This week, Belkin announced the Bluetooth USB Adapter with KODAK Picture Upload Technology ($49.95 at Kodak.com), letting you wirelessly transfer photos from your Bluetooth-enabled camera phone directly to your PC. All you have to do is connect the adapter to an open USB port, be in Bluetooth range of your PC, and your photos will automatically be transferred. In addition, you can share photos on MySpace and Facebook; users with a Premier membership at Kodak Gallery can use the Bluetooth USB Adapter for automatic picture uploads and full-resolution online backup from their camera phone.

Belkin chose to tap into the camera-phone market due to the the widespread use of camera phones to capture the most unexpected moments. According to Forrester, 93 million camera phones will be sold by 2011.

The Bluetooth USB Adapter with KODAK Picture Upload Technology Software is said to work with many Bluetooth-enabled phones on the market today, including models from Nokia, Motorola, Sanyo, LG, and Samsung. A full list of compatible phones can be found here.

Users of the popular social networking website Facebook were warned on Wednesday that they were putting themselves at risk of identity fraud by posting even a handful of their details online.

According to the BBC's consumer rights television programme Watchdog, set to air later Wednesday, fraudsters could open bank accounts and receive credit cards armed simply with the information found on a user's Facebook page.

The show created a user named "Amba Friend", posted a cartoon picture of a girl in her 20s on the fictional user's Facebook profile page, and contacted 100 people at random inviting them to be her friend.

Of those, 35 replied, despite knowing nothing of "Amba Friend", thereby giving programme-makers personal details shared on the networking website.

One of the people who accepted the fictional character as their friend was Scott Gould, 23, whose Facebook entry contained his date of birth and home town, which the Watchdog team used to find other information on publicly available websites.

Armed with just those details, they were able to open an online bank account in his name, and successfully applied for a credit card.

"A lot of people using Facebook are trying to increase the size of their network and want to have as many friends as possible -- to the point where they'll befriend people they don't even know," a programme spokeswoman said.

"The programme will show what easy prey they are for identity thieves."

It is possible for members to adjust privacy settings to protect information from fraudsters, but Watchdog said that many users fail to do so.

Facebook claims that some 200,000 people sign up to Facebook every day, and the site has more than 42 million members -- it decided last month to publicly list its members' profiles on search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, unless a user actively opts out of the scheme.

SINGAPORE: One in six iPhones sold falls into the hands of someone who has "the intention to unlock", according to Apple. The Cupertino-based company currently has an exclusive deal with AT&T that restricts the use of the phone to the latter's networks in the United States.

Apple estimates that some 250,000 iPhones have been sold to "unlockers". And it seems that a fraction of these have ended up in the hands of Singaporeans, with local sellers estimating that there are a "few hundred" being used here.

Last month, TODAY found out that the unlocked phones were available for a cool $1,500 apiece here. But the laws of supply and demand seemed to have caught up with retailers such as Mr Eric Teng, who has been selling these phones online since early last month. "There is still a demand for the phones, but there's more competition now. Customers tell me that they can get it cheaper elsewhere," he said.

The price tag has dropped steadily since last month and is now down to $1,300. In comparison, Apple sells the 8GB iPhone for US$399 ($582). But that steep price for the unlocked version does not deter interested buyers from asking about the phone, with Mr Teng revealing that he gets at least 80 email enquiries a week.

There are cheaper ones out there, if you are willing to look. The shops at Lucky Plaza or Sim Lim Square are a good place to start. These shops sell both locked and unlocked versions of the iPhone, with prices ranging from $850 to $1,085.

However, one might find these shops a little dodgy. This reporter got an initial quotation of $850 for an unlocked iPhone, which went down to $750 a mere 20 minutes later.

"But when you're paying, they'll say you need to top up another $50 or so to have it unlocked," said one shop assistant who wanted to be known only as Boon.

Before you fork out the cash for one of these babies, remember that they do not come with an official Apple warranty, as they have been tampered with. Some shops tell you this straight up, while others offer their own warranties ranging from three months to a year. Retailers also tell buyers not to update the phone's software as Apple's software updates could relock the phones and render them useless.

For the time being, if you want to get your hands on the officially-released iPhone, you will have to wait until next year for its Asian release.

All three local telcos admitted that they are looking at the possibility of bringing it to Singapore, but details are still sketchy at this point.

"The iPhone has been a high profile sensation and appears to be selling well in other markets. We expect it will be of interest to the Singapore consumer once it's available, and we are interested in products and services that are of interest to our customers," said a StarHub spokesperson.

Microsoft has launched the latest additions to Windows Live, its free suite of online services.

It comes with fun new tools such as Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Events, as well as enhancements to its popular services like webmail service, Windows Live Hotmail, instant messaging service, Windows Live Messenger, blogging and photo sharing service - Windows Live Spaces.

You can install the entire suite at www.get.live.com or just the products that you want. One ID and password is all you need for all your online services, and you can use your existing ID if you are already a Windows Live user.

The one that stood out to me was Windows Live Photo Gallery. It is a free upgrade to Windows Photo Gallery available in Windows Vista, that works with both Vista and Windows XP and provides easy management of photos and videos on the desktop with the power to easily share these online.

