Human beings are curious, nosy animals. It’s in our nature to want to know things: what our friends are up to, what that neighbor across the street is dragging into his basement, what that guy in the coffee shop is doing on his laptop…you get the idea. As a result, if you’re typing or working on something in a public place, you might not always have as much privacy as you’d expect – there’s always the odd looky-loo around who’ll gladly snoop over your shoulder to try to figure out what’s on your screen.
Chances are pretty good that this is something you don’t particularly enjoy dealing with; particularly if you’re working with any sort of sensitive information (although one might question why you’d be managing such information in a public spot). 3M has come up with a rather unique, interesting, and – dare I say it – innovative solution to this common problem. It’s called the Privacy Screen. How it works is through the installation of a plastic ‘filter’ of sorts over your device’s primary screen, using a series of small sticky tabs. With the filter installed, you can easily see what’s on the screen if you’re looking straight at it. Anyone looking from an angle, however, will (theoretically) see nothing but a blank screen.
Thus, whatever you happen to be working on at the time will be completely safe from prying eyes.
While they’ll still allow anyone who’s looking directly over your shoulder to see what’s on your screen, they’re still better than the alternative (nothing).
The Privacy Screens come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes; 3M has designed screens for notebook PCs, Desktop LCDs and CRTs, and even for several handheld devices (no word on how well touch-screens work with one of these gadgets installed onto them). Those of you interested in nabbing one of these for yourself can get them from the 3M Website. Note that they’re mostly designed for standard devices; Macbooks may have some trouble with sizing.
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