Looking around on the internet I found something I think a few of you might be interested in.
First a little mythology. For those of you, like me, who are unfamiliar with Roman Mythology there is a goddess named Adeona who was known as the goddess of safe returns. When children left their parents’ home for the first time she was busy safeguarding their first steps alone. So it’s no wonder the new open source program aimed at tracking and locating lost or stolen laptops would be named after the goddess Adeona.
Adeona is a free Open Source system designed to track the location of your lost or stolen laptop because let’s face it, we don’t all live in Sunshine Happy Land and unfortunately there are individuals who seek out high priced items that may carry a lot more than sentimental value. Adeona is the first Open Source program of its kind and has incorporated features that even existing commercial programs of the same kind don’t offer. All other options on the market, meaning they cost money, seem to have no privacy settings and users subsequently forfeit location privacy even while it’s sitting in its owners’ lap. Adeona ensures that the owner is the only person who could access the current location on the device; all for free.
For those of you who own an Apple laptop are in for an even bigger treat. The developers of Adeona also offer a tool named “isightcapture” which will let you take pictures remotely with the built in iSight camera.
All data regarding location and pictures taken by the iSight camera are stored remotely on the internet so there is no chance of the thieves deleting data and leaving you with no trace. From what I can tell even if they go through and delete the program their last location would still be logged. As it stands right now the developers make it easy to uninstall as this is the first deployment of the Open Source program. So this system isn’t perfect and there may be flaws here and there but as a totally free option to have JIC (Just In Case), it really isn’t that bad.
Personally I’ve never been the victim of laptop theft but I would still prefer to have SOME sort of backup plan. I think it’s a great service, at least interesting. Take a look at it and let me know what you think.
Adeona’s Website with more information - http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/index.html




