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MotionI recently installed a simple video surveillance system at a facility I work.

The main goal is to know who (and when) entered our server room. Currently the setup features a tiny Philips USB cam connected to a Linux server (running Debian Sarge). At a later Stage this webcam will be replaced by a proper network camera (or even several cameras).

The software I used is called Motion – a relatively easy to set up video surveillance system that does motion detection (…and much, much more). Motion detection is ideal for my purpose because the room is normally completely dark unless somebody enters it and switches on the light.

Now every time somebody comes in, a short video is produced and saved on our server. I made a web accessible filesystem alias to the video directory, so I could check whether there was new footage available. This process was not automated enough for me, so I slapped together a short (und ugly) PHP script that takes the contents of the video directory and delivers it as a RSS feed that I can now subscribe to with my news reader.

The script is available at the Motion WIKI and can also be downloaded from there.

[Update:]
Some photos of the former chaos in our server room and it’s extinction can be viewed here.

special thanks to Herbert for having the idea 😉

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EhrensenfEhrensenf, a german daily internet TV broadcast, has been nominated for the “Grimme Online Award”. I encourage you all to vote for it …even if you don’t understand german – Katrin (the host) alone should be convincing enough 😉

Just follow this link and vote for Ehrensenf!
Thank you 🙂

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I’m constantly surprised by Google. They keep making their service better and better. Most of it is just stumbled on unintentionally by me.

Today while listening to Diggnation I wondered where the company Dell is located because they where talking about it. So out of pure boredom I typed in “where is dell” into the Google search field in Safari.

To my surprise I received something like an actual answer to my question on top of the usual search results.
Where is Dell

I tried a couple more companies and sites, with different success (Google doesn’t know where Disneyland is 😉 ). So now I wonder what else can I “ask” Google? Any suggestions?

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flashbagThis caught my eye while surfing the web today.
The Flashbag is a normal USB thumb drive with a little pump in it. It inflates with the amount of data you store on it. Even when not connected it stays inflated so you can always estimate how much space you’ve got left.

It is still a proof of concept and you can’t buy it anywhere. But in my eyes this is a really good example of creative tech design 🙂

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BlogTalk Reloaded banner

BlogTalk Reloaded – the conference
is scheduled for Oct 2-3, 2006.
It will be held in Vienna, Austria

Seems like the crazy Web 2.0 conference hype is also slowly attacking my homecountry. Blogtalk which will be held in October is already the third occurrence of this gathering. The general theme will be “Social Software” in all it’s aspects.

Read more about their Mission on the Page.

Following the international success of BlogTalk 1.0 and 2.0, Blogtalk Reloaded – that will be held in Vienna, Austria – is expanding its focus to Social Software, while remaining committed to the diverse cultures, practices and tools of our emerging networked society.
The conference is designed to maintain a sustainable dialog between developers, innovative scholars who study social software, users in corporate and educational settings, and the general community of users.

The whole thing will be held at Techgate in Vienna.

UPDATE:

We decided to extend the deadline for software related proposals to May 31.
Please circulate this info as we want to attract more developer proposals and mix them with the other crowd.
PLease submit project drafts, protptype ideas, and concepts.
06.04.2006 – 7:21 pm GMT

…so if you think you have something to talk about, don’t hesitate and send in your proposal.