I just read about the theft in Mexico of a laptop computer that contained the psychological screenings of 441 applicants for law enforcement jobs in California. The computer was owned by a psychologist doing contract work for the state. The notebook was stashed in knapsack stored in the trunk of a car.

And that incident has inspired me to make a confession — right here on blogBytes within earshot of everybody in those other cubicles around me.

It wasn’t so long ago that I maintained data of a private nature on my own working laptop that could easily have been ripped off in a similar fashion. No, I’m not talking about some salacious collection of Tony Bennett photos or my one-of-a-kind compilation of Alberta Hunter tracks.

I’m talking unencrypted social security numbers, banking data for accounts that weren’t mine, kids’ names and birthdays – the kind of stuff that the wrong kind of thief could cause a great deal of grief with.

This in spite of the fact that I’ve often reported on the loss of private data that happened because of the general idiocy of the user.

Sure, I thought I had good reason to keep this data. Mostly it belonged to people I have worked with through the years, where I’ve needed to access their SSN information or bank account data to make payment or put invoices into accounting, or family details for idle conversations.

But I finally discovered the errors of my ways. It wasn’t that long ago that I went through the contents of my hard drive — a time-consuming process — and removed anything that could be misused by another. I’m still not encrypting everything; but progress comes slowly in these quarters.

So here’s my brilliant idea: I think it’s time for some creative and totally honest programmer to come up with a simple application that will run through the contents of a hard drive and generate a report detailing the confidential information it contains — so that the user knows what needs to be wiped away or encrypted.

There you have it. The idea belongs to the world. When you have what I need, let me know and I’ll report on it.

In the meantime, I gotta go wrack my brain to remember what the name of my editor’s oldest kid is, so I can ask how high school is working out for her…

Hiya Ibiza Rhapsody! I was going to write about a product overcoming a strange sounding name, but decided to focus instead on some of the more unique aspects of the Haier ibiza Rhapsody 30GB Portable Media Player. This is the first Media Player from Haier, who are better known for their dishwashers, refrigerators, microwaves and other home appliances. The styling is reminiscent of an iPod classic with some Zune 30 thrown in. It has similar dimensions to the iPod Classic and a 2.5 inch screen. It also has a Zune-like touchpad. Yet it is rather costly in comparison.

This is not just any Media player. Like the SanDisk Sansa Connect, this is a wireless-enabled Media Player, but this one is linked to the Rhapsody music store. However, no computer is required to set up and use this player, just a subscription to the Rhapsody Music Service. Fortunately it comes with a 30 day trial subscription.

Among the multiple features of this device: Podcasts can be updated wirelessly. You can also access video on the go through AOL Video. It supports stereo Bluetooth, which not many players do. As well as an FM Radio with RDS, you can listen to Rhapsody Channels – the equivalent of customized internet radio channels.

The Ibiza Rhapsody comes in several capacities and colors, There is a 4GB and an 8GB Flash Player, or a 30GB hard drive based player. The colors: black, blue, silver, white and pink – that’s the 30Gb version, the 4GB and 8GB have variants of these.

This is a great player for discovering music, but obviously needs Wi-Fi access and a $15 per month Rhapsody Music subscription to get the most out of it.

When I mentioned the Nokia 810 Internet Tablet previously, I assumed that it had superseded the Nokia 800. I was wrong. Apparently due to some differences in design and a huge price difference, both devices are currently being marketed to different segments of the mobile computing market, and the Nokia 800 will be supported along with the 810.

Briefly, the Nokia 810 Internet tablet added a keyboard which was more of thumbboard, and a built-in GPS receiver. The memory card slot was also changed to a high capacity miniSD card slot.

So what does the Nokia 800 have to offer other than costing less? Firstly, it has two high capacity SD Card slots, which means that the memory can easily be bumped up to 16GB or higher. The Linux operating system can also be upgraded to the same version as the Nokia 810, which increases the CPU speed from 320MHz to 400Mhz. It has an FM radio which the 810 doesn’t. Other specs include a 4.1-inch, 800×480 touch screen, rotating VGA web camera, 802.11b/g wireless and Bluetooth 2.0. The bluetooth allows you to add a keyboard if you would prefer not to use the on-screen keyboard. There is also handwriting recognition which is not as sophisticated as that of Palm devices.

