As expected, the seemingly constant stream of news stories revealing how one organization after another has lost, misplaced, or allowed evil hackers (which some of you want me to call crackers) to access personal data about its customers, employees, and/or clients has spawned a new product. Fujifilm's Tape Tracker combines a GPS receiver and cellular modem to create a James Bondian tracking device cleverly disguised as an LTO tape. All you have to do is slip a Tape Tracker into each Turtle of tapes when the Iron Mountain courier comes to get them. If someone mugs him as he loads the van and steals your tapes, the Tape Tracker will call SCI's Lojack Intransit 24/7 monitoring center and you can track him to his secret lair.

You can program the little gadget to send an alert when it enters or exits an area, or on a schedule. If you keep the number of calls down, the batteries can run as long as a month.

So you can have two Tape Trackers and have your tape storage company return one when the courier brings tapes back from the rotation. At $150 per unit per month, I could see some folks calling it cheap insurance.

Some others may just want to show off the James Bond part. Now if they had one that fit in the heel of my shoe...