Roger Rogo

So there's yet another player in the plug-n-go security market: Rogo. For $10.95 a month, customers can remotely access cameras from their PC or cell phone using this system. The model is similar to other vendors in this arena: making remote video monitoring a mass market product by making it as cheap and easy as possible. But $10.95/month? That's pretty darn cheap. Rogo is pushing the use of USB cameras, which are so inexpensive they can give them away for free, or so they say at least twice in this article. However, the obvious drawback of USB cameras are that, well, they're USB cameras and they have to plug into your computer to work. Who wants 50 yards of USB cord strung through their house, even if the camera is in the form of a cute puppy? (The picture of the puppy camera has nothing to do with the Rogo system, I just thought it was cute and funny ... plus it's Friday.) To counter this downfall, the Web site explains that the system is compatible with AXIS wireless cameras. Another problem from a consumer standpoint is that all the captured data is stored directly on the consumer's computer. The FAQ section of the Web site says that the system only takes up about 5 GB of space, but still... Something interesting and perhaps new about this system is that the cameras can be set on "motion detect mode" and only record when activated. That certainly seems like more of a security-related function. The article also mentioned the ability for the camera to produce graphs and quantitative results based on the footage, or so says the president of the company: “We’ve also moved beyond just security,” [James] Trimble says. Because the system can monitor 24-hour activity and graph it, a retailer can examine the peaks and valleys of activity in a store. That was a first for me, too. It sounds like there must be an analytic component incorporated in the system, right? No mention of the word "analytic" in the article or on the Web site, but perhaps that word doesn't create the excitement in the consumer market as it does among security professionals.