buzzbishop
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It was suspenseful stuff to watch his nervousness and excitement as he closed in on the criminal and worried for the safety of his friends.
Power was in Ottawa, his computer was in New York City. He started tracking down the bad guy once hes pinged by a piece of free open source software, Prey Project, on his computer.
Prey Project is easily installed on Linux, Windows and Mac machines. Once it's up and running, you can then access a web panel to get status updates on your devices.
Through the panel, Power was able to turn on his computer's webcam remotely to get a full screen shot of the thief as he leaned over the hot laptop. He could have also sounded an alarm, popped a text message on the screen or locked the machine down to prevent any tampering. Instead, he chose to sit and watch from Ottawa as he called the NYPD and had friends hustle down to the restaurant to stake out the suspect.
While Power was waiting for the cops to arrive and nab the guy, they needed him to fill out a report. His colleagues had to pull some vigilante justice to get the computer back, but in the end it worked.
What's the first thing I did last night as I watched the story play out on Twitter? I installed Prey Project. It was quick and easy and a great way to track my Macbook in a way similar to how "Find My iPhone" works for my iOS devices.
The entire scenario brought back memories of the night Revision3's David Prager found a hobo in his house and Ustream and Twitter whlie he hid in the bathroom. More recently another savvy computer user did a screen cap of his thief dancing around and posted it on YouTube.
Moral of the story? Don't steal a nerd's computer.
catch the buzz ... pass it on.
