A number of Lextech team members will be attending the San Francisco iPhoneDevCamp event and the Chicago satelite gathering this weekend. Our goal for the event is to continue building knowledge of the iPhone platform, meet some great people and have an app or two we can release to the world when it’s all wrapped up.
In addition to a weekend focused on hard core iPhone development, we’ll also be providing the backup video feeds for the event satelite locations using a camera equipment mac mini streaming to our video reflector network.
We’ll post a follow-up on the event with the highlights.
We’re proud to say that Lextech Labs (our sister company) has submitted the release version of the iRa video surveillance control system for the iPhone and iPod touch to Apple for inclusion in the App Store so it will be available soon.
For more details on iRa check out the Lextech Labs site at lextechlabs.com/ira.
Tech-savvy startups have the potential for rapid growth with relatively little investment of capital or labor. Identifying a niche market to focus on rather than a broad “everyone is a prospect” approach and applying that technology to address it can yield serious revenue rewards.
Immigration Tracker software, created by PC Legal Tools, is an example of a niche focused technology startup. Designed by electrical engineer Fred Colman to aid his wife, Julie Pearl, in her work, Immigration Tracker shows how necessity really is the mother of invention.
Julie, an immigration attorney, wanted a way to help her clients track their employees. The crux of the problem: the status of work visas, a very important issue for Julie’s corporate clients. She needed a software program that could track every step of the visa process for every immigrant worker on her clients’ payrolls. An ideal program would allow her corporate clients to track and retrieve workers’ documents, while leaving her in control. Basically, Julie wanted a system that would allow her to manage the entire work visa process.
Fred took up her challenge. Today, after more than five years, Immigration Tracker software has evolved into a full-fledged company offering a variety of software solutions. They count nearly 400 law firms as clients and have shown huge revenue growth.
Fred attributes his company’s success to a genuine need among immigration attorneys to manage their cases, coupled with a lack of pre-existing tools to do it. He was able to join his technological skills with the needs of Julie’s Pearl Law Group to develop a partnership and create a product that serves a highly specialized niche market. His technology-driven enterprise has proved to be very popular among law firms that work in the field of immigration law.
Founder & CEO of Lextech Labs and Lextech Global Services, Alex Bratton, was a guest on Inside Mac Radio. During the radio segment, Alex is interviewed by Scott Shephard (Host/Anchor of Inside Mac Radio) about Lextech Labs and the mobile surveillance product, iRa. The show can be downloaded on iTunes and accessed through http://www.insidemacradio.com as a podcast. Check it out!
Continuing the now annual tradition we started last year, a group of us enjoyed the early morning air and rain sprinkles to stake out our spot in the iPhone line insanity of last week (granted last year was a bit more intense with much more time in line). Our spots started at 46th in line and that worked out to score us the initial batch of phones we needed to continue our development and testing of iPhone related technologies, especially over 3G. It was great to meet the variety of folks who decided to take the plunge — Apple fans, Windows converts, IT administrators and totally non-tech people who wanted ‘the phone’.
It took about 4 hours for us to get all of the phone issues resolved (25% were perfect at the store, 25% waiting on the iTunes servers and 50% needing surgery in AT&T’s records to fix updated SIM numbers). Once activated we thoroughly put the phones through their paces and downloaded apps galore to test out. The App Store is an amazing software delivery vehicle and the millions of app downloads already are proof that Apple is on to something huge here. Now we just need to continue the upgrades as more phones come available in the weeks ahead.
And as the coffee, sugar and excitement wore off later in the day, off the intrepid line adventures crept to crash a wee bit early for the evening with dreams of the App Store dancing in their heads…
Web development can be… well… a pain sometimes. Especially if you are creating dynamic web pages with Javascript and CSS. Thankfully there are some tools out there to make your life easier. I’ll delve into a tool specific to Firefox called Firebug in this article.
Firebug is a Firefox plugin that can be installed by searching the Tools->Add-ons interface. After installing the plugin and restarting your browser as instructed, you’ll notice a little green icon (or bug) in the bottom right of your Firefox browser. Simply click on it to bring up Firebug and enable it.
You’ll notice 5 main parts to Firebug:
Console - Javascript debugging console. Convenient way to view errors in your javascript, including the line and file the error occurred.
HTML - HTML of current page. What is really cool about this is that unlike right clicking the page and selecting view source, you can also see changes to the HTML that happened dynamically since the page loaded.
CSS - All the styles loaded for the current page. Including external CSS files.
Script - All javascript loaded for the given page. Including external Javascript files.
DOM - DOM layout / overview.
Net - Tracks request, their status, and how long it took to load each one. (ajax calls, images, css, js, etc…).
Additionally, there is an “Inspect” option that allows you to mouse over the website and automatically outline and display information about the current element your mouse is hovering over. All of the client side aspects of the site can be edited on the fly as well, with immediate results reflected in the browser.
There are quite a few more features available in Firebug, but I’ll let you find those out on your own. I hope this little tip has been useful. I know Firebug has helped me a great deal.
For more information:
http://getfirebug.com/ - Special thanks to Joe Hewitt and the Firebug group.
July 10, 2008 — We’re working hard to wrap up the functionality on iRa, Lextech Labs’ surveillance viewing and control application for the iPod touch & iPhone. We recently pulled together some video footage showing off the many improvements and new features we have added since our technology demo video in May.
iRa iPhone Surveillance App Preview Video
For more information on iRa or to sign up for product alert emails, please check out the iRa product page.
