The World is Watching By John Townley February 17, 2000 Home Alone -- No Longer As anyone who reads the paper knows, the era of smart technologies is upon us, whether we want it or not, as New York Times writer Alice Hill recently opined. All this is the result of Bluetooth local RF transmission technology that allows anything with a chip in it to talk to anything else that's got one, too. Then there's the spycam technology that's been monitoring us all in the strangest places, from ATMs to the shower stall, the chance for us all to live voyeuristically a la Sharon Stone in "Sliver." Well, why not hook one up to the other and talk to your peeping-eye cam from anywhere in the world, or let it faithfully report back to you? That's what the folks at X10.com have accomplished with their GigaCam/XrayVision hardware/software combination. It's a tiny, palm-sized color video camera that transmits its RF signal to a base station which can be hooked directly into your TV or softwared into your PC via USB cable and then accessed from anywhere in the world. Remember, way back when, that first wired, then wireless intercom in the baby's bedroom, placed to wake you up every time the kid turned over a few rooms away? Now you can look at your little darlings in full color, not just remotely from within your house, but thanks to an Internet connection, from across the globe. No more "Home Alone," even if you're a universe away. Forgot to take the kid? No problem. Don't trust the babysitter? You've got that serruptitious party animal under full serveillance at the punch of a button on your PalmPilot or Nokia Net phone from 35,000 feet over France. No kidding. And, no kidding, it's a great little device, and cheap at $99 for the camera/ transmitter and receiver, only a few dollars more to add the XRayVision software, or download a beta version free. It's the sort of thing techno spyshops used to sell for thousands, and a lot more versatile. Both camera and base station have little swivel antennas which need to be pointed accurately for best reception, and both plug into the wall sockets, so it's made for stationary, not roaming applications. Your uses for it are, of course, largely determined by your needs and your creative imagination. In this house, the kids are all grown up, so forget babysitting - but they're becoming parents themselves, so it could be a great techno shower gift. We tried it on our mailbox, which we always watch fiercely for incoming checks that might be snatched by our scurrilous neighbors. It had a certain Warhol quality, akin to "Empire State," with the light slowly changing and, eventually, the mailman showing up with a fistful of ads and bills. The World is Watching (2) Outside the front door, it functioned well as a peephole, and we could show our visitors snapshots of themselves after we let them in. Or, we suppose, we could e-mail them the same had we chosen not to answer the door. That's a serious option, because one of the features of the setup is it will spontaneously e-mail what it's watching to any address you choose at pre-assigned intervals. Sting would have killed for one during his divorce... The temptation to make streaming bedroom videos was very real, but overcome by sleep and alcohol and wound up being a good shot of our fireplace, merrily crackling away as we slept. Nevertheless, this is the setup of choice for the likes of dudedorm.com and other real time, real life home sitcoms. What else could we use it for? The camera exiled to the basement successfully told us when the laundry was done. Down the street it sent back nice pictures of kids playing in the park, but that was about as far as we took it from the base receiver, as most Bluetooth technology is limited to a few hundred yards in range. And, remembering that, it was just as well that the bedroom thing fizzled, because although the camera transmits on several different chooseable frequencies, what if those scurrilous neighbors had one, too, and picked up our signals the same as with a portable phone? Perhaps x10's next product should be a scrambler. Then there's the car. Aha! Could we monitor our trips, and the occasional carjacker? Not yet - you'd need a 12-volt adaptor, and our Clarion AutoPC uses WindowsCE, wrong platform. Maybe someday. The fact is, although we personally could find only limited use for this wonderful, and affordable, device, we could think of all kinds of things other people might do - especially parents and anyone needing remote surveillance of any kind. Was there anything we wished were added to the capabilities? Yes, there was one. It would be nice if there were a model (albeit necessarily more expensive) that could control the camera's angle and make it zoom, a la Vorax's much pricier service. The best action, after all, is usually just off camera, and it's frustrating to be helpless to the task of correcting it. It would also be nice to have a battery-powered roaming model. Aside from that, this is first-generation Bluetooth household interconnectivity at it's best, and at a good price. We say first-generation advisedly. The next generation will observe that your eight-year-old just finished the milk and will tell the refrigerator, which will order more. Expect Virage to get into that act somewhere...

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