Synchronica and Orange, a UK mobile communications company, are working on a new service to keep lost cell phones from becoming data-leak disasters — and it’s a scream.Given the amount of information being stored on smartphones these days, the main draw of the business-targeted service (which uses Syncrhonica’s Mobile Manager) is likely to be the wipe-clean features. Make a phone call, and your phone will be remotely cleansed of all data and locked down. The rabble-rouser who ends up with your phone might be able to resell the phone itself, but they won’t be able to touch your credit card info, classified company data, or personal phone numbers.But wiping the data stores of mobile devices isn’t new — you can serve up a poison pill with a host of services and software, including Nokia’s IntelliSync, Exchange SP2 and MSFP for Windows Mobile 5.0, and iAnywhere’s Afaria. The real kicker here is the bonus “scream” feature: once alerted to the theft, the missing phone starts screaming like a banshee. And no electronic whine, either — the noise is intended to sound like an actual human scream, according to reports of the new service. I don’t know if a human scream is the best choice of alarms, but if your cell is stolen and the thief tries to blend into a surrounding crowd, the satisfaction of watching him try to coolly play off the fact that he’s hold a howling phone would be sweet (schadenfreude, anyone?). Of course, adding a tracking chip to find the lost phone would be much more useful if you don’t realize it’s gone until well after the fact, or if you’re just prone to leaving it in taxis, friends’ purses, or odd corners of your own home. Wonder what would happen if all the stolen laptops involved in the recent spate of data-loss incidents suddenly started yelping? Technology Industry