Thinking outside the Box

Wikipedia explains 'Thinking outside the box' is to think differently, unconventionally or from a new perspective. This phrase often refers to novel, creative and smart thinking.



It is important in our CCTV industry to think outside of the box when it comes to designing a surveillance solution.

Here are 2 examples;

Conventional : to deploy an infrared camera at a dark area
Alternative 1: to install a lamp and a normal camera
Alternative 2: to deploy a low Lux camera

Conventional : to deploy multiple cameras at the site.
Alternative 1: to deploy a megapixel camera.
Alternative 2: to deploy a PTZ speed Dome.


... and here are 2 alternative movie plots, enjoy.

Six

World Health Organization (WHO) had escalated the swine influenza pandemic alert to the highest phase, phase number 6, made H1N1 a first ever 21st century official flu pandemic.

Putting human cost aside for a moment, let us explore how this development will affect our CCTV industry.

H1N1 outbreak is definitely a boon to the private health care and medical industry, a bane to tourism and traveling industry.

If people try not to travel, they will turn to technology to substitute the physical traveling like making phone call, emailing, messaging, tele-conferencing, and CCTV Internet distance monitoring.

This powerful and yet simple surveillance solution will allow its authorized user to distant monitor multiple sites, or business outlets from the comfort of their office or house. A user can simultaneously monitor all sites with a Internet connected computer or a mobile phone. This CCTV solution give you the power of omnipresence, and to time travel to the past when you remotely playback the recorded footage.

CCTV remote monitoring is indeed a very powerful tool, lets hope this flu outbreak will trigger a pan-global CCTV deployment.

Back in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, I still don't see anyone wearing mask. Seriously even when I see someone on the street wearing a mask, I dunno if it was for the flu or the haze. In South East Asia, we are now experiencing a seasonal phenomenon call haze or smog during the midyear dry season. This haze is 'believe' to be caused by farmers in Indonesia who set illegal bush fires to clear land for planting, causing smoke to drift across the Malacca Strait into the neighboring countries. Some says those culprits in Indonesia are actually Malaysians.



Whatever it is, care to wear this elaborated mask?

Paranoid & Greed

Day before yesterday we talked about customers who were looking for cheap CCTV solution, today I would like to draw your attention to another group of customers.

This group of customers are those who would like to have a CCTV solution which has 'ALL' the available CCTV functions and features despite those functions are irrelevant to their application.

To me they are like asking for a overly excessive swiss knife. I dunno if it was due to their paranoid nature or greed... a little bit of both I suppose. Come to think of it, it could be paranoid turned greed. Like when we feel insecure we tend to eat excessively.



The most practical Swiss Army knife to me, is a simple pocket knife which comes with a USB drive and a laser pointer.

Stay Hungry Stay Foolish

Wanted to write something else today, but a CCTV installer visit prompted me to share this video with you.

This CCTV installer and a long time time friend came to see me. He was furious and felt betrayed, he said he will not participate in any CCTV job tender in the future no more. He said his company had spent months in the design of the CCTV solution for the tender, and someone just took his design and hijacked the job.

At that time I dunno what to say to him but now I remember this speech by Steve Jobs and I would like to share this video with him.

My friend, if you want to be successful in business or anything for that matter, the only way to get there is to stay hungry and foolishly keep trying.

Cheap

During this economy downturn many walk-in customers are looking for economic CCTV solution.

I remember one of them said philosophically, “a camera is a camera, like car, both cheap or a luxurious car can ferry you from point A to point B, only a fool will buy a luxurious car.

Ehem.... I don't mean to be rude, but how about traveling time, comfort and safety? In CCTV term, Frame Per Second, TV Line and Reliability. Of cause you can get yourself a cheap car and of cause you can choose to lock your car in the following manners too. It is cheap, it is your choice, it's your life after all.








My advice is please don't fall into the penny wise pound foolish trap.

Your Money 24/7

Since the world equity markets greatly affected our CCTV business and it will continue to do so, I had included a world share market ticker for your reference.

Free Ride

You may have a home network with a permanent-on broadband connection that allows you to access the outside world anytime 24/7, but how do you go the other direction and access your home network from the public Internet? This is possible if you can afford to spend two to four times the money on a broadband account with a fix or static IP address. Fortunately there is an easy solution to solve this problem with DDNS (Dynamic DNS) service. A DDNS service helps a dynamic IP user (non fix IP user) to tie their ever changing dynamic public IP address to a fix IP hostname or domain name.

Most name brand IP camera comes with free DDNS services, for example;

Panasonic: viewnetcam.com

Vivotek: Safe100.net

This free DDNS is for the authorized IP camera user to perform remote monitoring via Internet or handphone. Some smart IP camera users actually free riding on this free but stable DDNS to perform the following tasks;

(1) Host a personal Web site from your own computer.

(2) Host your own FTP server.

(3) Remote Desktop or VNC into your own personal computer from anywhere on the Internet.

(4) Host your own game server.

(5) Host your videos with something like a Slingbox.




In other words, this free for life (or rather paid for) principle provided DDNS makes those IP camera absolutely a bargain. The IP camera actually paid for itself after a while with the money you saved from subscribing to a fix IP line.