January 7, 1990

I HATE WHEN THAT HAPPENS: January 1990’s Popular Communications contains an interesting little piece called, “How The Walls Have Ears: Now a Scanner Can Tune in on Your Neighbors’ Private Household Conversations.”

“Recent developments in consumer technology have vastly changed the status of listening in on what’s being said behind closed doors,”says the piece, by PopCom editor Tom Kneitel. “It seems strange when you think about it, but the person who is to be eavesdropped on is nice enough to go to the store and purchase the room bug, and then they are thoughtful enough to place it in a strategic location where it can best pick up any voices and other sounds made on the premises .Ž.Ž.”

Kneitel is referring to those cheap, popular devices known as room or baby monitors. Turned on, they create an open radio channel that can be easily ˆ and I do mean easily ˆ picked up by cheap, popular, unmodified police scanners.

Product specifications say the monitors operate in a 200-300 foot range, but Kneitel says ˆ and I know people who have observed this as well that scanners can pick up conversations a mile or two away. Consider the possibilities, especially an open microphone in an adult bedroom. Kneitel says he knows of one such situation which has “a better audience share than Johnny Carson most nights of the week.”

Kneitel believes that a determined party could quickly compile “a rather formidable dossier”via monitor snooping, and advises people who need them to turn them off when not needed, or to “at least (take) some precautions”to cut down on their efficiency.

And unlike monitoring cellular phone calls (also ridiculously easy), monitoring frequencies used by intercoms is completely legal. Thought you’d like to know.

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS: Interested in not missing out on the opening of Eastern European high-tech markets? You may want to attend a meeting on Thursday, Jan. 18, at San Francisco State University School of Business, sponsored by a student organization called the U.S.-Soviet Business Institute.

Soviet PC software and U.S. software adapted to display the Cyrillic alphabet will be shown, and you’ll have the opportunity to chat with Soviet programmers Alexei Pazhitnov, who wrote the wildly popular Tetris game, and Arkady Borkowski, who’ll show his English-Russian translation program to be marketed in the U.S.

Leonid Evenko, chief of the Department of Management Studies for the USA-Canada Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, will also be present as “an official person to whom people can talk if they want to make some deals and ventures,”according to Lana Manaev, a U.S.-based Soviet computer consultant who’s helping organize the seminar.

Other speakers include Cecile Shure on the export licensing of sensitive technologies; Lee Felsenstein, president of Glav-PC, the U.S.-U.S.S.R joint software development venture; and Manaev, who represents Soviet software authors who hope to distribute their products in the U.S.

The meeting is from 4 to 7 p.m. in Room 202, School of Business. Cost is $25 in advance, $30 at the door. Phone the university at 338-2242 for reservations and/or information, or Manaev at 283-5313.

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS II: Despite the fact that a strong high-tech industry is the brightest hope the U.S. has for a return to competitiveness (see Will Hearst’s essay in this week’s Image magazine), I was depressed to hear that Montgomery Securities of San Francisco is getting a slow response to a nifty (free) upcoming event taking place before its annual Semiconductor Industry Conference starts on Jan. 30.

Called the “First Annual Silicon Valley Company Field Trip,”Montgomery will tour-bus institutional investors and clients to a day and a half of executive on-site briefings at select high-tech firms on Monday and Tuesday, Jan. 29 and 30.

Bus stops include Autodesk, Network Equipment, Maxtor, 3Com, Tandem, Pyramid, Vitalink Communications, Everex Systems, Amdahl and Conner Peripherals.

John Jones, senior analyst and field trip mastermind, says he selected local companies with “the potential of being high-growth, attractive investments ˆ if not today, then some time in the future.”Say what? The future? Long-term investing? What a concept!

QUICK FIX: I printed the wrong address a couple weeks back for Computer Comfort, the firm which sells a booklet and HyperCard stack on healthy computer use. The address is: 1117 Woodland Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025.

HOWEVER, I CAN SAY NO: I can’t provide anyone with copies of the book, “The Japan That Can Say No.” Sorry.