It is a typical weeknight in your local shopping mall. People from every walk of life are patronizing a variety of stores in the facility. Mothers and their children are scoping out the latest bathing suit sales. Students are browsing the aisles of the book store for their reports, no doubt due tomorrow. Sports enthusiasts are examining the hottest new cross trainers at the the athletic shoe store. Everyone is caught up in the pace of their personal shopping experience, just as they should be.
Suddenly in the distance, you see a man wearing a ski mask dart out of the corner Jewelry store. And then you hear a scream. And then another. People pour out of the jeweler’s frantically, with little regard for who they run over on their way out. Panic alarms echo throughout the crowded hallway.
Is this really happening? Are my teenage children safe in the food court? Has anyone been injured? Should I make a run for my car or should I wait inside for the authorities to secure the parking lot? All these questions and more are racing through the minds of mall patrons.
Store security sends a page to all guards to be on the look out for the suspect, yet none of them are able to explain the suspect’s appearance via radio in a timely manner. A security guard in the back room full of surveillance monitors zooms in on the suspect and realizes he is only a few yards away from him, near the Pottery Barn. He sends this message via radio, but is unable to chase the suspect himself, for fear of losing track of the perpetrator on the monitors. The suspect escapes. Terror echoes throughout the now empty hallways of the shopping center, and you (the facility manager) have a lot of explaining to do to the local authorities.
The sad truth is that the story didn’t have to end this way. You could have had an extra security guard walking the floor. Your surveillance monitor could have chased after the suspect, while still keeping an eye on his whereabouts. Or better still the situation could have been avoided altogether if all of your guards were able to monitor and control the surveillance cameras simultaneously for suspicious activity.
iRa is a simple solution to this type of security challenge. iRa is Lextech Labs’ remote surveillance viewing and control system that puts the power of multiple live video feeds and direct camera pan-tilt-zoom control in the palm of your security guards’ hands on an iPod Touch or an iPhone. The guards in the unfortunate scenario above would have had access to real time video to rewind and zoom in on the appropriate camera to get a fast, accurate ID. The guard in the surveillance room would be able to watch the video on his iPhone, while intercepting the suspect at one of the exits.
Do you have one or more large facilities that need to be closely monitored by security professionals? Do you employ a person to sit in a back room and watch a bunch of surveillance cameras? Do you want to increase security presence in the main areas of your facility, without neglecting your surveillance videos or adding extra personnel?
We are proud to announce the opening our new sister company, Lextech Labs. Sure, a sister company may not be a sibling in the traditional sense, but there are some commonalities.
We have the same parents. Or in this case, parent. Alex Bratton founded Lextech Global Services in July of 2001. Over the past 7 years, he has worked to establish Lextech Global Services as a leading provider of systems engineering and support services. Working closely with clients and listening to their business challenges brought to light a demand for increased mobility in the security and surveillance industry. Alex decided to start Lextech Labs in July of 2008 as a response to this demand.
Lextech Labs will be a product-based organization, and the first family of products will be a high-end set of surveillance applications that operate over WiFi via the intuitive touch interface of an iPod Touch or iPhone.
We rely on each other. Lextech Global Services will design and engineer cutting-edge iPhone applications as solutions to real business needs. Lextech Labs will then bring these products to market for personal and commercial use.
Lextech Labs trusts that we will provide the highest level of systems engineering expertise and software development because we have a proven record of success. The Lextech Global Services team has extensive experience working with high-end surveillance systems, embedded software, and military security projects for industry leaders like QuickSet International and the United States Army, Navy, and Coast Guard.
We share. We have taken the life lesson “share your toys” we learned as children to heart. Sure, our toys consist of high-end technologies, but they still elicit the same type of excitement. Both companies will play an active role in research and development and share resources to make it easy for users to interact with their complex systems using Lextech Labs’ products.
We also share the same facility at 3080 Ogden Avenue, Suite 200 in Lisle, IL.
Learn more about Lextech Labs and their exciting new product line by visiting http://lextechlabs.com today!
When connecting to remote systems, it’s often easy to overlook a very simple fact; many methods of communication are not protected in any way, shape, or form. Even as you read this post, the data is being sent in cleartext and anyone with the desire to watch over your shoulder, can. Data is the foundation of the internet and businesses in general, and not all of it is a big deal if someone else gets it. However, there is a lot of information that should be protected, and there are a lot of ways to protect it.
First, a common example and, hopefully, some answers. Let’s start with probably the #1 offender: Instant Messaging. IMs have exploded on the internet in the last few years as a great, simple way for people to talk (ok, type) to each other. Here is the problem. Odds are very good that your message to your wife with your account information for the bank website was sent in the clear because you aren’t using any encryption. Yes, most IM technology has no concept of secure communication at all, so everything you type is like talking on a party line; anyone that’s listening can hear it, too.
Now, depending on what IM system you are using (AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, etc), there are different ways to deal with this one. Some of them may have an encryption option built in, which is a lot more rare than it should be. Because of this, there are some third-party IM client solutions. One of the more popular IM clients is pidgin. Not only does it allow for multiple messaging protocols (because you can’t get all your friends to use the same one), but it’s available for most Operating Systems, and has more than one encryption option available as a plugin. If you primarily use AIM, then the OTR plugin is probably what you want. Adium (the MacOS native IM client based on the pidgin libraries), has OTR built in. The pidgin-encryption plugin is another option that has been around almost as long as pidgin.
Unfortunately, this is just one of many potential examples/solutions. Do a little research into whether or not your favorite IM client or protocol has any way to encrypt your messages. The real point is just to be aware that what you are sending is probably vulnerable, so don’t send anything that you deem to be important without setting something up first.