It comes with basic photo editing tools that allow you to enhance your photos by adjusting the colour and exposure, as well as simple cropping and red-eye fixes. Windows Live Photo Gallery automatically saves your changes but you can revert to the original anytime as a shadow copy has been created in the gallery.

�??Windows Live Photo Gallery is fail-safe, you can undo stuff and it's really easy to manipulate things. And if you did something that you don�??t like, it's really easy to undo,�?? said Mr Steven Birkhold, group manager for Windows consumer market.

A new feature that I found really neat is the Panoramic Stitch which allows you to stitch photos together to form seamless, panoramic shots in just a few clicks. I can now take tighter shots of skylines and stitch them together to get the complete picture.

Organising your photos and videos is a piece of cake. When they are imported from your digital camera, Photo Gallery organises them into events based on date and time. You can add captions, tags, ratings, then email them to your friends, burn to DVD, or publish them straight to your Windows Live Spaces.

Windows Live is also working with other partners that are outside the Windows realm such as online photo service, Snapfish - where you can print and develop photos, and have them delivered to you - and photo sharing website, Flickr, where you can publish your photos directly from Windows Live Photo Gallery.

"Flickr is a very popular, great photo-sharing website so we want people who use Windows Live Photo Gallery to be able to use Flickr if they prefer to use Flickr. If they're already there, we want them to try Windows Live Photo Gallery... to use it to provision their accounts and their sharing on Flickr," said Mr Birkhold.

The request seems innocent enough: Your boss wants you to add him to your MSN Messenger or Facebook. Put in that position, I'd do a double take, and wonder if I really want higher-ups perusing my online profile.

Everyone has a little bit of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in them, and often it is Mr Hyde who manifests online. Some, if not most, of my friends' social networking website profiles feature incriminating evidence of their wilder alter egos who surface on Friday nights.

We even tailor our nicknames in our instant messaging programs to reflect our feelings towards something or someone.

"If people put information about themselves up on social networking sites, then they can expect all manner of people to look at it, so they should consider carefully what they reveal before they publish," said Dr Jennifer Jarman, assistant professor at the Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore (NUS).

Facebook does allow its members to tweak privacy controls so they won't reveal select information to certain contacts, but not everyone is so prudent in managing their personal information.

Companies like Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs have banned Facebook. But on the other end of the spectrum, there's Serena Software. This month, the software developer introduced "Facebook Fridays", where its 800-strong global workforce is given one hour of personal time to surf the social networking site.

In fact, Serena president and chief executive Jeremy Burton is such a fan of the social networking site that he decided to make Facebook his company's intranet. He believes that colleagues who know each other on a personal level will work together better.

"We feel that company intranets today are limited. They only allow you to passively get information from employees," said Mr K C Yee, Serena Software's vice-president for the Asia-Pacific region.

"We believe it is more important to use an interactive arena where we can engage in two-way communication with our employees, partners, friends and families."

In the media industry, where networking and communication forms the bread and butter of their business, sites like Facebook are embraced with gusto. Staff from leading public relations firms and advertising agencies like Ogilvy, and Young and Rubicam have formed their own networks on social networking sites.

A survey of 500 Facebook users by IT security and control firm Sophos showed that 14.8 per cent of users admitted to being logged in to the site for the whole day, while 37.2 per cent accessed the site at work "once or twice" a day.

"People post personal information and images that express who they are, so it would be quite intrusive if employers insist that employees share their Facebook accounts for work purposes," said Ms Mylinh Cheung, spokesperson for HR firm Mercer in Singapore.

If knowledge is power, then it could be abused. More and more employers are trawling social networking sites like Friendster and Facebook for information on their potential employees, although the mole in this case would be the victim himself.

"If the employees prefer to keep their work and social networking activities personal and separate, they should be allowed to do so without fear of repercussions," said Ms Cheung.

However, that is easier said than done, with most people telling Today that rejecting the request might hinder their career prospects. They'll accept the request, but will water down their online profiles.

"I gave my boss my MSN contact, but that also means he can find me on social networking sites," said an account executive at a major events company who declined to be named.

"If employees have concerns about employers requesting information other than what is normally requested on a resume, they should raise these concerns with the appropriate authorities," said Dr Jarman.

Last I checked, my contract didn't say anything about me having to reveal my MSN or networking site profile to my superiors. Personally, it's not that I have anything against my colleagues, but what I do or who I am outside of work is nobody's business but my own.

"If the employer is not accepted as a 'friend', then he should not take it personally, but accept that the employee wishes to draw a boundary between work and personal life," said Ms Cheung.

A new survey examining the potential productivity implications of the social networking site Facebook, has found that employees who access Facebook during office hours are actually Facebook abusers.

IT security and control firm Sophos which carried out a world wide poll among 500 Facebook users, including those in Singapore, found that while 37.2 percent only visited the site once or twice a day, eight percent admitted using it up to ten times a day, and up to 14.8 percent, approximately one in seven, confessed to being logged onto Facebook almost permanently during their working day.

