Online Fun and Business

Cameras used for home security surveillance can be both hidden and visible cameras. Again, you can choose between both wired and wireless cameras. you can make it digital quality or use DVR or VCR.

For obvious reasons hidden camera is your best option for home security surveillance. They are small enough to place almost anywhere and are often inexpensive. Although hidden cameras can be purchased already hidden - they appear to be plants, clocks, toys, etc. - but can result in poor image quality. If the image cannot be seen, the camera is useless.

Web cams can be visible or hidden. The same camera that computer users use to transmit their own image while computing can be used to monitor a room or area. These web cams are also easy on price. There is downside in that Potential camera locations are limited by the length of the USB cord unless the camera is a wireless version.

Camera lens determines what images are captured. Dome shaped, wide-angle camera lens produce distortion free images and have a larger field of view than standard camera lens.

Homeowners utilizing cameras for home security surveillance options should consider lighting. For low-light or night light recording, infrared capabilities are required. The infrared gives the camera night vision, resulting in captured surveillance images.

Now a days wireless cameras are also easily available. They are excellent home security surveillance options. and you can will find installation and usage to be very easy. Homeowners can use as many cameras as necessary to monitor home or property.

IImages can be viewed on cell phones, televisions and the computer. Some hand held gadgets allow viewing of images. You will probably need help of qualified engineers to install wired cameras. Installation can be done while a home is under construction or added later. Adding them later can result in a mess and some expense.

DVR could be a better choice because you will get more footage and more recording and viewing choice. The DVR can be set to capture the image feed from the camera constantly or only when certain actions or events occur. You can use internet for remote viewing of images With all the technological advances made in last few years, you can look for plenty of add ons like Motion sensors, temperature change sensors, lighting change sensors and smoke detection sensors, for your base configuration. The DVR can be set to notify the homeowner should a sensor be activated.

Surveillance and security companies provide a free assessment of your requirements. By answering the questions on the sheet, the homeowner can better determine what kind of security and surveillance is best.

When you are making a decision about Home Security Surveillance, size of the area to be monitored, conditions and budget should be your parameters. You have a choice of signing up for a subscription service from various security companies. The most popular, and largest, security companies will charge hefty fees and may require long term contracts as well. Newer providers are becoming available with lower prices. Price should not be the only determining factor when considering a home security company.

Home security surveillance can be as simple as a web cam and a laptop. It can also be as involved as installation of a complete hardwired system.

Couple of resources for you to get started - home security video surveillance - home security surveillance video.

Too many small business websites are impersonal and often times downright boring. What seems to be forgotten on these business websites is that people do business with people. So why don’t we ever talk about the people they’ll be doing business with?

You can easily set yourself apart from your competition by simply talking about yourself and your staff on your website. Who are these people? What do they bring that’s interesting and unique to your organization? What in their background and experience makes them more qualified than anyone else to help your customers?

All of this can be taken one step further by incorporating “Video Business Cards” into your website. A video business card is a short streaming video of someone presenting themselves. For a small business owner it might simply be their elevator speech, or 30 second introduction: “Hi, my name is Bob. I work with XYZ Company and we work with ABC companies who need help with their such and such.”

Imagine how much more real you would become to your website visitors and prospects if they could see YOU introducing yourself on your website? You could even include your video business card in your e-mail introductions to the prospects you’ve not had a chance to meet yet.

People do business with people they know, like and trust. A video business card gives people who you’ve not yet met an opportunity to get to know you and like you before you talk to them!

Scott Ingram is the founder of NetworkInAustin.com, a networking resource for networkers in Austin, Texas who use networking as a business development and marketing strategy. They recently taped Video Business Cards as a member benefit for their premium members. You can learn more about Scott by watching his video or reading his Networking Blog.

Unlike standard television broadcasting, there are a limited number of viewers that an Internet television station can accommodate. These limitations are determined by the amount of bandwidth the network media server has available. A popular Internet television station would require large amounts of bandwidth to provide the broadcast to a large viewing audience.

Peer to Peer (Commonly referred to as P2P) broadcasting allows viewers using specialized software to re-distribute the media broadcasts. This eliminates the need to utilize costly centralized media servers to distribute the broadcast and results in cost savings for bandwidth consumption.

Any size business or group can establish an effective media broadcast presence without the huge costs normally associated with Internet broadcasting. Using this method, only a few data streams are required for a global Internet broadcast distribution.

P2P Internet broadcasting provides extremely bandwidth friendly results and can support a virtually unlimited number of users. This method also provides effective security against Denial Of Service (DOS) attacks which can cripple a centralized server network architecture.

There are both commercial and non commercial options that offer P2P broadcast ability for Internet television.

This article will cover free open source software.

Open source is an initiative that allows people to have access to the source code of software. This is the actual nuts and bolts that allow the software to operate. This initiative also allows people the ability to redistribute and or modify the source code thus allowing improvements and adaptations of the software.

