We know you must be busy with Christmas shopping these days, so let’s go straight to the point.
We wish you a happy holidays!
Honestly, we were really tempted to create something original. You know, some animated, maybe even interactive! A Christmas card on its own domain. All shiny and worth sharing, just like last year!
But then we thought: hey, what if we devote that time to working on our apps? Wouldn’t it be more useful for everyone?
We believe it was, over the next few weeks we’ll be launching three new apps! Time-lapse, cloud recording and one more.
However, we believe your 2014 has been at least as great as ours. Thank you for being with us, and let’s make 2015 even better!
Were you around when we founded Click2stream? If so, you might remember it all started with just one thing: the Live Streaming app.
Things have changed since then, and we are now running what we call the world’s first open appstore for security cameras.
One of the first smart applications you can try is Cloud Recording, which many of you were asking for. The app comes with a little surprise – unlike anyone else in the world, we decided to let you record 3 days worth of footage for free.
Click2stream was an amazing brand, tied closely to our very first app. But as we decided to help people make use of their network cameras in many different ways, we are changing our name to angelcam.
Why?
For couple of reasons.
One of them is that we believe security cameras are meant to do much more than just watch what’s happening around them. That’s why we enable them to do a lot of other things
through our apps.
The second reason is much more poetic! In some cultures angels are told to be magical creatures. And, with all due respect to magic, we would like to be known for bringing it to small and medium businesses all around the world. Also, our platform and all apps run in cloud. And guess where angels live?
That’s right.
Last but not least, the new name reflects our values. Developing apps for video analysis is one powerful thing, especially if taken advantage of. We believe in certain values that would never allow us to develop apps that would harm someone or someone’s privacy. Angels wouldn’t do such thing either!
This is an exciting moment for us, so we could be talking about this whole rebranding thing for hours, but you know what? Check it out for yourself at www.angelcam.com and let us know what you think about our new name!
Or shoot shut me an e-mail: peter@angelcam.com.
Peter Ocasek, founder & CEO
We will be at the British Machine Vision Conference – one of the major international conferences on computer vision and related areas organized by the British Machine Vision Association (BMVA).
To meet us there, e-mail Adam (adam@angelcam.com, @adamherout). Adam will be presenting research results related to traffic understanding titled “Automatic Camera Calibration for Traffic Understanding” – a soon-to-appear app available to our customers.
Welcome to Clarksville, Tennessee a town of 150,000, not even a full hour drive away from Nashville. And also home of a wonderful application of our technology at the local National Little League baseball field. It all started when one coaching parent approached Danell Welch who runs the field. He got diagnosed with leukemia and couldn’t continue coaching the team where his kid plays. That’s devastating news for sure. But Welch didn’t just offer sympathy. “I thought ‘What could I do for this guy. What would I want to do if I were in his situation,” Welch recalled on our recent phone interview. “And I thought “I’d want to watch my kid play baseball.”. That’s something that could’ve been done. By installing 3 ACTA D83 network cameras facing the field and finding a way to stream the live video publicly. Welch called up the ex-coach as the first game was about to start saying “Sorry you wont’ be able to help with coaching today, but you know what? You’ll be there with us today. Turn on your computer and go to our website.“. And as he did, there was his child waving at the camera.
The idea caught on also with the community’s parents serving in the army overseas. “Turns out, there’s a lot of grandparents who live elsewhere, but want to watch the kids play, too,” adds Welch. But with parents deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq wanting to watch the games, finding a new streaming technology was necessary – they needed live video streaming that would work seamlessly not just on desktop computers, but smartphones and tablets as well. And video streaming publicly in high quality to Android and iPhone is what brought them to click2stream.com. “We had some issues at first to set it all up correctly, but the support team at click2stream was very helpful and now it all just works,” said Lee Ezell who helped out with the on-site installation and setup. Bringing parents and grandparents closer to their kids by watching them play baseball – that’s something we hope to see more often in the ways people use click2stream in the future. “It’s something that’s great also for other teams who come to play here from elsewhere,” adds Welch. “If you’re a parent who is deployed overseas and you can still watch your kid play baseball back home… Man, you can’t put a price tag on that!”
As reported by CBS New York, a newly approved law White Plains, New York will require some types of business to install and maintain security cameras on their premises. The new law proposed by White Plains Public Safety Commissioner David Chong applies “to businesses that sell alcohol, check cashing establishments, pawn shops, pharmacies and stores open between midnight and 4 a.m.” according to the news report.
Commissioner Chong was quoted as saying “What we want is we want is uniformity,” adding that “consistently clear video that is accessible is a key to solving crime.”
According to CBS New York violation of the law can lead to a jail sentence for up to 15 days and a fine of “maximum of $250 a day until cameras are installed and in operation.”
Although we are more in favor of non-binding encouragement of businesses to install network cameras and store their video securely in the cloud where robbers can’t steal it along with cash from the register – the easiest way to render the system ineffective – the experience of our current customers proves that there are substantial benefits to having a surveillance system in place in stores that fit the law’s target. And with suitable network cameras starting at $100, there’s reason to believe more communities will follow in White Plain’s footsteps soon.
For store owners concerned with risk of police seizing their recordings by police outside of legal reasons when investigating an incident, the Cloud-based solution provided by Click2Stream adds another effective layer of protection by removing the recording’s physical storage from the store’s location.
While public reaction to the new law is mixed, we are preparing a special offer for business owners residing in White Plains and other locales.
It’s quite obvious you realized that’s where you are, of course. So let’s talk about…well, about what we will talk about in this blog in the future and why you should subscribe to learn about new posts (or come back here often).
There are 2 main services that click2stream offers to you and those two are the topics we’ll be covering in the blog, too:
1) Streaming live video and audio from network cameras (or security cameras)
2) Computer vision and video analysis applications
Now, let’s talk a bit more about the two and why we’re excited about them.
Streaming live video and audio from network cameras (or security cameras)
If you’re one of our customers, you’ve most likely found us because you wanted to stream from your network camera and needed a simple, problem-free service that provides it with transparent pricing. Or at least that’s the feedback we’re receiving in our customer reviews, emails and live chat support.
This is the service we started with and we have expert knowledge of. That’s why it’s very reasonable of you to expect us to write blogs with tips and tricks on how to set up your camera stream, handle troubleshooting and also get to your fullest viewership potential if you’re streaming publicly. We’ll also cover topics like choosing the right camera for your needs and intriguing new developments on the camera market like this interesting 360 camera, or this very budget friendly click2stream compatible camera.
Computer vision and video analysis applications
A few months ago we’ve opened what today still is the first and only open app-store for video analysis applications.
We’re working hard on adding more and more advanced apps to its offering as well as recruiting hundreds of 3rd party developers to add their algorithms and apps. While we’re doing this, we often stumble across interesting developments on the frontiers of computer vision that point towards what you can expect from our app-store in the future. It would be a shame if we didn’t share these with you.
Another range of topics come directly from you, our thousands of customers.
We often talk to you and in those talks often uncover new use cases for video analysis apps be it in retail, facility management, traffic, security or a handful of other areas. We would never have thought of these use cases without you and your expert knowledge of your own business and its needs, of course. But we think there’s value in sharing these findings as we think that for instance what we learn about one mayor’s office needs installed can help other cities solving similar issues.
Of course we will never share any sensitive information or business data and whenever we write about any ideas that sprang from discussions with our customers we will obtain permission from them first.
Hope this post got you as excited about our blog as we are. If it did, please subscribe to our newsletter so you don’t miss a single posts ever.
We’re looking forward hearing back from you about our posts as well as any ideas for topics.
