While we've never been all that convinced that leaving your lights on while you go on holiday is the best deterrent against burglars (who needs an expensive energy bill right after shelling out for an exotic week-long break, eh?), we've decided it's no crazier than the latest venture from Precreate Solutions.

They're offering a "social networking concierge" service, manning your Facebook and Twitter accounts while you're on holiday, shooting off prosaic updates in an attempt to fool burglars into thinking you've never left your house at all.

Director Gary Jackson came up with the idea after hearing about a growing trend for burglars to spy on Facebook accounts for potential break-in targets.

"Putting up a Facebook posting of photographs on a beach to 300-400 'friends' is like leaving an advert on your door to a burglar telling him when you will be out. We are now going to run clients' social media while they are away to give an appearance that there is still a presence at their homes and business premises," said Jackson.

The service comes free as a part of Precreate Solutions' other security offerings, who already have 40 members signed up.

It does seem a tad excessive though. With Facebook and Twitter's privacy settings tight enough to restrict everyone but your mates from seeing your posts, surely delving into the privacy settings of each social network and adjusting them before going away should do the trick? That is of course unless your "friends" aren't all that trustworthy to begin with...

Via: Evening Standard

Welcome to Tech Trumpet, where I attempt to make vaguely musical sounds using a variety of gadgets and computers.

After today's news about a DJ selling the 867-5309 number, I thought I'd compose something using DTMF "Touch Tone" dialling tones.

Well, "compose" may be a bit much...

Welcome to Tech Trumpet, where I attempt to make vaguely musical sounds using a variety of gadgets and computers.

Following today's announcement of Nokia's latest Classic handsets, I thought I'd put together a little ditty made up of classic Nokia ring tones.

Welcome to Tech Trumpet, where I attempt to make vaguely musical (and festive) sounds using a variety of gadgets and computers.

This week, by way of a very understated celebration of the Apple Macintosh's 25th birthday on Saturday (today is when the iconic "1984" SuperBowl ad was shown), I've composed a short piece based on Mac System 7 operating system sounds.

Hop over the jump to play it.

It's the third Christmassy Tech Trumpet, where I attempt to make vaguely musical (and festive) sounds using a variety of gadgets and computers.

Actually, I've cheated a bit this week due to the pressures of Christmas preparation and a lack of Vitamin C, and instead am sharing with you one of the most wonderful Christmassy MIDI files I've ever heard.

It's the second Christmassy Tech Trumpet, where I attempt to make vaguely musical (and festive) sounds using a variety of gadgets and computers.

Last week you got a slightly different version of O Come All Ye Faithful. This week, I'm paying tribute to Rudolph, the infamous red-nosed reindeer.

In a hat tip to Santa, who has to travel the entire globe in just one night, this version uses lyrics gleaned from multiple automatic translations from Google Translate.

The original English lyrics were translated into Bulgarian, then Croatian, Danish, Finnish, Filipino, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Russian, and then back into English.

It's Tech Trumpet time again, where I attempt to make vaguely musical sounds using a variety of gadgets and computers. It's December, so it's about time to dust off the Christmas carols and synth them up a bit.

So, here's the classic "O Come all Ye Faithful" (no, it's not "Why are we waiting?" OK?) but done just a little differently.

This is what happens when you take a fairly ordinary MIDI file and mix it up. Jump over the page to take a listen:

Yes, it's that time of year when Americans take a bit of time out and give thanks for... well, things.

In honour of that, here's a special Tech Trumpet - a computerised version of the Star Spangled Banner.

You wouldn't expect me just to play the tune without modifying it though, would you?

Course not, which is just as well, because this is a very special version of the song...

Social networking meets live performance in this week's Tech Trumpet. Ocarina is a virtual musical instrument for the iPhone that has become incredibly popular. Simply by blowing into the iPhone's microphone and pressing combinations of four buttons on the screen, you can create notes from a variety of musical scales.

What's also great is that you can listen to what other people are playing on the instrument in real time, represented visually as sound waves emanating from a globe.

I decided to jam along to a number of ocarina players this morning on bass (synth bass of course). What follows is a genuine, unedited, live performance (recorded at about 11am GMT).

This week's Tech Trumpet has been sequenced entirely from the iPhone's new Noise.io Pro [iTunes link] synthesiser.

I've been waiting a while for this application to come out. As you should be able to hear even from the few built-in audio patches I've used in this recording, it's pretty versatile.

Welcome to another iPhone-inspired Tech Trumpet.

Following on from iPhone Bloom comes this interesting "music" created with SynthPond (iTunes link) by Zach Gage. It's all quite random but you can get some nice ambient sounds from it.

Here's my attempt:

Previous Tech Trumpets:

23rd October: Mr Do! Mix
16th October: iPhone Bloom
9th October: The Cosmovox Mixes 1 & 2
2nd October: Old '80s Computers Rickrolled
25th September: Mad Skype Mix

Welcome to another '80s-inspired Tech Trumpet.

Relax, you're safe from another rickrolling, because this TT pays tribute to my favourite video game character -- Mr Do.

Firstly, hats off to Sivak Drac who meticulously composed several of the audio elements from Mr Do. Found via the Video Game Music Archive.

Now, go party like it's 1982.

Previous Tech Trumpets:

16th October: iPhone Bloom
9th October: The Cosmovox Mixes 1 & 2
2nd October: Old '80s Computers Rickrolled
25th September: Mad Skype Mix

It's time for another edition of Tech Trumpet.

This week, I have been mostly playing with "Bloom" for the iPhone. Developed by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers, the application offers an audio-visual experience simply by touching the screen or letting the instrument play itself.

"Bloom is an endless music machine, a music box for the 21st century. You can play it , and you can watch it play itself," says Eno.

Hello, and welcome to another Tech Trumpet.

Today, I'd like to share with you two compositions made with the help of the marvellous solo instrument that is "iPhone running Cosmovox".

The Cosmovox (iPhone users can get it at the iTunes App Store for £1.19) is a rather bizarre, motion-controlled instrument featuring 45 different musical scales, real-time multi-touch parameter sliders including modulation, feedback, instability, vibrato, and beating, and stereo output.

Firstly, an apology to anyone eagerly awaiting a track composed from the "interesting looking audio boxes sitting next to me". Unfortunately, I've not yet got all the wires and other gear required to do them justice.

This week, I've dug out what may well be the earliest example of Rickrolling. Take a few defunct '80s computers (the BBC Model B, to be precise), a discarded dot matrix printer or two, a few industrial monsters, and a handful of sound effects that never quite made it into any successful game, and you have a late-Eighties Rickroll extraordinaire.

Welcome to a new weekly feature: Tech Trumpet. Each week, I'll be attempting to create something vaguely resembling "music" using various gadgets and computers.

This week, to ease things in gently, here's a track made up entirely of sounds from my favourite piece of communications software, Skype. I'll leave you to judge whether it's electronica, synth, ambient, all or none of the above.

Hit the jump to play the music and find out what's coming next week.