Picture the following

- you happily flung away $400 or so for a brand new shiny iPhone (wheeee!).

What on earth will you do if it gets stolen? Hmmmmm?

Why, you want to prepare for that by…..the iPhone Lojack! To wit:

…Way back, one of our readers begged for an iPhone LoJack solution. He wanted his iPhone to “call home” regularly in case of loss or, let’s be more realistic, theft. Over the past week, I finally had a chance to give this request some time, and I put together findme. It’s a command-line program that returns the location of the cell phone tower nearest to your iPhone. When run, it tells you the tower id, plus its latitude and longitude courtesy of Google Maps.

Still, how to get the location report to a place you can get it… but nobody else can… and without receiving a zillion SMSes? For this part of the puzzle, enter Twitter. Twitter dev Britt Selvitelle helped walk me through the setup for a private account that allows your iPhone to phone home but keeps the location data relatively secure.

To do this, create a new Twitter account just for your iPhone (it will need its own unique email address, separate from your main account, so have one handy). Open the Settings panel, and look for the “Protect My Updates” checkbox. It’s towards the bottom of the page, just above the Save button. Check this and click Save. With protected updates, only the Twitter users you approve will see the updates for this iPhone-only account (just you? you + spouse? spouse, kids, and “special friends?” Up to you).

After creating your phone’s Twitter account, you’re ready to set up your iPhone to tweet in on a regular basis. Here’s how.….MORE…..

What a brilliant idea! And it uses shell script! My life is complete!

But if you don’t worship and adore shell scripting and unix yourself, here are some resources to help you learn:

• Beginners iPhone Mod Guide
• iPhone Unix Help
• Help Unix

ThankYouVeryMuch!

Owlbert

ps - nifty iphone goodies you crave?

Unlocked 16GB 2G iPhone 2.0.2 GSM MOBILE PHONE

4GB Apple iPhone. EXTRAS! 2.0 w App Store! GSM unlocked

Apple Iphone 2G 8GB 8 GB 2.01 UNLOCKED & JAILBROKEN

iPHONE 8GB Apple Used 1 week! + UNLOCKED?

2G apple iphone in great condition able to be unlocked

Brand New 16GB iPhone 3G UNLOCKED + UNIVERSAL SIM

Apple iPhone 1st Gen 8GB JAILBROKEN UNLOCKED Ver2.0.2