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VoIP Supply at the MOBOTIX 2014 East Coast National Partner Conference
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VoIP Supply and MOBOTIX

The VoIP Supply President, Paula Griffo, and I just got back from the MOBOTIX East Coast Partner Conference on Friday and are we excited where this security company is going!

VOIP Supply and MOBOTIX have had a beautiful relationship for years. When the MOBOTIX Partner Program went into effect last year, VoIP Supply was immediately an Advanced Partner. We’ve been trained on the products and we can get directly on the phone with MOBOTIX, which is a huge benefit to you, our customers.

If you’re not familiar with MOBOTIX, they are a full solution surveillance company. Dr. Ralf Hinkle founded the company back in 1999 in Germany by building a DVR directly into an IP camera. This decentralized system was revolutionary, and since then MOBOTIX …

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Google+ Home Surveillance
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If you’re fabulous enough to have received an intive to the exclusive Google+, the latest social media splash, you might also like to know that their Hangouts feature offers an easy way to set up simple home surveillance monitoring.

Google+ Hangouts offers face-to-face video chats with several of your friends at the same time.  But what if you were just using two of your own personal accounts with one of the account’s webcam trained on an area of interest? 

That’s what a Lifehacker reader did and explained the process and results of using Google+ Hangouts with a webcam to keep watch over your house:

You can use Google Hangouts as an on demand remote camera viewer. First, create a second Google Account, and put …

Mobile Access to NVR with ACTi MobileGo
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Keep watch on your IP surveillance cameras at all times even when you’re not at home or in the office.

ACTi’s MobileGo! software connects to your NVR to allow live viewing and camera control remotely via iPad, iPhone or iPod.

Free App

It’s a free application and when installed on your devices you’ll gain:

  1. Easy access to live view
  2. PTZ control: Pan, Tilt and Zoom control available for ACTi PTZ cameras, including preset points.
  3. Search and Playback video with both time based and event based search functions.

NOTE:  The free Android version will be available in Q4, 2011.


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Office Theft and Employee Surveillance Limits
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A reader writes VentureBeat asking if it’s okay to install surveillance cameras to watch employees after a rash of trade secret thefts in the office.

The answer?

Proceed with caution.

4 Kinds of Surveillance

There are generally four kinds of employee related surveillance explains Curtis Smolar, a lawyer representing small businesses and start-ups:

  1. Work Related Data:  Usually acceptable and generally non-invasive, this monitoring type relates to on-the-job employee performance.
  2. Computer Data:  Potentially the most invasive type of monitoring, protect yoruself by making sure that your employee handbook states that this data is not private.
  3. Video Monitoring:  Coinsidered very invasive by employees and often rife with gray areas, notification of a company policy might prove acceptable.
  4. Audio Recording:  Possibly illegal in many states,
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New ACTi GNR-2000 Compact Network Video Recorder
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Realizing that the 64-channel rackmount ACTi XNR-4200 NVR has enviable features at a price and scale that smaller operations can’t touch, ACTi has released an NVR based on that platform better suited for smaller systems and limited budgets.

Small and Powerful

The standalone ACTi GNR-2000 NVR is smaller in size but maintains the same great user interface, support for up to 5 hard drive disks (not included), and packs the same powerful features such as:

  • Manage up to 16 IP cameras or video encoders
  • Support H.264/MPEG-4/MJPEG formats up to 4-Megapixel resolution
  • H.264, MPEG-4, MJPEG with dual stream
  • RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 10
  • Instant event playback, 4-channel synchronized playback up to 500x speed
  • Intuitive and friendly user interface

Standalone NVR vs. IP Camera Software

For …

To Protect and Converge – Axis Police Car Offers Rugged Mobile Surveillance
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The 2011 ISC West show featured Axis displaying the aggressive Dodge Charger police car outfitted with their rugged IP surveillance products. 

Designed for mobile video surveillance, the Axis M3114-R IP Camera was mounted on bumpers and throughout the car while the Axis Q8108-R network video recorder (NVR), purpose built for public and commercial transportation applications, provides a wireless video stream back to the command center.