"They're seriously struggling to tear themselves away from the website when they should be concentrating on their jobs - disturbing news for all organisations that are still allowing employees uncontrolled access,�?? said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

Several trade unions have however spoken out in the site's defence, suggesting that employers should put more trust in their workforce, and the study did also show that close to half of the Facebook users polled only visited the website at home, after work.

While the Sophos spokesman admits that clearly the majority of people are using the site in moderation, he goes on to warn, "The problem is that a 20 percent addiction rate equates to an awful lot of loafing, while there's also the likelihood that the abusers could ruin it for the other rule-abiding users.�??

The survey conducted between September and October 2007 adds weight to growing fears that sites such as Facebook could impact business productivity.

Sophos also warns that organisations that have employees accessing Facebook face a series of security concerns, particularly the risk of sensitive or confidential information being leaked to the wider world.

Facebook reportedly sees 100,000 people signing on to the social networking website every day and Sophos found in another test carried out, that Facebook users open themselves up to online crimes against themselves and their companies.

In a Sophos Facebook ID Probe, a fabricated Facebook profile 'Freddi Staur' (an anagram of 'ID Fraudster'), was created before sending out friend requests to 200 individuals chosen at random from across the globe.

There were 87 responses and almost all revealed personal information to 'Freddi' who had divulged little.

From most these new friends, 'Freddi' received one or more email address, their full date of birth, details about their education or workplace and their current address or location.

In addition, most also shared with 'Freddi' photos of family and friends, employer details and even their complete résumés. A number also shared the names of their spouses or partners, while one user even divulged his mother's maiden name - information often requested by websites and credit card companies to retrieve account details.

What's worrying said Sophos after the study, was just how easy it was to gather enough information to create phishing emails or malware specifically targeted at individual users or businesses. The information also makes it easy for online criminals to guess users' passwords, impersonate them or even stalk them.

As Cluley explained, most people wouldn't give out their details to a stranger on the street, or even respond to a spam email and people need to realise that this is still unsolicited communication, despite it occurring within Facebook, and users must employ the same basic precautions.

Three-dimensional virtual worlds are the next frontier for social networks. Among them Kaneva stands out for its simplicity.

On the Web, Facebook is the flavour of the moment, with 55 million users and a valuation (if you want to extrapolate from what Microsoft paid for a sliver) of $15 billion. So what's the next big thing? Three-dimensional communities. In a recent study Gartner predicted that by 2011 up to 80% of active Internet users, or 250 million people, will participate online in virtual worlds.

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Soon you won't merely be reading about your friend's day at work or blogging about a recent film you've seen, but rather your avatar, or 3-D digital character, will be watching movies and listening to music with your friends' avatars. You will walk through virtual malls together and dance the night away at virtual nightclubs. Millions of residents on dozens of virtual worlds are already doing so.

Some online worlds are pure fantasy: multiplayer games like Sony's Everquest and Vivendi Universal's World of Warcraft. Many are also cutesy sites geared toward children and toys, like Disney's Club Penguin, Ganz' Webkinz and Mattel's BarbieGirls.com. In the first three months of operation Barbie drew 4 million members to her site.

Among the producers of virtual worlds Atlanta's Kaneva may be on its way to becoming the most "disruptive," according to Strategy & Innovation, a Cambridge, Mass. newsletter founded by Harvard Business School's Clayton Christensen. Christensen has made a career of studying market disruptions -- how novel products or novel ways of doing things have upended whole industries. In this world disruptive is a compliment.

Since Kaneva launched in March 2007, its membership has swelled to 800,000. It is geared toward people ages 18 to 34 and is, in essence, a virtual world version of MySpace. Its much larger rival, Second Life, from San Francisco's Linden Lab, has 11 million registrants.

Kaneva is the creation of Christopher Klaus, 34, who had the money to get it going without venture capital. Klaus started Internet Security Systems when he was a Georgia Tech student and last year sold that outfit to IBM for $1.3 billion.

"Virtual worlds are still in the very early stages," says Klaus. "We are where MP3s were seven years ago. Our goal is to combine the virtual world with social networking and videogaming."

The key to Kaneva's rapid growth is in its accessibility. It's aimed not at videogaming geeks but at ordinary folk. "Second Life currently has huge mind share, but they are after a different market," says Klaus. "We want people who have never played videogames before." Kaneva encourages residents to create avatars that are online versions of their real identities, linking photos of themselves and lists of hobbies to their animated avatars. Second Life, in contrast, fosters taking on an alternative identity, including imaginary beasts.

On Kaneva, registrants can decorate their virtual houses with their own photos, upload their favorite music and stream YouTube videos and television shows. Like Second Life, Kaneva has a "micro" currency that can be bought for real money; take ten real-world dollars into a Target and you can buy 1,500 units, then use these to buy furniture or outfit your avatar with cool clothes to wear at the Dance Party 3-D contest.

Both Second Life and Kaneva are free to join. They get revenue by selling play money, leasing virtual land and, in the case of Kaneva, by promoting real-world commerce (especially TV shows).

If Kaneva becomes a hit it will prove that disruption does not come from technology alone. It comes from playing the game differently. Says Christensen, "Simplicity, convenience, accessibility, affordability -- all of these are hallmarks of disruptive innovation."