Tech Eye: Hello? Is it me you're looking for?

The last dregs in a tankard of ale foolishly abandoned while the previous user avails of the facilities in the local hostelry are always the tastiest. And what ladies have known our sandpaper-rough touch are usually so traumatized by the incident as to neglect to ask for payment as stipulated in their contracts.

A little bit of bribery never hurt anyone either, and when we do come across a precious few bits of information, the money gained from our blackmailing syndicate helps keep Jimmy the Nose, the local moneylender, sweet for another week or two, as we try to recoup our losses at the village casino. The information might not cost us anything to obtain, but hiding in the bushes does tend to take its toll on one's dignity. In fact our self-esteem is so low that we even take free plugs from PR types, though thanks to a number of outstanding slave-trading charges no firms have yet allowed themselves to be associated with our wretched column. 

One of our favorite free things is online phone calls using voice over internet protocol (VOIP). Long have we been burdened by scandalously high phone bills, thanks to the long list of people who have offended us over the years that must now suffer our wrath, in the form of our specialist anonymous nocturnal calls. We have yet to find a way to do this heavy-breathing routine undetected using VOIP, but the research continues.

This is the Notone from Boynq, a monotone PC speaker with a VOIP handset receiver and a very high-tech gap for shoving your notes in, along with an equally complicated pen holder. It also has a USB port so you can plug your other gizmos directly into your computer, is USB powered and needs no software. It costs about zł.160 but unfortunately it won't protect us from criminal prosecution. Still, a man can dream, eh?