Peercast

Peercast is a P2P media broadcast application that is available for the Windows, Unix and Mac operating systems. It is compatible with Shoutcast, Icecast and Windows Media streaming protocols.

The software was originally designed to use Gnutella as a basis for broadcast distribution. The software now uses a hierarchal topology for media broadcast distribution. This new method provides greater scalability and more data organization.

Broadcast station data is collected by the YP directory. This data is continuously updated by individual broadcasters. Listeners / viewers (client software) provide the connection points between themselves, the broadcasters and others.

Each broadcaster has the option of including a digital signature to enable media broadcast authentication. This will prevent their broadcasts from being hijacked and replaced with alternative material.

The following video codecs are supported by Peercast: VP3, VP6, Theora and WMV. It can also be used for audio broadcasting and can be configured to use several audio codecs. The software can be used to broadcast individual static media files as well.

Hardware network routers use Network Address Translation to provide internal IP addresses for computers within that network. Traffic flowing through NAT must be converted from internal IP addresses to external IP addresses. P2P traffic routing through NAT usually requires software port forwarding to bypass NAT. Peercast is NAT friendly software and requires no special port forwarding.

A plug-in is available for the popular Winamp media player. (Winamp versions 2.x and 5.x) This can be installed and used by clients to easily receive a Peercast station.

The Peercast network provides a real time online station directory of current broadcasters. (http://yp.peercast.org)

The main Peercast client must be installed to broadcast using this P2P network.

Additional resources

Peercast Frequently Asked Questions: (http://www.peercast.org/wiki/wakka.php?wakka=FrequentlyAskedQuestions)

Peercast Help : (http://www.peercast.org/help.php)

Peercast Community Forum : (http://www.peercast.org/forum)

FreeCast

FreeCast is a Java P2P broadcast application. Users must install the Java Runtime Environment, which is available for the Windows, Unix and Mac operating systems. It is compatible with the Icecast streaming protocol.

The software has a internal audio and video player applet that can play both the Ogg Vorbis open source audio codec, and the Theora open source video codec. It can also be configured to use the Java Web Start feature for automatically loading and launching. This enables a “one click” approach for web based end users.

Each broadcaster has the option of including a digital signature to enable media broadcast authentication. This will prevent their broadcasts from being hijacked and replaced with alternative material.

FreeCast uses a hierarchal method of media broadcast distribution. Each broadcaster acts as a central node with listeners / viewers receiving data from them and relaying to other listeners / viewers.

Icecast and JRoar media streaming server software can be used with FreeCast. In addition, Ezstream can be used with both JRoar and Icecast to source both Ogg Vorbis and Theora files. This software is a command line utility and is available for Windows and Unix operating systems.

FreeCast is continuing software development that will allow its deployment across networks that interact with network routers that utilize Network Address Translation (NAT). Port forwarding is currently required to accommodate NAT routers.

A real time station directory is currently not available or supported.

Additional resources:

FreeCast : (http://www.freecast.org)
Theora : (http://www.theora.org)
IceCast : (http://www.icecast.org)

Dave Childers is a freelance Internet broadcast consultant, writer and the webmaster of http://www.scvi.net, the Winamp TV / NullSoft video information website.

If you’re new to PC video editing then knowing where to start can be a bit daunting, so hopefully this guide will point you in the right direction.

To start with you will need a few items of equipment

Camcorders/Video Decks

Depending on your requirements or aims there are number of different solutions to discuss, so i will split these up into separate sections.

1. If you are starting from new then i recommend buying a new digital camcorder, this will give you superior video and sound quality as well as making getting started in video editing very simple, so ideal for the beginner. There are thousands to choose from catering for various types of budgets.

2. You may already have an old video deck or camcorder which uses the old analogue outputs such as composite or s-video (be sure to check first what outputs you have).
For this kind of setup you would need a capture card/analogue to digital converter, this is discussed in more detail further on in the article.

A PC for Video Editing

It is now possible to easily capture footage from your Digital Camcorder directly to your PC and edit it.
If you looking at buying a new PC or building a new one then the currents spec’s are more then powerful enough, a typical spec PC these days is a P4, 512Mb Ram, 80Gb HDD, Windows XP or something along those lines.
You could always use your existing PC if you have one, but i wouldn’t recommend using anything below a PIII 600.

Additional Hardware

When transferring video from your camcorder to your PC there are a number of additional things to consider depending on the type of camcorder your using.

If you’re using a digital camcorder then all your need is a firewire card (also known as an IEE1394 card), a lot of current PC’s have these as standard now, otherwise you will need to purchase the card separately. Some of these will come bundled with editing software such as Adobe Premiere but this really depends on which card you buy and how much you spend, once your camcorder is connected to your firewire port windows will automatically recognise your Digital Camcorder.

If your using the old analogue camcorder then you will also need an analogue to digital converter, see the section on video editing cards below.

Speed?