The one area where both the Nokia 800 and 810 lack is PIM software. However, there is a beta Virtual Machine available that will allow Palm Garnet OS applications to run on any of the Nokia Internet tablets. Also, third party developers are working on various applications for the open Operating System.

You’ve seen Wow Wee products even if you don’t know it. That’s the company that’s into robotics. They make the Roboquad, a four-legged spider-like robot that can follow objects, dance and turn when faced with an obstacle. They also make the Alive Elvis, which sings and dances and moves an Elvis Presley-like mouth authentically in a truly spooky manner. Then there’s the Roboraptor, the Robosapien, the Dragonfly…

But these are not exactly the kind of cuddly robots you might want to give to a kid who loves his soft toys. That’s why I was thrilled to find out the company will be introducing a new line this summer, which I had the chance to pet at CES.

These cutie-pie creatures are all animal babies — big heads and fluffy bodies. But when you stroke their heads or necks, they start cooing and looking up at you with adoring eyes. They also open and close their mouths while making mewling sounds and moving their heads around like affectionate cats.

Forget the dog I was planning to get in the next couple of years. I’m going to load up on rechargeable batteries for my kid’s pet fix.

Well, when a Notebook is called a “Ferrari” for example the Acer Ferrari FR1100-5457 Notebook you are going to expect it to be screamingly fast. I guess they wouldn’t call a notebook the Acer Beetle – even though the Beetle may be a fine car, it just doesn’t give the impression of a top of the range notebook .

Also, this notebook is powered by an AMD processor, and in all the reviews and mentions I have made of desktop and notebook computers so far it may seem like I’m biased towards Pentium Dual Core processors. That would be a bit hypocritical on my part, as out of four Desktop computers of varying vintages at home, three have AMD processors, and only one has a Pentium processor. The one with a Pentium processor was bought second hand so I didn’t really have a choice of the processor. The others were bought because of the cost savings of buying a computer with an AMD processor instead of an Intel processor.

The Acer Ferrari notebook features a AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile processor, which may not be as fast as an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, but other than that it will run Windows Vista just fine, especially with 4GB of RAM. With the 250GB hard drive and only weighing just over 4 pounds it makes for a pretty decent thin and light notebook.

Once when I was younger, I went to Xanadu, the house of the future in the Wisconsin Dells with my grandmother. Shaped like an above-ground version of the house where the Teletubbies live — all round and curvy — it included a geodesic greenhouse, porthole windows, computers (Commodores, mind you) to control the temperature of your bath water, an electronic hearth with a TV and sound system, shag carpeting, and a meditation room. I’m personally surprised we’re not all living in these heavenly homes.

I was reminded of Xanadu when I toured NextGen Home Experience during CES. The idea was to show off the latest in consumer electronics and connected home technologies in a “real” atmosphere.

But what really amazed me was the bed. Leggett & Platt have some nice beds — they can undulate like a snake in the winter. But that’s nothing compared to what they concocted for NextGen’s Starry Night Bed.

Let me count the ways:

One, vibration sensor and load cell technologies to measure how much you toss and turn, and how often you get out of bed during the night. According to a company press release, the same vibration sensor technology detects and monitors rhythmic breathing patterns that indicate relaxation. It compares these movements to a 30-day baseline measure of the sleeper and then provides tips to improve sleep quality.

Two, using some kind of liquid-based technology, the mattress can be set to pre-heat or pre-cool both sides separately. If you’ve ever slept with somebody who suffers from hot flashes, you’ll recognize this as a total selling point.

Three, the bed includes a surround sound system along with an LCD-based projector that can show movies on your bedroom wall. You can also surf wirelessly from bed controls to settle those late-night arguments about obscure facts that only Wikipedia can answer. There’s a built-in iPod docking station for recharging your device. And it includes 1.5 terabytes of disc storage to maintain your music and video collection.

Four, the bed actually detects snoring with a vibration-detection system and automatically moves the bed into a position that will help open nasal passages to reduce mild to moderate snoring. When the snoring stops, the bed returns to its original position.

This deluxe night-mobile is projected to be available in the first half of 2009 and to retail between $20,000 and $50,000, depending on your configuration. Sound expensive? Compared to getting apnea surgery, hormone treatment or a divorce, I think it sounds like a true bargain.

