Google Nest launches home camera

Wikipedia: "Nest Labs is a home automation company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, that designs and manufactures sensor-driven, Wi-Fi-enabled, self-learning, programmable thermostats and smoke detectors. Co-founded by former Apple engineers Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers in 2010, the start-up company quickly grew to have more than 130 employees by the end of 2012.

The company introduced its first product, the Nest Learning Thermostat, in 2011. In October 2013, Nest Labs announced the Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide detector.

On January 14, 2014, Google acquired Nest Labs for US$3.2 billion. Nest Labs will continue to operate under its own brand identity. Nest Labs continues to grow quickly with more than 460 employees in mid-2014."

Now below is a very clever idea with the obvious, if deliberate flaw, that you have to pay to store the footage. It is also yet another way Google could be used to spy on you. They can read your emails etc, listen to you a number of ways, know your precise location and more - now they can watch you in your home day and night. It's not that it will happen but that we are blind to its possibility and consequences. As a society we claim to be concerned about privacy but simply are not:

From Techcrunch: Remember when Nest bought Dropcam? The first fruits of that purchase are finally dropping today: Nest has just announced the Nest Cam, an oh-so-Dropcam like security solution.

At first glance, the Nest Cam looks like the Dropcam that we all already know. At second glance… it… still looks like a Dropcam. It’s a bit more slim and its curves are a bit curvier — but the base idea is the same: an ultra simple, plug-and-play WiFi security camera.

But what’s inside?

Here’s what we know so far:

1080p video (The last Dropcam was 720p)

It has a built-in tripod mount

Its base is magnetic, allowing it to be mounted to your fridge

8 built-in infrared LEDs for night vision.

Like the Dropcam, the Nest Cam uses a cloud-based DVR to store video. Alas, also like the Dropcam, it sounds (so far) that that’s the only option for recording video— meaning if you want to record and store video (rather than just stream it) you’re looking at paying $100-$300 a year on top of the cost of the device. 10-days of video archiving will cost $10 a month; 30-days of archiving will cost $30 a month

You can mix Nests Cams and older Dropcams in your home, if you so choose. They’ll both appear in the newly designed Nest app for iOS and Android.

The Nest Cam will ship next week, and cost $199.