At Pepcom – San Francisco 2014 we met with the staff of Ring, a video doorbell company that offers home security in a unique way.

Ring Video Doorbell at Pepcom-SF

Originally known as Doorbot, they had a successful crowdfunding campaign raising $250,000 and created a first-generation product by fall 2013. Doorbot decided to change their name to Ring (a privately held company) and redesigned their hardware for the home security market. Ring’s brochure says they have wide angled HD video, smart motion detection, and cloud recording.

Ring founder and CEO Jamie Siminoff said to Techcrunch that Doorbot’s first-generation hardware had shortcomings and was a good learning experience. Siminoff said, “With the Ring doorbell, early on when we were designing it, we decided what we were really doing was designing the alarm system literally turned inside out. Not an alarm system that copied what ADT is doing, what Canary is doing, or even what Dropcam was doing with its window and door systems, but actually building some kind of pre-crime system.”

Lowe’s Big Box DIY (do it yourself) home improvement store recently did a study on Smart Home interest among 2,000 randomly chosen respondents. They found security was at the top of the list.

Next in their survey finding was fifty percent of respondents wanted a DIY solution and not paying a monthly fee to an alarm company.

Thus Ring’s assumptions are right on target for what most home owners want – security- and that they want to install it themselves.

Ring’s motion detector sensor hardware and algorithms are able to detect both near and far movement, during day time or at night.

Ring alerts users to motion as soon as it’s detected

Often criminals ring the doorbell before they try to break into a house. When someone presses the Ring video doorbell, the user can have a near instant look at who is out there. With a smartphone and the Ring app you have two-way communication like a phone call and that makes it easier to talk with whoever is at the door. Wide-angle video is also recorded to the cloud in HD resolution.

Who is that at the door?

Ring’s installation is a simple three steps:
1. Download the free Ring app (iOS and Android)
2. Connect the doorbell to your WiFi network (using the app)
3. Mount the doorbell

The unit specifications are below:

Ring’s Video Doorbell is priced at $249 and begins shipping this week. It comes in four different finishes, and free cloud-based video recording until January 1, 2015, at which time subscription options will be available. The device can record 720p video at 30fps, has infrared LEDs for nighttime recording and features a 5,200mAh rechargeable battery – The unit doesn’t require electric power, but you have to charge the battery – for sure before going on vacation.

BSN* has requested an evaluation unit for testing to confirm that it works as well as the demo we saw at Pepcom- SF 2014.

The post One Ring and You’re on Candid Camera at Pepcom SF appeared first on VR World.

The Rocki Road is an occasional blog feature written by its CEO N.M. Yap detailing the company’s path through the start-up world.

Rocki is now officially part of Techstars family — day nine actually. It all happened last week which could some day be remembered as a truly significant moment in Rocki’s road, as important (or more important) than the Kickstarter launch.

At Kickstarter, we launched Rocki the “garage-built” company complete with the cliched troop of friends, family, ex-team mates, volunteers, and anyone and everyone who’s able to contribute to the cause. Everyone on the team are experts in their day job and sweating it out by night to build Rocki, something that we all believed in but a lot of others thought otherwise, at least at that time, a year ago. And thanks to all Kickstarter backers, Rocki users, the press, industry partners and Techstars family for supporting and encouraging Rocki, we now have a serious path to become something more impactful than we ever imagined.

At Techstars, we are launching Rocki the disruptive startup that will have the muscle and platform to grab that opportunity to give to the world it’s first universal system unifying all your streaming services and all your favorite home audio, bridging the future of music and its legacy. We want to fill your home with music.

We arrived last Sunday, started Monday and on Thursday the official announcement was made (Forbes referred to us as the 12 Luckiest Startups). A week of Airbnb, got our apartment keys on Friday and then a weekend of IKEA-ing, a home cooked dinner for ourselves and a home cooked dinner for a couple of Techstars-mates, we (at least I) finally feel we’re all set and ready to Rocki and roll!