Its worth considering your Pc’s Processor speed, the speed will effect the rate your video will encode, encoding is where your DV video clips are converted into a more compressed format, for example DVD’s are encoded to MPEG2. So the faster the better really. Also consider the amount of RAM in your PC, 256Mb would be the minimum.

Extra Hard Drive Storage

Its worth considering having an extra dedicated drive for your video footage, remember that five minutes of DV footage uses 1GB of hard drive space so consider a large capacity hard drive such as an 80Gb or 120Gb, also consider the disk drive RPM, at least 7200RPM would be recommended.
If your PC supports it (most new ones do now), then a Serial ATA (SATA) drive will offer increased date transfer rates of up to 150MB/sec compared to 100 or 133 offered by the IDE drives, you may also consider a SCSI drive if you’re PC has an SCSI adapter as standard.

DVD/CD Burners

If your planning on putting your film onto CD-ROM (VCD), or DVD then a CDRW or DVDRW is an essential piece of kit, most new pc’s may have a CDRW or DVDRW as standard, to burn your DVD, you’ll need DVD authoring software.

Video Editing Cards

If you have and older analogue video camera/deck then an analogue USB or PCI capture cards will suffice.

These dedicated analogue to digital converters take process of conversion away from the CPU and therefore speeds up transfer.

If worth getting a quality capture card as the cheaper cards can produce mixed results,

The Video Editing Software

This is where all your creative work starts and the creative work starts, you can capture video from your camera, edit the captured clips, arrange them into a sequence, add transitions, credits and a soundtrack, titles and when your ready export your movie back to the camera or a suitable encoded file format (DVD, VCD etc).

Founder of http://www.avmechanic.co.uk, offering a free friendly helpful community for anybody that needs computer help or help with PC editing products

Insider’s Scoop On How To Skyrocket Your Sales Plus Decrease Your Advertising Costs.

If there is one constant between anyone who does business, or ever sells anything, it’s the big question; “How do I stand out above the crowd when I’m trying to reach my customers?” It is a question that has been asked ever since the human race started advertising and selling. It is only just now coming to the forefront about the amazing benefits and results of using video to do this.

Users Report Dramatic Increase In Sales With Use

The Internet is a wonderful way to advertise items, but has its advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantage of the Internet is that it can be impersonal. It is a well-known fact that customers will buy more when they feel appreciated, trusting of the advertiser, and receive that “personal sales touch”. If you have an item for sale, potential buyers are much more likely to pull out their card to purchase if they are able to see the item as though they were right there with it.

The advantage, of course, of the Internet is the ability to reach tremendous volume of customers, which simply cannot be duplicated on a one-to-one sales relationship.

The advantages of personal sales, and the volume of the Internet are now combined with the use of video software.. An advertiser can record a video with quality audio, either off-line, or online, edit it, and send the personal video to the prospective customer, post it on a web page, or in an ad. There are generally also options to allow for real-time, face-to-face Streaming Video, with two, or even multiple parties.

What to Look For In Video Software;

Although there are already video capabilities on the Internet, there are several key points that you should look for;

• No file attachments in an email, which reduces virus concerns for customers.
• You don’t want one that has long download times–I have received ones like that, and I get tired of waiting and don’t bother with it–your customers will too! Ideally, you want one that doesn’t even require a download.
• High quality video & audio, with the abilities to import, upload, and edit outside videos. Also ideal is the ability to record video off-line, then post it online.
• Uses universally accepted Windows Media Player.
• Allows areas of the screen to be linked to a web page.

Newer versions of video software that have quality, and are user-friendly, are sure to revolutionize the ways we communicate on the internet. It is applicable for all; from family members wanting to send a personal video, all the way up to major corporate needs.

Use It Now, and Be “Heads Above The Rest” In Your Sales and Customer Response

The probability of this type of software revolutionizing the way we do business on the Internet is almost certainly without dispute. It can be used by the everyday person to show a video of a car, boat, or motorcycle for sale, yet is a valuable tool for business promotion. The advertiser can send video links for practically anything; personal emails to prospective customers, or even message videos within their E-zines. The possibilities are endless; some of the first ones coming to mind are;

• Antiques-Crafts-Art, or other similar display
• Car Dealerships/sales
• Motorcycle, RV, boat sales
• Real Estate
• Animals with high quality bloodlines for sale or breeding; such as horses, dogs, cats, etc.
• Possibilities only limited by your imagination!

It is, of course, quite apparent that this tool is likely to become the “new standard” for Internet business and advertising within a very short time, probably a matter of only months. The ones who jump at this tool first, are the ones who are going to be “ahead of the crowd”, exploding their sales, and setting this new standard for advertising.

Mary Van Scoyk has been working on business and marketing online since 2000. After getting enough of the “big city” lifestyle, she escaped to the quiet farm country of the Midwest cornfields. She has published the website, http://www.thegoodliferesources.com/ where she also publishes an online newsletter with tips about how make a business succeed online.