All posts by The Artist

Reviewing HomeCamera, Home Surveillance Camera System

The following is a fair and impartial review request of the website and service of Home Camera.

Home camera is an in-home surveillance camera that is free to use during beta testing. If you have done research on home surveillance, you would know that those advanced equipment do not come cheap. With Home Camera, however, you do not need to buy additional equipment because all you need to do is to install the software to your Windows PC or laptop like any other software and hook up a webcam.

Turn the program on and start monitoring anywhere you like after you have named your camera. I find that the easiest way to name your camera is the room that you re monitoring, like living room, baby room, dining room or kitchen. This is to avoid confusion because you can connect a total of four webcams or CCTV cameras.

Once everything is set up, you can then access your cameras remotely from any internet enabled computer, laptop, PDA or mobile phone. With Home Camera, though, you can also opt to share your surveillance cameras with other Home Camera users. Perhaps you will be away without an internet connection and would like your siblings to keep an eye on the house and pets, or share your children’s moments with the grandparents so this is a great feature and can be easily implemented by granting access to specific users.

Personally, Home Camera is perfect for me because I have a dog which suffers from seizures. He lapses into fits and it is especially bad during a storm because he suddenly developed a fear for the rain and lightning and of course the sound of thunder terrifies him. This is especially frustrating for me because I live in Malaysia where it rains almost every day. You can imagine that I have to stay with my dog for hours daily.

My friend has advised me to keep him in a room all by himself and asked me to stay away to retrain him but I can’t let him inside without checking on him every other minute in case he hurts himself in a bout of fits. I went to check out the prices of surveillance equipment and they cost me an arm and a leg. Seriously, I could not afford them even if I could reclaim my freedom. That was why I kept putting it off while my dog continues to cling to me almost every day.

While Home Camera is the perfect tool for me thanks to its motion detection and automated recording where I can access the video or images that are automatically stored on the server of Home Camera or emailed to me, I know that Home Camera would also be perfect for people who are dependent on foreign maids to care for their children. We have read enough horror stories of how kids end up physically and mentally abused by these maids or even died the hands of these maids from hell. With these cameras well hidden at strategic parts of the home, the maids would not even realize that they are being watched.

Aside from the fact that this is a free service for the time being, and users who register during Beta testing will have a FREE Home Camera Lite account for life even after the service is commercialized, the plus points of Home Camera compared to other home surveillance services are its user-friendliness and intuitive interface plus the fact that we can use out existing computer and webcams without forking out thousands of dollars just setting up the remote monitoring system.

Online Spies For Hire?

I noticed something. Every time I wrote about a big corporation, someone from India would come and read my post and then send my permalink to the company and someone from that company would come and check it out. I think I have noticed this happening about five times. And each time the first person that comes to read that post is ALWAYS from India.

Is there a company in India that has online spies for hire? Let’s say I run a company and I am afraid that someone out there is writing bad about my company or a branch office in particular, maybe I can hire this company who has staff to monitor the internet 24/7 for their clients and when some someone mentions the company whether in a positive or negative way, off the spy sends out the link to the client.

Hhmmm the more I think of it, the more plausible this scenario is.

Perhaps these companies can subscribe to Google Alerts and Technorati themselves? Why hire people to do the job? Of course, I have come across companies who come personally as well, can see from their IP mah 😀

The Gift of a Digital Keychain Frame

Some time back. I thought I would be getting a digital picture frame for my friend whose birthday is coming up. It would be a perfect gift for him because he is a professional photographer. However, I was not sure if this is something that he would like. But then when I was surfing to more gift stores, I found something even better than a digital photo frame.

The TAO 1.5″ Digital Keychain Frame (Black & Gold), which is selling at only $47.99 from eFrame Store, would be more than perfect because it is a keychain and my friend, the birthday boy, would be able to take it everywhere he goes, unlike the picture frame which he most probably will leave at home.

Of course, a digital photo frame would have more features like displaying photos in slideshow or mosaic mode and some of the more advanced would also have wireless capabilities.

