys know about it when i get a chance to try it out !! After-all as i always say Mac is a better deal !
6 comments:

ur laptop really makes wierd alarms at work place even when u r tht 'thief'


thts really cool da.. jus amazed @ de things wat these little little applications can do..!!! wen i read the first few lines of ur blog i thot u wer talkin abt technology 10 yrs ahead of us..but u proved it tht is jus 10 mins away.. :P


@Archana,

Thats what u call 'testing' :)


@viki,

u bet.. I was kinda surprised that these applications are still lurking in the dark !


These are third party applications and may I know why you think these are part of MAC? There could be dozens of such applications that already exist written for Windows as well.. Well, as far as exposing the API's of microsoft's products(to set status as away or to pause media player), I dunno if they do it.. but that doesn't mean they dont do it.. :)


Anti theft and self defense products, but the best way to personal security. There are a lot of theft online, ready to rob you and destroy you. How to prevent this from happening? Do you really have to use evidence eraser? Or can you just erase the important file that you stored and carry on with your life?

You can't hide from this people, even if you put some anti spyware or adware remover, they can still penetrate from your personal information.


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