Nov 26 2008
Cool Lenovo stuff
Two things that are really cool about Lenovo this week.
First: we announce a very cool way to disable a stolen or lost laptop by sending it a text message that will disable it. I think we should put a big dye bomb under the keyboard so when the text message is sent the machine dyes the thief a nice shade of indelible orange.
Second, we announce this external hard drive with a high security numeric keypad thing going on. Master designer and Lenovo blogger David Hill posted this most excellent photo of the rejected ideas last night. I like working at a company that has great designers.
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Great idea – I can see my sysadmins sending text messages during meetings to set off the dye bomb on someone’s laptop.
it’s surprising that RIM (or any other smartphone manufacturer for that matter) doesn’t have a way to send a text to a blackberry using a special code to wipe the device in the event of loss. it’s a simple yet ingenious concept that shouldn’t have taken so long to hit the market. the only pitfall the the thinkpad application of this concept is that it will require a WWAN subscription and not everyone needs or uses one. something based on a unique TPS device MAC address that could disable the machine using a global IP callout would be better, since this could disable it using a hardwire network, wifi, or WWAN connection. one could log into a secure lenovo server, tell it to disable your machine based on MTM/SN and other unique identifier(s), then once the machine connected to the internet via any means, it would disable itself. consider it “security for everyone,” not just a select few.
i’m looking forward to receiving the 320GB secure HDD. i’ve wanted one since reading that engadget blurb last week. it’s one of those “ah-ha” inventions that will make life easier and give me piece-of-mind with client files. i just wish it didn’t take over a week to ship and another week after that to arrive.
update: i just got shipment notification this morning from lenovo. looks like the drive is shipping a week ahead of schedule.
oh, and happy thanksgiving, david!
Saw this?
Why Lenovo S10 Social Media Campaign Is Not Good Enough
http://www.cwrblog.net/1226/why-lenovo-s10-social-media-campaign-is-not-good-enough.html
Poor English, all over, but seems like an interesting point. Should *all* social media campaigns be conversational? Can some be top down or will that be frowned upon by the have-opinion-will-talk generation?
Yeah, I don’t think social=conversational needs to be some sort of cast-in-stone law. (I didn’t have anything to do with the S10 campaign which originated in China). I’ve done highly conversational programs like the Olympics which got flamed for not being SEO optimized. So, sheesh, you can’t please em all.
Criticism is cheap.