A few weeks ago, a friend of mine called me and asked me how he could find out if somebody had been reading the e-mail at his computer.  I asked him why he thought somebody was reading his e-mail.  He works as mortgage broker and one of his co-workers started calling up his clients.

I asked him if he had any anti-virus software (he does, pretty good stuff), if the computer was his or the company’s (it’s not his), and what his password was (one of his children’s names).  After the third question, I told him (a) his co-worker had almost certainly broken into his files and (b) he needs to change his password to something less obvious than a marquee screaming “come steal this”.

I also told him if he was worried about somebody being on his computer again in his absence, he could pick up one of those programs that suspicious significants use to check-up/catch their significants.  You can find them just by searching Google with keywords like “software catch cheating spouse”.

Now it also got me thinking about a product we could produce.  Just about every laptop shipped these days has a camera.  What my friend really needed wasn’t just something to take a shot of the screen that his co-worker was looking at, he needed a picture of his co-worker as well shot at the same time.  Let’s lay out some basic marketing requirements of what this “thing” should look like:

1. The program/project name will be “You Are So Busted”.
2. The software should automatically start when the user starts the computer, logs on,  etc., unless it has been configured otherwise.
3. The software should be stealthy.  Maybe a tray icon (at the most), but nothing in the task bar unless the owner is actually configuring it.
4. The software should take a picture of the desktop (or focus window) periodically.  Maybe every 10 seconds.  Same thing with a web-cam if it is present.  We don’t need high motion video here…people searching through your mail, surfing for porn, or hanging out in chat rooms aren’t exactly switching screens that fast.
5. The software should NOT need a key logger or any of the other (hacker-like) and complicated features I’ve seen in some of the other “catcher” programs out there.

The interface and use model must be very simple.  Most of the other ones I’ve seen look pretty complicated.  People are using them (obviously), but I think our competitive advantage comes in simplifying the system, not adding a million options to it (Time Tracker aside).  It should be one main screen with the following options:

1. Start Automatically (default to “yes”).
2. Use Web Cam (default to “yes” if a web cam is found).
3. Set Storage Location (default to “somewhere”…doesn’t need to be changed).
4. Set Password (default to no password; if set, must be used for configuration as well).
5. Use Password (default to yes if the password is set).
6. Watch Captures – Look at capture sequences by date.  Show both the camera and the screen shots in sequence.  Let the user increase/decrease the view rate.

On the drawing board for now.