Many people give a ring to their mobile phones to find out where they are. Then there are remotes which glow in the dark for easy location. When something is at home, it is easy to locate, but what happens when you lose something outside? Nowadays some phones come with tracking devices which are inbuilt.

If you are in the habit of losing your car or home keys, or your bag or wallet, or your laptop or iPad, you can find it thanks to the Cobra Tag. It comes as a Bluetooth tagging system which is built into a device which looks like a key fob. The key fob works with Cobra Tag smart phone app, which you have to download into your smart phone. It will work with Blackberry and Android phones. (more…)

If you want good home security you may look into the burglar blaster. The burglar blaster is a new and pretty novel idea for home security. We know pepper spray is used in some self-defence products, but this takes it further and employs it in home security. If it detects any unauthorised movement, it will release pepper spray all around 2000 square feet.

It is armed with an infrared beam. First the beam will ‘find’ an intruder and then the blaster will emit a warning tone. That is so that if you are the homeowner or resident, you can disarm the spray quickly. According the manufacturers (Heracles Research Corporation) a burglar will not be able to detect the place the sound comes from. (more…)

In existence and use are highly advanced scanners which can scan people and even objects. But the current scanners have some limitations. Now a scanner has been made which can detect hidden objects in solids. It uses millimeter wave and microwave signals in real time and special software decodes all the information.

It can thus detect objects in structures and solids and display the images on the computer. The focus can be moved so that the entire structure can be scanned. Originally developed in 2007, researchers led by Dr. Reza Zoughi at Missouri S&T have developed a device which is smaller in size and more efficient. Research is still ongoing to find a system which can show images in 3D. (more…)

Not too long back, witnesses looked through photos of criminals in files or albums and tried to identify them or match them with the person they saw. If required, or if they could not identify the person, they would sit with the artist and get sketches made. With computerization all this has become much easier. It becomes easier to make the sketches and go through all the pictures. Of course this helps only if witnesses have actually seen the criminal and it is not going to be of much help if the perpetrator has worn a disguise like a mask. (more…)

The porn detector comes on a USB drive, so is portable and easy to use on many computers. You just put it in the USB port and it will scan the computer for pornographic content in the form of images. It can even find deleted files and history files and prepare a report of images. And it uses advanced image analysing algorithms to find porn and rarely returns false positive results.

Why would you want to use it? If you are a parent, you can find out if your children or other people who have access to your computers are surfing porn sites. If you are an employer you can learn if your employees are wasting time. If images are stored on your computers, you will be held responsible for any illicit activity. (more…)

A small virtually invisible camera clipped to the uniform of the police officer can help fight crime. When police officers go to a crime scene to talk to people, they either take notes or also take photos. But if they wear video recorders, they will have to do neither, as the camera will record everything.

In West Michigan, police officers are wearing body cameras to capture crime scenes. This way there is less room for error and other officers, too, can see and hear what has been recorded. These tiny body cams cost only about $100. Many police cars have cameras on their dashboards, but these have limitations as the cruiser has to be close enough to record. (more…)