iAlertU

iAlertU is a neat little application that may help to secure your MacBook or MacBook Pro.  When enabled, it uses the sudden motion sensor to detect movement.  When movement is detected, the an alarm is sounded, and a picture of the person moving the computer is taken.  (Assuming that the are in front of the computer.)

There are some things that I would love to see fixed in iAlertU

1. Have the alarm played through the speakers, even when headphones are plugged in.


2. Have iAlertU startup, even before users login.  This will allow the alarm to continue even after a hard reboot.


3. Have an iAlertU screen saver, that automatically arms when the screen saver enables.

This page describes a way to have the images, that are taken by iAlertU, automatically uploaded by to a server.  This should allow you to see the image of who has taken your laptop.  I like the idea, but I don't like depending on a non-standard application.  I changed this script to use scp to upload the image.

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
    ------ CONFIGURATION - set your options here -------
    set the favorite_name to "Your Transmit Favorite"
    set the image_path to "Macintosh HD:Users:pwestbro:iAlertU_Capture.jpg"
    set the folder_path to "Macintosh HD:Users:pwestbro:alert"
    set the upload_path to "/Users/pwestbro/iAlertU_Capture.jpg"
    ------- Configuration is complete  ---------------
    try
        if added_items as string is equal to image_path then
            delay 1.5
            
            -- build the shell command
            set command to "scp " & upload_path & " paul@xxxxxx.xxx:~/alert/AlertU_Capture`date +'%m%e%g%H%M%S'`.jpg"
            do shell script command
            
            tell application "Finder"
                activate
                move added_items to folder_path
            end tell
        end if
    end try
end adding folder items to

I also didn't install the script that runs at login, since I don't have my computer setup to automatically login.  So if some took my computer, and rebooted it, the script would never run.

[via TUAW]