Speaking of Techstars-mates, wow wow wow. It’s not just the intelligence level, it’s not just the awesome positive attitude towards life and everyone, it’s not just the brilliant stuff that’s being worked on… it’s all of the above and more. I knew before we started that Semyon (the “eindbaas” as we say in Netherlands) and his team Tuan and Rohit went to great lengths to hand pick the 12 companies for this batch of Techstars Boston – Semyon’s debut as captain of the ship. But I could have never imagined this level of …  uhm, wholesomeness (for lack of a better word). There’s also enough variation in characters, strengths and weaknesses of individuals that complement each other, that we can actually become a superclass drawing strength from each other. It’s too early to tell what greatness would come out of this synergy, but the ingredients are certainly there. And it’s not by accident but by careful observation and well thought selection. Respect. I’m suspecting Semyon is a perfectionist.

In alphabetical order,

• Codeanywhere is a cloud based code-editor, development, and collaboration platform.
  Ivan is from the sunny mediterranean cruise stopover harbor town of Split, Croatia – fun, magnetic personality with a relax-chill smile and sharp-eyed intelligence. A coincidence is that I know Ivan already from the South-Europe startup conference SHIFT Split Croatia which he organizes annually as a “hobby” and invited me to speak at earlier this year.
• CoolChip Richie and his team design next-generation kinetic coolers for electronics enabling quieter, smaller and cooler product experiences. Quoting Richie, you can remember the coolchip name as in “Hey, that’s cool” and “Can you pass me the chips?”

• EdTrips makes field trips easy and drives more visitors to educational destinations by consolidating the booking and payment of trips among multiple locations and services. Ed is not the name of the founder – Jakob is.(Ed stands for Educational Trips). Together with a team of about 5, they are letting us “Experience the future”.

• Fairwaves develops disruptive open-source mobile network equipment and software to bring cell phone service to the next billion people.
  Alex, Andrei and Tiana from Russia with love. If such a thing as logical passion or passionate logic exists, it’s these three. I love what they are doing and some day I know I will semi-retire off into some remote village somewhere in the world bringing with me one of these mobile-network-tower-thingy-in-a-box they have built.

• Fortified Bicycle is building an urban cycling brand with MIT-engineered hardware.
  Tivan is the one who knows which pubs to hang out in and where to go. Together with Splashscore Chris and everyone on the Indico team, they are our go-to guys for anything we Boston noobs need to do or find, our local human “Google”.

• Headtalk’s platform enables a new kind of nonverbal communication with wearable devices.
  Alex is a bundle of energy. Each time I talk with Alex, it feels like there is a full spectrum of communication beyond verbal and nonverbal. Hmmm perhaps he indeed has found the ways of telepathy and is secretly alpha testing.

• Helloblock‘s  API simplifies accepting online payments through Bitcoin.
  Scott and Sidney, mostly quietly doing their stuff, while still engaged and vocal enough with everyone. I hear that they are quite respected in the bitcoin API community, advancing the cause of bitcoin, making it simple beyond the bitcoin diehard fans so that companies like Rocki could easily accept bitcoin — hmmmm, perhaps we should.

• Indico is building the world’s first IDE for machine learning.
  Slater, Alec, Ezra, Aidan and Madison are running (coding) the show here. You have to love these guys. Super young, super intelligent, super charisma. Also known as our neighbours – the best neighbours we would ever want and have.

• ROCKI is creating the standard for listening to the music you love on the speakers you already have.
  Hey, that’s us!!! Nick, Dennis and Simon, the eclectic bunch from everywhere in the world – we win “the most number of national flags flying above us” award – that seems to not fit into any box (that’s what we are hearing from our mates), ready to Rocki!

• Spitfire Athlete is building a brand that stands for strength and badassery among women, starting with a fitness app.
  Erin is badassery spitfire – you can see the fire of determination in her eyes. Fun Fact, she ran several marathons and won a first to 10,000 push-ups competition. Nidhi is a wizard-class full-stack software engineer who also competed in rowing. That’s double badassery right there!