However, with the keychain that I mentioned about, he could share his favorite pictures with friends and family wherever he goes. It could also connect directly to a PC or MAC computer system and comes with AC adapter, USB cable and software.

Hhmm honestly speaking, I am now undecided. Perhaps I should get both for him?? And also get one for myself? What do you reckon?

Blog Held Hostage

Did you hear about the case where people’s blog are deleted, or at least taken offline, when the administrator disagreed with the things that the blogger wrote about? This is why it is always advisable to build your own blog and not receive free or shared space from others.

A long time ago, a fellow blogger told me that I should join his blog network and asked me to transfer all my post to his blogs. I was very tempted because I would have my own hosted blogs in a unique domain and I do not have to pay a cent.

I consulted a friend, someone who has had a website for years. He told me that I better not let others determine the fate of my blogs. Imagine spending time and energy building up the Page rank, traffic and network and then if I have a fall out with my host, my blog would be wiped out. Of course, the administrator said it won’t happen but who knows, right? See, it happened to this fellow Postie.

So, I am glad that I decided to host my own blogs and struggle with the technicalities by myself instead of getting a free sub-domain blogs from this friend and let him set everything up for me. At least, I have total control of how my blog looks and is run.

How Much Do You Earn Blogging??

I get asked this question all the time by my friends but I believe only one person knows my approximate total at the end of every month. This person supports me a lot. Even my family does not know.

Anyway, although I have been blogging for pay for a long time, I do not think it is good to publish our earnings. We must be humble, and I find that publishing earnings is rather distasteful. Do you think that you would scan your check from your real life job and publish it on your blog so that you can show every one how much your salary is? I don’t believe so and I give my blogging earnings the same privacy and confidentiality.

Having said that, I do read other people’s earning reports to motivate myself and congratulate them if I know them personally. I am happy for them.

I believe if I write until I am three quarters dead, I would be able to do that as well but why should I torture myself? I only reserve as much opportunities as I can handle and leave the rest for other bloggers.

There is always another day and another and another, right?

The Many Plastic Surgery Procedures

I came across many plastic surgery terms when I as browsing through a plastic surgery website just now. My, are there so many for us to memorize! I would like to get one IF there is no pain because I would like to get some little “defects” off my face and body and I know that I could look a whole lot better with some help, help that could not be rectified with cosmetics! But I am uncertainly though! One thing is the pain, another is the cost and I will never go to a quack doctor in his makeshift clinic to get a tummy tuck, for example, just because it is cheap and that is what I could afford. No way! I would rather suffer from ugliness than put myself at risk!

The popular trend now is to check into a clinic that looks like a five star hotel, be treated like a VVIP and then come out as a new person! This is what I dream to be able to afford one day when I could pay a million dollars to look like a million dollar girl!

There was once that I read a patient went in for liposuction and the clinic staff forgot to shut the machine off because she was busy chatting away on the phone while the patient on the coach fell asleep, with the machine on. I don’t know what the consequences were but she came out in a pretty bad shape, I read.

After reading all those bad experiences of others, when my friend told me that she may have to get a rhinoplasty, I told her to only go for the best. There is only all to gain to check in with a reputable plastic surgery clinic, right?

She agrees with me, of course, but would still need the final approval from her husband. He is the paymaster, after all!

Are Contextual Posts Sponsored?

We are all still unclear, I guess, and although it has been announced that we do not have to sandwich all our sponsored posts with organic posts, preferably linkless ones, except for those taken from triple P, defining sponsored posts with respect to contextual links in normal ordinary posts is critical in defining a blog from a 50:50 ratio of sponsored versus non-sponsored content.

This is rather tough to determine. To me, a post with a contextual link is not sponsored if we successfully managed to integrate the link into our posts but it is sponsored if it is awkwardly thrown into a post.

It’s well and good to say, “You know it when you see it”, but that is so subjective. I don’t really want to violate any company’s terms of service but at the same time I do not want to feel as if I am pressured to write posts that I do not feel the passion for.

That being said, I need clear guidelines to work freely and if the guidelines say that contextual posts are sponsored, then by all means let us know in advance so that we could work within the guidelines.