Your phone's watching you

I have to give it to Cisco. It does find every feasible application under the sun to run on an IP phone. I suppose any application could run on an IP-enabled endpoint, given enough processing power and a big enough display.

Anyway, Cisco has this week brought the humble time clock out of the world of punch cards and into the world of internet protocol. First development in time clocks in a century, I'm told.

Working with a company called Workbrain, the world leader in time clocks for corporates with lazy employees (or similar), Cisco has built an application which will enable workers to log in and out of work from right at their desks. Just log in to your phone and it tells HR you're at work. Log out and HR knows you've scarpered.

Sounds quite helpful. But one wonders, how easy is it to defraud? Can you now send malicious code to the application to pretend that you went home at 9pm last night instead of 4pm? Can you change the timeclock in the middle of the working day to 'borrow' an extra working hour?

Will employees be reimbursed for the time it takes to get from the old time clock at the office entrance to walk to their desk, make a cup of coffee, and remember to log in to their phone?

Sounds very powerful, and an excellent way for employers to cut back on man hours in the office. Paid ones only.

More on Workbrain here.