Tired of thieves, Portland woman lets the world watch her Obama sign

Re:Tired of thieves, Portland woman lets the world watch her... by vaksel on Monday September 22, 2008 @05:43PM (#311682)

This could actually work as a startup idea. You setup a ustream webcam, and for $99/month the startup will have some low wage worker monitoring your feeds and in case of burglary or fire they can call police. Or better yet crowd source it and have people monitor the feed to earn "bounty" for catching a particular event. i.e. $1000 bounty if you catch some burglars in action.

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Re:Tired of thieves, Portland woman lets the world watch her... by kajecounterhack on Monday September 22, 2008 @07:36PM (#311764)

I like your general idea. But its effectiveness would sharply decrease as customers began to outnumber people actually willing to sit there. Not to mention, it might not be effective from the get-go.

After all, the chance of a burglary happening is rather slim, and sitting there without being paid by the hour is sort of drab/not likely. I know I wouldn't do it.

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Re:Tired of thieves, Portland woman lets the world watch her... by hugh on Monday September 22, 2008 @09:02PM (#311852)

Perhaps the idea could be adapted, though. How about throwing in a motion detector so that we only draw our human watchers' attention to the motion of things which look like human-sized objects?

You'd need, of course, to throw in some kind of key system (RFID?) so that it's turned off whenever the rightful owners are at home, and throw in some kind of penalty (after several warnings ) to make sure people didn't leave their house guests sitting around setting off false alarms, but some form of this could make a very cost-effective alternative to more elaborate security camera systems.

I'd pay twenty bucks a month for the peace of mind of knowing that nobody is breaking into my house, and that it isn't on fire.

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Re:Tired of thieves, Portland woman lets the world watch her... by byrneseyeview on Monday September 22, 2008 @09:59PM (#311914)

http://www.wired.com/wired/scenarios/global.html

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