• Streamroot cuts bandwidth costs for online broadcasters with native peer-to-peer video streaming technology.
  Z French team, aka Pierre Louis, Nikolay and Axel are coding their way to the top. Building pretty cool technology, make sure to check out their product demo on the website.

• Splashscore’s influencer activation engine helps large consumer brands find and activate their most influential customers on social networks to drive more clicks, likes, leads, and sales.
  Chris and his team use their patent pending algorithm to identify influential consumers who already engage their friends around topics relevant to a brand, and activate them to deliver powerful branded content on Facebook and Twitter.

We also had the chance to meet up with the Techstars Boston alumni – awesome of them to spend their time with us for an everything and anything goes evening with us. Lots of knowhow and words of wisdom passed on to the next generation. We finished the evening with an unscheduled trip across the street to the corner pub (yes, that’s the name of the pub and it is in the corner of the street) for “car bombs”. The next evening’s mix-and-mingle session with mentors, was equally relaxed but had a distinctly different undertone – everyone had a purposeful mission to meet meet meet and meet, almost like speed dating. Mentors came with a mission to meet the startups and the startups darted around to “preview” the mentors for the coming week’s mentor madness.

What is common in all this – the teams, the mentors, the alumni, the hacksociates (more about this in another post), the managing team – is the willingness and eagerness to help each other is seriously stronger than I had ever imagined. #givefirst. For that alone, I’m glad we came.

The Rocki Team at Techstars. From Left Nick, Simon, Dennis.

I’m writing this on a Wednesday morning – one day of mentor madness done, another four to go. They don’t call it mentor madness for nothing. Spoke to couple of mates, some had a very good day with mentors, some had mixed feelings about it. I loved it. And if I survive the remaining mentor madness days, you’ll hear about it from me. And if the next post here is nothing but gibberish, then you’ll know mentor madness broke me Adios. Ciao. 下次再聊. Tot de volgende keer. Off to mentor madness.

The post The Rocki Road Part 5: Rocki at Techstars appeared first on VR World.

Ryan Block tried to cancel his Comcast service recently and the Comcast representative simply would not let him do so without explaining why he’s leaving. The Comcast rep was completely unresponsive and employed sales tactics that have been used many times before to keep people from leaving their companies. With Comcast already behaving a lot like AOL did back in the internet’s early years, this kind of experience could become even more common as Comcast and Time Warner Cable are set to merge. This episode is yet another example of why a company like Comcast should not ever be allowed to acquire any of their competitors, especially their next biggest competitor in Time Warner Cable.

As you can tell, the Comcast representative simply was not heeding the customers’ requests whatsoever and was clearly on a mission (either as a result of his training or from his manual) to figure out why Ryan was leaving Comcast. Such behavior can only be described as anti-competitive and anti-consumer as it does nothing other than bully the consumer into coming back to the company (or never leaving). Comcast also uses some pretty ridiculous claims in the call to try to convince Ryan to stay with them including some of their internet speed claims. They offer 105 Mbps internet speeds, however Google and Time Warner Cable already offer speeds of 300 Mbps and 1 Gbps which are far faster than anything Comcast has offered any consumer, ever.

Such tactics are shameful and Comcast should be forced to answer for such behavior. No matter what happens in the Time Warner Cable and Comcast merger, this needs to be investigated thoroughly by the FTC and FCC.

The post Listen: Cancelling Comcast is Like Pulling Teeth appeared first on VR World.

When I found out that I’m actually going to Computex Taipei 2014, my first thought was – well, nothing. The fact is that through all of my journalist years I’ve heard news bits about an IT conference that is held in Taiwan every year for the last 33 years. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine myself being actually there on that very spot. I’m aware that as for all of you BSN readers, I don’t have to explain what it’s all about. Somehow though, I still like to think that I’m not the only one who’s been IT ignorant so maybe this typically chick-lit text will find its readers.

