Jan 03
While browsing Ubuntu Forums today I stumbled across a post asking what cool stuff a Bluetooth enabled mobile phone can do with Linux and discovered KBlueLock.
Of course, you need a Bluetooth dongle on your PC, I have a USB one.
In KDE I get a ‘K’ version of the Bluetooth logo in my task bar. If I right click it, I can choose KBlueLock.
The KDE Bluetooth menu (above)
A window pops up:
KBlueLock properties (above)
and I can check to lock the computer when my mobile phone is out of range (or has Bluetooth switched off) and unlock when my mobile comes back in range (or has Bluetooth on).
My screen now locked. Can only be unlocked either by password or by the mobile phone bluetooth being on or in range (above)
How cool is that?! 
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January 4th, 2008 at 12:02 am
thats all very nice, until someone realizes all they have to do to get on your computer is change the hardware address of there bluetooth adapter to the same one as your phone… or nick your phone. and then they can copy/delete/modify any of your Documents (or worse if you’ve left a root shell, or used sudo recently enough for them to just sudo -s).
Its a very nice idea though
January 4th, 2008 at 12:35 am
Aaaahhh! But I have the ultimate defence:
absolutely nothing of remote interest in my mobile phone or computer!
January 4th, 2008 at 3:31 am
Then why do you need to lock it? (I know… it’s a cool/geeky thing to do
January 4th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Exactly James, it’s not ‘why should I use it’ it’s ‘how cool does it look?’
January 4th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
A very similar thing I used way back is to use kbluetoothd to execute scripts when a phone appears / disappears. I used scripts to set gaim / pidgin to “away” and pause amarok (I play music with headphones at work). I think that is what kBlueLock does. I just hope someone would do similar nice interface for pidgin and amarok as the kBlueLock. I think it would raise the “wow” factor of KDE and Linux.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Nice trick. Works like a charm here. Would it be possible to make it more secure if one would change the permissions of the configuration file so that maybe only root can change it or even read it?
January 9th, 2008 at 9:54 am
For anyone with a mac side on the same machine or with a mac in general, there is a mac appl along the same lines called Homezone that I just discovered. http://metaquark.de/homezone/