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I’m quite happy with the results of the free beta of Vitamin D ( http://www.vitamindinc.com/index.php ) . Basically it turns your webcam or any other camera into an automatic surveillance system that will recognize movement and images. Then you can create rules, like to send you an e-mail when a person is detected, range of hours or days of the week, etc.

So even if someone breaks into your house and steals your computer, the images will be already sent by internet and you will be able to give them to the police to help tracking down whoever was there.

I am using the Microsoft LifeCam VX-7000 which is working great but the software also supports network enabled cameras and configuring different regions of the house if you are really some sort of security freak.

Also a very good idea to use bitlocker encryption on all your internal and external drives so your computer data cannot be accessed without the proper keys. At Microsoft this is now mandatory and I’ve seen several situations where customers lost their laptops with sensitive data, which is something you don’t want to experience.

If you encrypt your drives, remember to make a good backup of the recovery keys (preferably on some secure internet drive) so if something goes wrong with your keys you are not completely doomed.

And no, I’m not a security freak… Although I’ve also installed 6 window/door monitor plus a few motion sensors around the house. After all, why not?

New Zealand now is officially the least corrupt country in the world:

http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2009/cpi_2009_table

It is interesting to see the progress from the 3^rd position in 2003.

Unfortunately I can’t say the same about Brazil, who went down from the 54^th in 2003 to the 75^th position now in 2009. That describes well how Brazil has been doing with Lula’s government. In several different occasions in the last years we could see Lula protecting politicians accused of dreadful corruption crimes.

I can only feel sorry for my home country.

So now they say that recession is over.

The same people who didn’t have a clue about the economic crash that was about to happen, who said repeatedly that everything was fine before the deep dive of stock markets are now assuring you that everything is going to be fine, the worst is over.

Let’s use our brains a little bit:

Absolutely nothing differently has been done by Obama’s government. Actually the recipe for addressing this issue is exactly the same one that lead US and the whole world into this problem in the first place. Ridiculously low interest rates and measures to bring forward future economic growth in a non-sustainable manner so politicians and central banks could deliver “results” to public opinion and push the problem to the next ones to be in charge to solve them, that’s all.

Likewise in other countries, such as Brazil, nothing has been done in the last 8 years to improve the economic growth in any way. None of the important structural changes was even considered.

Any economic “growth” we can witness in US is nothing more than just future growth brought forward by artificial measures. It comes with an invoice yet to be paid by every single person on this planet.

Debt is skyrocketing, currencies and most assets are devaluating.

Allow me to illustrate what I’m talking about:

This chart shows some currencies and stock market indexes, all indexed in Gold. Imagine gold as a fixed unit of value, always equals to 1. Then convert everything else into this unit of value. That’s what you get.

Any number anyone gives to you should be analysed from this perspective.

With the exception of Brazil’s Bovespa, which goes irrationally against this trend (but not for too long) everything else has just lost value.

Unemployment, wages, house prices, revenues, profit margins… You name it. They are all still going down.

But don’t worry, that’s just the beginning. The worst is yet to come.

Scoring the 10th place in a list of 104 nations covering 90% of the world’s population is something that deserves respect and recognition. And if we are talking about a tiny country with 4 million people then it gets even more interesting.

So New Zealand is officially the 10th most prosper country in the world:

http://media.nzherald.co.nz/webcontent/document/pdf/Successful.pdf

Well done, New Zealand.

Unfortunately I can’t celebrate my home country, Brazil’s situation. We are ranking at 41, which might not sound so bad until we compare the same country two years ago when it was ranking at 34.

That’s sad and shows how not well current government is doing over there. But much worse is Venezuela that managed to go down from 31 in 2007 to impressive 74 now. How stupid can people be to not see such a disaster happening before their eyes? How can people still approve someone as Hugo Chaves or Lula after so many obvious facts?

In Brazil it is easy to explain. People are too busy celebrating that Rio will be hosting the Olympics to worry about boring statistics and facts. Oh well, let’s hope things will change in the future over there…