18 July 2006

Undercover's 1/2 birthday

It has been exactly 6 months since Undercover has been released and a lot has happened since then... time for an update.

Airplay
The Undercover concept of using the built-in iSight to secretly transmit pictures of the thief makes a great news or blog story. As a result, Undercover has gotten tons of media attention, much more than we ever hoped. Our theft recovery application managed to make it to the Digg homepage. It also received its own entry on Slashdot and Ars Technica. Of course, Undercover was mentioned many times in the international Mac press as well. For example, Undercover has been listed among the 47 hot new Mac things by Macworld.

Reviews
Undercover has been reviewed three times thus far. The first review was carried out by Mac360. A second review recently appeared in Applicando, the leading Italian Mac journal (Undercover received an awesome 4.5/5 score) and finally the Austrian National Radio praised Undercover for it's ease of use and innovative features. We are still working to have Undercover reviewed by a mainstream US Mac magazine.

Succes stories
Many Mac users are interested in protecting their Macs with Undercover. Before committing to the software, however, they want to know if Undercover really works (which is something I'd be asking myself too, if I weren't the developer). As a result, we have received literally hundreds of requests for Undercover succes stories. Thus far, we have published only one - unusual - recovery story. This ostensible lack of succes stories is mainly caused by our respect for our users' privacy and for the secrecy of the investigations. Although computer theft may not seem like a big deal at first, it's often accompanied by burglary, violence, or even homicide. And even if it's 'only' a computer theft, it's still a crime that requires police investigations. The last thing we want to do is to ruin an investigation by prematurely releasing information (or iSight pictures) of a thief. On the other hand, we really want to show our (prospective) customers that Undercover really works. Therefore, we are preparing to publish more success stories in the weeks and months ahead, as well as some more general things we have learned. Keep an eye on this weblog, because we have some amazing Mac-recovery stories we would like to share...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

make the anti theft sensor also take pictures to an encrpted folder on your hd that would rawk dude just hav i sight activate with the programme? hmmmm may i automate? i shall look into it..............

Anonymous said...

I respect your considerations about publishing success stories. I am curious, however, about the ratios, that is, if the concept really works: What are the numbers for licenses sold versus thefts versus recoveries?

Thanks
Andreas, Aachen

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to remind all of you about the comments on removing Undercover by resetting the Open Firmware Password.

Please rememember that you have to count on the theif knowing that Undercover is installed. Most likley, the theif won't know and will take it for granted that your computer is unprotected, using it without reseting the password.

Peter Schols said...

Andreas, we will start publishing success stories very soon now, please keep an eye on this blog