Computex Taipei 2014 Intro Page

If you’d ask someone who knows me in person, they would probably call me a geek. A girl, but, still a geek. It is true though, that even I am a great final user of many gizmos and gadgets, I couldn’t call myself a geek. Nowadays, when a girl needs a huge amount of gadgets and related applications, it is practically impossible to stay a total idiot. Or lives under a rock.

In that way I’m pretty much trying to go along with the news in the IT industry. For me, the most important thing that a gadget should have is accuracy. I want my mobile/laptop/tablet (etc.) to act fast, be accurate, simple to use and – to look nice. It’s not the matter of benchmarks, which as we know – today can be owned by the manufacturers of the said gadgets.

Yes, I can understand some guys drooling over some really ugly (but still very cool, expensive, hip, mega extra wanted) notebook as it was some hot chick from AVN Expo. Still, for me, my gadgets have to be pretty, and has to match my other accessories and has to be noticed.

That is way I’m pretty happy because of attending of this years’ Computex. I you consider that it’s my peer, and that every year it gathers top ICT elite, different innovators and entrepreneurs from all of the world – I believe that there is a hope of finding some very cool and useful stuff. As organizers announced during their press conference, this Computex should be impressive for launching the new ‘SmarTech’ area featuring smart wearables, 3D printing and the rest of the smart technology at all levels of everyday life. Who knows, maybe 3D printing opens our ways to some new fashion era.

Teuta wearing Google Glass at the W Taipei Hotel.

All in all, through the next few days, I will be there having my Google Glasses on – assuring that nothing comes out of my way. And of course, I’ll be in my feminine way informing you on what have I learned and found out.

The post Computex from a Woman’s Perspective, Part I appeared first on VR World.

Earlier today, Technicolor introduced BSN to a private demo of their new Qeo software framework, allowing seamless communication across devices of all brands and platforms.

Imagine being able to bridge all of your gadgets and appliances in your home, no matter the manufacturer, operating system, or interface. With the Qeo ecosystem, families can do just that, while creating a custom experience within their home, across all devices. While being able to shoot your media from mobile devices to the television is no secret, Qeo can also manage your alarms, home surveillance, power automation, facial recognitions, and much more.

Check out some video highlights of the live home demonstration below:

[developing? coming soon!]

So the moment you walk through the front door, your lighting, favorite television channel, alarms, calendars, recent visitors, or social networking updates can all be presented to you across all platforms throughout your home. A ?Butler? app handles the cross-communication between all devices, coordinating them throughout your private home network. In fact, there is little to no pulling of information from an outside server unless the content demands it. The best part of the Qeo ecosystem is that it adapts to every new changed preference or event. If the room becomes a little too toasty, you can always manually override your thermostat, and the Butler will remember for your next entry. Authorized users can also explore a full history of all activity across all Qeo-enabled devices, through the ?My Butler? app.

Safety and security plays a big part in Qeo. When an unknown person is at the door, the Butler will pull possible facial recognition matches from your social networks and then give you the option to create profiles, access levels, and notifications to your devices. Parental controls will also be much easier with this system. When your grade-school son stumbles upon The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Butler will know that it?s a movie for mature audiences. It will show the option to notify your parent and continue, or to change back to your approved programming. Dad receives a notification, and can choose to remotely lock your sneaky late-night movie that you weren?t allowed to watch.

Smart homes are becoming more of a reality, and Technicolor strongly believes that Qeo will be the future step in managing your multi-platform digital world. Technicolor?s diversification of their Connected Home Division is an interesting step for this Hollywood-renowned quality standardization giant. They pride themselves in creating new visual standards and patents to ensure that audiences view the best quality possible, across all platforms. But are they using this ecosystem to create a new experience for entertainment viewers, or are they aiming to diversify just for the sake of keeping up with the digital future? It?s difficult to tell where Qeo will go, but with major players in the storage, telecom, and networking industries already ?on board?, we?ll be following where they go next.

The post Technicolor Seamlessly Connects Your Entire Home with Qeo appeared first on VR World.