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Beyond the security needs
of businesses, Mr. Brenner described other commercial applications.
With the proliferating use of computers and inexpensive web cams,
combined with broadband internet, the system has many uses as
a low cost video conferencing tool. Conference calls, with two
or more parties connected via phones and Internet simultaneously,
permit several parties to see as well as converse, and becomes
a more persuasive means of communication. For the more casual user, a home computer set up with a web cam lets you keep an eye on your children, or house pets while away. This can be comforting. At least you will know what to expect when you get home, (the kids threw a wild party, the dog ate the couch). Photos from your web cam, digital camera, scanner or a video cameras can be sources for preparing online albums to share with family and friends. SnapVideo provides a secure website to store as few as several hundred to millions of images per month at a modest monthly volume based a fee schedule. Snaps taken at a 15 minute interval can provide cover for a lot of time with only a few hundred stored images. Your prepaid volume limits can be increased if more recorded time is needed. When the prepaid limit is reached the early snapshots are deleted and the ongoing stream of new snapshots continue without a lapse of service—similar to the aviation “black box” cockpit sound recorders that continuously loop the last half hour of conversations. For more information, go to www.snapvideo.net. |
| Marc Cohen is a founding member, a DACS director and production editor of dacs.doc. A perpetual novice, he started out having problems with C/PM on his Osborne computer, and still has problems with Windows. |
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David Brenner’s presentation of SnapVideo
at the March meeting showed a multitude of applications to increase
the utility of a web camera. First off, he showed how to set
up a low cost single or multiple cameras as a security monitoring
system. The camera(s) do not record images as real-time video
but take snapshots at various intervals ranging from a few seconds
through several hours, and permit viewing the timed snapshots
privately from a computer at your office, home computer or laptop,
and to share them with other permitted internet users. Examples
David used showed how he could monitor his daughter from the
home PC (see photo), and setup an office camera to view the employee
parking lot overnight to check timeliness of his snow plowing
contractor and the arrival time of his staff (in this case the
lot wasn’t plowed in time for the employees arrival in the
morning and his bill was adjusted). These were just mundane examples—multiple
cameras can be employed to observe warehouses, stock rooms, 24
hour retail establishments, cash registers or construction sites
that can be viewed sequentially or in multiple views on your
computer, with enough options to satisfy the most paranoid.