If you’ve never worked in an office where an unsuspecting co-worker gets an e-mail sent out on his or her behalf announcing that happy hour drinks are on the house, you haven’t LIVED! It’s the perfect way to teach someone that they should always, always, lock their computer whenever they head over to the break room to find that someone drank all the coffee and didn’t bother to make another pot. Those days may be about to end, though, thanks to Phoenix Freeze.
It’s a Windows application that senses the proximity of your cell phone to your computer via Bluetooth, assuming your cell phone’s in your pocket most of the time. When you walk away from your computer, it automatically logs you out. When you come back, you’re logged back in. Simps, dude.
Free to download at PhoenixFreeze.com if you’re interested. Here’s a demo video:
[via Notebooks.com]
There is/was a program for the Mac called Salling Clicker that you could use with your Bluetooth-capable phone or Palm (we’re talking long enough ago that you had to pay a lot to get the nice phone that actually had Bluetooth) to control your iTunes, DVD Player, etc. and one of the features it had was that it could lock/screensaver your computer when you went out of Bluetooth range. Neat idea except that as I recall it didn’t have the ability to adjust how far away you should be before it locked, and I often found that reception was good enough that the computer wouldn’t lock until I was out of the house and down the street a little ways, so its utility in fending off annoying roomates/siblings was limited if I was just walking around the house.
Looks like this program has a setting to dial in signal strength to solve that issue, which makes it a pretty cool item to have if you’re the type that regularly leaves sensitive stuff exposed on your computer, or if you’re just anally paranoid about someone finding an emailed copy of your bank statements…
Yeah, Windows Mobile phones have had an app for this for about five years.