Toolbar  hell.

Ever wonder why sometimes your mobile phone alerts you to a voicemail yet the phone never rang? Ever wonder how someone is able to connect to you by calling your mobile number and it gets through no matter where in the world you are at the time?

Tidbits.com has the answers to a lot of questions on how your mobile phone really works.

I received a tip from my new buddy Henk today who resides in the Netherlands. It’s regarding a couple of topics most of us are probably all familiar with: Kevin Mitnick & Privacy.

Mitnick was in the news again recently for an interesting detaining at the Atlanta airport - you gotta read what happened, talk about a bad day gone worse. Sheesh! 

Anyway, it can be understood that based on Mitnick’s past, he is probably anal about his privacy, with that in mind, here’s the message from Hank:

Yesterday I was visiting TWIT LIVE (leo Laporte) and 20 mins before episode #163 started, he had to call an AT&T service to setup a interview with Kevin Mitnick.

I and 2500 other twitters noticed that the AT&T call was setup by an automatic message, saying, ‘We are calling now (Number of Mitnick)’.  Laporte tried to mute it, but too late. He apologized to Mitnick and proposed him to pay the costs for a new number.

Five minutes earlier the Skype-nick of Veronica Belmont was revealed by accident, also nothing earth shaking, but it made me think about a basis for a small story. More and more tech guru’s use twitter, stickam etc.  and can be followed for hours each day.

Which jeopardizes their privacy and those they interview.

Thanks for the mail Henk. I wonder if Kevin shrugged it off, figuring give it a couple of days and if the phone isn’t ringing off the hook then it’s all just water under the bridge. Also, someone as scrutinized as he is probably isn’t as fazed by his number being revealed to thousands of listeners/fans/hackers.

I gave out my mobile number in a public forum once that is frequented by my customers; co-workers thought I was crazy but only one person took advantage of it to contact me for some free technical support while I was at home. I was amazed it wasn’t abused and learned that most geeks respect each other’s privacy and will probably not abuse it.

If I put my mobile number on the Geeknews sidebar, do you think it would get abused? Robert Scoble did it for quite a while and I don’t recall him being hassled via his phone #.

[via Neatorama]

A wooden shield found by archeologists in Denmark is said to be well preserved, over 32 inches in diameter and over a thousand years old. Apparently the dirt near Copenhagen is pretty moist which tends to preserve fir wood.

I’m sure LARPERS would love to get their hands on it to add to their armor.