A Bike That'll Break When Stolen [Bicycles]

Andrew Leinonen created the ultimate deterrent to bicycle theft - a lock that's integrated into the bicycle's frame. He calls his invention the StayLocked Bike.

The concept is simple, but brilliant. Instead of external lock that can be cut without damaging the bike, Leinonen's lock is integrated into the seat stays, an integral portion of the frame that connects the rear forks to the main tube that holds up the seat.

To steal the StayLocked bike, a thief would have to cut these seat stays. It wouldn't take too him long to figure out he went after the wrong bike. As soon as he hopped on the bike, it would buckle under his weight and he would go crashing to the ground. [Andrew Leinonen via Wired]

You can keep up with Kelly Hodgkins, the author of this post, on Twitter, Google + or Facebook. Related Stories

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

How This Pro Photographer Recovered $9k Worth of Stolen Gear [Crime]

Professional photographer John Heller got $9,000 worth of gear stolen in Los Angeles. Here's how he got it all back.

Heller, a Getty Images photographer, was on assignment at the Egyptian theater in Hollywood when his Nikon D3 and bag of lenses was stolen. Like most victims of gadget theft, Heller reported the crime to the police but resigned himself to the loss. In a last ditch, he entered his camera's serial number into GadgetTrak's Serial Search Service and turned up an exact match to several photos that had recently been posted to Flickr. These photos eventually lead Heller and the police to a professional photographer who'd unwittingly bought the stolen gear. The Flickr account even lead them to the photographer's Facebook profile which had snapshots of the missing lenses.

So how does the GadgetTrak search work? Buried within each digital photo file are vast troves EXIF data which includes exposure settings, the type of camera that used to take the photo, and most importantly in this case, the camera's serial number. When you upload your photo to Flickr, or any other photo-sharing site, all of this data goes with it. Searching photos by this data is easy enough unless they're hidden behind a privacy setting. GadgetTrak claims that its search spiders have located and indexed more than 10 million camera serial numbers. It seems so simple that it's hard to believe Heller's the first person to recover their camera by searching for their serial number on Flickr.[GadgetTrak via BoingBoing]

Related Stories

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.