Axis mobile surveillance demo at ISC West:

Axis Mobile Surveillance Police Charger in action on the street:

For more videos in action, check out the Axis Mobile Surveillance Police Charger page.

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5 Reasons Surveillance In the Cloud Makes Sense
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One huge advantage of an IP camera based surveillance system over their analog, coaxial cousins is vastly better image quality.

So why are so many analog cameras still in use? 

Dragging Surveillance Into the Digital Age

Matt Krebs at TechNewsWorld asks, “In a world where HDTVs, Blu-ray and 3D IMAX features dominate the entertainment landscape, how can video from surveillance cameras be so poor?”

Cost is always factor but the gradual shift to higher quality, full-featured IP cameras can also be attributed to surveillance systems that haven’t broken down yet.  Many systems still employ analog components that have not out-lived their usefulness on fully functioning infrastructure that was expensive to install.

That may now change with surveillance in the Cloud.

Hosted Video Partnership 

Krebs …

QNAP Next Generation NVR’s
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We’ve updated the QNAP line of network video recorders for IP surveillance video storage and playback.

Popular models of discontinued QNAP NVR Surveillance Recorders have been replaced with new generation models powered by the latest Intel Atom processors such as the affordable VS-2004L (4-channel) and the VS-2008L (8-channel) consumer-ready standalone systems.

Mobile Viewing AppQNAP VS-2004L

QNAP updates include a mobile viewing app that keeps an eye on your IP cameras remotely via iPhone, iPad, or a Windows PDA with instant alerts sent to your mobile device should an event occur. 

Choice of Hard Drives

On all QNAP NVR’s with multiple hard drive bays IP Camera Supply offers your choice of:

  • No hard drives.
  • 1 TB hard drives.
  • 2 TB hard drives.
  • Any combination of the above.
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How To Repurpose Webcams into Surveillance Systems
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If you’re looking for a simple and cost-effective (read: Free) way to keep an eye on all of your stuff using computers and webcams that are lazily laying around the house doing nothing, then check out the Windows based iSpy security software.

Free and Open Source

iSpy is a free, open source, camera security software that can be used with your own computers, webcams, microphones and even IP cameras. Besides costing you nothing, iSpy software has the same functionality as  high-level IP camera software systems:

  • Event Management: Set up alerts and scheduling and get instant, mobile notification when motion or sound is detected.
  • Recording and Viewing: Continuous, triggered, or scheduled recordings. View recordings locally or remotely (Searching recorded video via different search
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Surveillance On Demand – Camera Emails Pictures When Asked
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There’s a DIY surveillance camera project outlined at Making of the Autonomous Surveillance Camera that aside from acutally working, can email you photos of the room it’s watching when you ask it to.

Here’s how it works:

It uses cellular network for communication. The device checks pre-defined email mailbox once an hour. If a new email is received the camera takes a picture, saves it on a SD-card and emails the image to its owner.

This produces still images on a time delay but, it can provide you a little peace of mind if you need to check on your home. You can build your very own camera with:

  1. A modem
  2. JPEG camera
  3. SD memory card
  4. Micro-controller and integrated circuit

Watch the video to see …

24/7 Surveillance Degrades Online Privacy
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At a TedXObserver event in London last month author, activist, journalist, and blogger Cory Doctorow gave a talk outlining the ways we’re undervaluing our privacy in an era of full disclosure and 24/7 surveillance and asks the question:

“How do we get kids to care about online privacy?”

Doctorow states that Facebook uses “powerful game like mechanisms to reward disclosure” comparing it to B.F. Skinner’s theory of using social reinforcement to strengthen a desired behavior – Like giving away information.

Making Facebook Less Creepy

Parents and schools will spy on everything in the attempt to keep them safe but this may groom them for an existence where constant internet surveillance is considered legitimate, normal, and good “teaching them to systematically undervalue their privacy years before …