The Archos 605 WiFi Portable Media Player is often compared to the iPod Touch. Sure, they both have touch screens, play music and video, and can browse the internet, but there the similarities end. The Touch comes in capacities of 8GB and 16GB. The Archos 605 WiFi comes in capacities of 4GB (flash memory with an SD expansion slot), and 30, 80 or 160GB hard drive sizes. Although the Archos has a touch screen, it also has tactile controls (buttons!) which can perform most of the functions. The Archos 605 has a Wi-Fi accessible content portal which allows you to buy music and rent or purchase movies and TV shows. These are then downloaded to the player wirelessly. To browse the internet though, you need to buy the Opera Web Browser plug-in for $30.

One of the greatest strengths of the Archos is that with the addition of a DVR Station (which costs $80 to $100 extra), the Archos 605 becomes a Digital Video Recorder. Once the 605 is docked in the DVR Station and connected to your television, you can watch any of the content on the device on your television. You can even surf the web on your television. Additionally you can record shows from your television and then take the very portable Archos 605 with you and watch the recorded shows on the go.

Am I the last person to notice that PriceGrabber is using its comparison shopping site to help us sort through presidential candidates? (Somehow, the brain in my clicking finger was telling me that the Election 08 button on the top menu bar would simply lead me to options for business suits and haircuts…) Anyway, what a cool idea!

Once you go to the Election 2008 home, you can filter through the candidates by their stance on pressing issues. Choose a subject such as the economy, and a drop-down list will appear. Click the category to filter on — national debt/deficit, taxes and fiscal policies, free trade and so on, and in each, select or unselect the choice you want to know about. Curious about who wants to reduce spending? Click to remove the check on all the other choices, push the “Filter Candidates!” button and the contenders appear.

A Candidate Match function lets you choose how you stand on particular issues and will show you who which candidates you best agree with — and to what extent.

Those of you who are part of the Peace and Freedom, Libertarian, Green or other party won’t find your candidates here yet. But who knows what’ll show up after the primaries are done.

In the meantime, check this feature out. It made me reconsider who I plan to vote for come Super Tuesday…

Continuing my quest for a Palm-OS based handheld with a qwerty thumbboard I even looked at some of the older handhelds. The Palm M515 does not have a thumbboard, but various snap-on thumbboards are available which don’t increase the size much, while retaining portability. Unfortunately these thumbboards cover the hardware buttons and graffiti area. Also the Palm M515 runs an older version of the Palm OS, version 4.1. As I have been using Palm handhelds with OS version 5.x for a few years now, this would be a step backwards.

Then it came to me. What about an unlocked Treo 680? This may seem like a strange choice as it is a smartphone. Also, why an unlocked smartphone? Simply because the unlocked Treo 680 would eventually cost less than a quarter of the cost of a subsidized Treo 680 bought with a two year cellphone contract.

There is no reason not to use a Treo smartphone as a Palm handheld. This idea originally came to me while I briefly owned a Treo 650 last year. Unfortunately the Treo 650 did not have enough memory. The Treo 680 has about 18MB more memory than the Tungsten C, and a backlit keypad. It has the same processor as the Palm TX, but unlike any Palm handheld has a removable battery. As regards size, the Treo 680 weighs less than the Tungsten C, and not much more than the Palm TX. Of course the physical size of the screen is smaller than that of both the Tungsten C and the Palm TX, but that is offset by a thumbboard which has been optimized for ease of use over a number of iterations of Treo smartphones. This may be the one.

My son is young now, and we can keep up pretty well on his web surfing. He only knows how to click the buttons on his computer desktop to get to the sites he wants to play in. But what happens when he learns to read? I shudder to think of the day when he realizes there’s a world beyond TumbleBook Library and BobTheBuilder.com. I see what havoc he wreaks now at age five. Who knows what computer mayhem may ensue when he’s — oh, say — six or seven? Oh, mein Gott!

Deliverance is at hand, friends, in the form of Smart Restart from Centurian Technologies.

This simple program, which has no subscription fee, no online service, nothing to renew year in or year out, simply does one thing: It write-protects the hard drive, preventing any and all changes from being made to the system files and programs. When you reboot the computer, it’s restored to what it was before pandemonium broke out. There’s no constant scanning of PC activity, no defrags, no definition updates.

Apparently, the magic pixie dust works like this: The software has three zones: 1) the protected zone, where all system files, programs and settings reside. 2) The keep zone, where documents, email messages, mp3s, settings and favorites live. And 3) the temporary zone, where any changes reside. That third zone is what gets blasted away when you reboot.

All I can say is, “Bring it on, son, bring it on.”