Our normal body temperature is 36.8 degree C and it fluctuates within a small range during the day.  The body, as any other object with a temperature, emits a radiation that pertains to its temperature.  These two pieces of information have formed the basis for employing Passive Infrared Sensors (PIR) to detect the presence of human.  Dogs and cats have a slightly higher body temperature at 38.6 and they may be detected by the same sensors for human.  Nevertheless, PIR tuned for human detection will not pick up leaf movements in the wind or the change of illumination level.   Therefore we can add PIR as an extra intelligence to video surveillance cameras.  In an automated process plant or restricted access area, for examples, a PIR camera can record undesirable human presence and trigger alarms.  The same arrangement also improves the quality of footage and the use of recording storage estates significantly.  Furthermore we can connect a bright light source to the trigger and this will further improve the quality of recorded videos even at night time.  We have tested the above ideas and are ready to offer the technique to customers.  Please email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it to discuss your requirements if any. 

A picture is worth a thousand words.  What about a video?  See how popular You Tube has been?  Video is indeed the language of the 21st century.  It was not possible previously because the cost of producing, transmitting and consuming video was high.  This has changed due to a few technology progresses made.  One is called compression.  The latest technique can compress a video file by up to 200 times without losing much originality.  Instead of transmitting 20Mbps on the Internet which is either impossible or gravely expensive, we need to transmit 1Mbps only.  Another development is IP for Internet Protocol.  It is an open standard for prescribing how different efforts can be developed separately and yet integrated to produce an end to end solution.  Camera and video handling are coming to the party.  Applications that were not IP based are coming to the party now.  These include physical building access and intrusion protection, internal environmental comfort control (water, temperature) and all processes in manufacturing. The flood gate has opened! 
http://www.cnz.co.nz/content/category/8/13/36/

Cloud computing refers to the clouds as the computing resources as opposed to our internal servers.  Many people have unknowingly joined the clouds and yet they resist the movements of the clouds. Why?  The editor is not a proponent or opponent of cloud computing and is acting as an observer here.  Google mails, Hotmails and Yahoo mails among many others are cloud computing as the email servers that support these mail services are somewhere in the clouds.  Consumers do not pay anything for these email services at the moment but this may change in the future.  Most businesses resist entrusting third parties to handle and store their data rightfully.  This scenario has produced a clear guidance to us all.  Instead of running our complex email servers in-house, we let go of it.  Instead of running an expensive phone exchange system in-house, we let go of it.  They are just tools and depreciating assets.   Data is different.  Data is the reason for having information systems.  Data is private, unique and hugely important for the management of a business.  Data stays in-house.  A white paper for your reading:    http://www.cnz.co.nz/content/view/64/38/

We buy milk by the litre.  We can buy PC by the litre too. Compucon has a small PC section with 3 PC models rated 6L, 4L and 2L (they are called Onyx, Short 1U and Pearl) respectively.  Diamond is 17L for reference and it is considered small by desktop standards (micro ATX). Pearl is the latest release.  It is so thin it can be piggybacked on an LCD screen and a bracket is provided for this purpose.  The small size does come with limitations of computational power and data storage size.  Pearl is therefore appropriate for applications that do not need high speed or large internal storage.  Otherwise, Pearl can justify its name as the pearl of PC.  Onyx and Short 1U are bigger in size.  They can have a big hard disk running a faster CPU for most office applications if you like.  This trio are commercial grade PC as against home office grade.  Short 1U is the most rugged of the three.  Please see Pearl here: http://www.compucon.co.nz/content/view/733/249/