OurBlock.TV

This is the definition of “Big Brother” according to Wikipedia:

Big Brother is a fictional character in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the enigmatic dictator of Oceania, a totalitarian state taken to its utmost logical consequence – where the ruling elite (’the Party’) wield total power for its own sake over the inhabitants.

The entire team of OurBlock has performed extensive research on the true definition of this strictly in regards to modern culture. The concept portrayed in Orwell’s book has changed quite a bit as it was written many years ago. Today, the idea of big brother is related to nearly every instance of control by any entity on any medium. OurBlock has been called “Big Brother” by nearly every person who’s seen the idea, including those who are absolutely in love with it.

A company, who we’re very fond of known as ShotSpotter is a service that helps authorities detect an amazing amount of data from the sound of a single gun shot. You can read more about what they’re doing here. On their FAQ, this question is answered.

Isn’t this “Big Brother”?

With all due respect to Mr. Orwell, gunshot location systems are not intended or used to spy on our citizens. (See the answer immediately preceding for details on how the ShotSpotter GLS does not trigger on noises which do not sound like gunfire.) In cities in which the ShotSpotter GLS is deployed, it is illegal to discharge a firearm except on a certified shooting range or under other controlled circumstances. Thus, anyone who does fire a gun has broken the law, and it is our position—with which district attorneys, police and civil rights groups agree—that firing a weapon illegally within city limits creates a significant threat to public safety and therefore warrants the detection of the event, investigation of its perpetrators, and possible indictment of suspects.

The intended use of their system is different than OurBlock but it’s interesting that they also addressed this issue which means they receive just as many accusatory emails as we do. I’m still working on our standard question to this answer that will be displayed on the website but I have a very loose response that generally gets my point across:

OurBlock is a service / platform that empowers citizens to take a stand against crime and setup cameras on their property. These cameras will be optionally watched by other citizens that are local or across the world. Those verified and trusted members of OurBlock will report crime as they see it. OurBlock merely verifies within 5 seconds that the crime is legit and not just a prank and we’ll contact the local authorities to do something about it.

We will gladly comply with government requests to hand over video of incidents but there will be no preferential treatment given to “the man”. We will work with all organizations to a degree but the side we’re on is that of citizens who participate in this project. Think of OurBlock like YouTube. You put a video up and someone watches it. We’ll do our best to keep irrelevant feeds off the service but we’re acting as a medium. Personally, I think of Big Brother as an organization puts up cameras WITHOUT citizen approval and keeps the video feeds PRIVATE and uses the video to monitor, exploit and record your life with purposes that go beyond human safety as an invasion of privacy.

By developing a platform where concerned citizens can setup cameras as cheaply as $49 and other concerned citizens can view them, OurBlock becomes a foundation for safety. We destroy all video archives after just a couple of days and only retain USER generated clips. We will hand over video to the authorities but in our tests, video quality is so low that the primary and sometimes ONLY use of that video is the real time aspect of catching the criminal NOW and not later. If someone steals your purse and they’re not caught then, that video can’t be used to identify them due to compression and quality of low cost cameras. This may sound like a setback but we look at this as an advantage and proof that we do truly care about your security. It’s not about tracking where you go or what you do. It’s that you know within 8 seconds of being attacked, a police officer has been dispatched and is on his way with a general description and exact location of your attacker.

We have been working long and hard on this concept and the team is growing more and more each week. The 1 year anniversary that Adam launched AdamsBlock is approaching. I’m disappointing that we won’t be ready by then to launch but there are so many facets to this system. video streaming and broadcasting at a low latency is difficult as well as storing it and scaling that to thousands of cameras. Adam made many mistakes before but he proved it was doable by someone with little funds and little time. We’re working on growing that model in multiples and we’re working daily on doing that.

We take security very seriously and have turned down offers from corporations and government bodies that don’t embrace our open idea of person to person video surveillance. Feeds won’t be made private, we just won’t do it. It has to be real and it has to be open or we will become Big Brother.

Thanks for reading.

You read that right. The camera formerly known as AdamsBlock is coming back soon. We were contacted by someone who will not be named be putting up a camera in the old apartment. I don’t have a date, details or info but even if our site is not done yet, the camera will be live on OurBlock.TV as soon as we can get it online. Probably in the next 60 days. Many thanks to the AdamsBlock Fan who contacted us about setting up a camera there!

Thank you.

Hello everyone. It’s been a while since we’ve updated. Honestly, the team has been working so hard on OurBlock that we’ve been too busy to blog about what’s going on. The team is still very secretive about what we have to do and what’s been done so far but I can share with you a few items that we’ve done even if I’m still extremely vague about what’s happening.

• Our team now has 4 people. All four people have full time jobs and this is only part time for now since we’re not trying to make any money off this and it’s a labor of love.
• We have actively began seeking capital (cash) to pay some much needed bills, web hosting & get some live cameras up and running.
• We have agreements with three US cities now to work with OurBlock exclusively to reduce crime using real-time crowd-sourced neighborhood watch.
• Our business model has four tiers that I can’t share right now but we have a business model.
• We are still hiring more people and if you’re interested, there’s a link on our homepage.
• We have a video partner to help OurBlock deliver real-time video at little or no cost to the end user
• We have partnerships with 5 publicly traded companies and a few private companies for hardware, software & hosting
• We are working on non-profit status as a second arm of OurBlock so we can accept and distribute donations to our communities

The final aspect that I wanted to touch on is that we’re no where near completed. If all four team members were able to quit their jobs today, the site would be up in 30 days w/ a few cameras available at launch. The reality is, we all have full time jobs & families so we’re stuck working on weekends to get things done. I apologize to all of you who are so excited about OurBlock and its future but you’ll have to wait just a little bit longer because we’re not done yet.

If you have any feedback, contributions, ideas or feedback, feel free to contact me personally at Owner@OurBlock.TV. We would love to hear from you.

First of all, I wanted to thank everyone for their support and kindness through this process of development. Everyone involved with OurBlock has a full time job and some of us have families so doing this has been an act of passion and not for money or fame. It’s been quite a whirlwind lately and the break we took between December-February was a mistake because now we have some very interesting proposals coming to us from citizens, companies and cities to get started as soon as possible. A bay area city yesterday asked if we could deploy and operate OurBlock across their high crime areas (75 cameras) by June 1st and that’s just not possible at this time.

There are four of us on the team and I’d like to share with you a screenshot of our network but also a few fantastic features that we have in-store for you. Here is what OurBlock’s main page might look like. I’m pushing for a partnership that will allow us to display a crime map of your area based on your IP address and then recommend cameras in your area but I doubt it will be ready for launch.

We’re rapidly developing this but it’s still an unpaid part time project. I can share a little bit about our infrastructure without saying too much.

1. Facebook Connect for ZERO anonymity. Reduces trolling.
2. Wordpress Mu for highly scalable pages and easy moderation.
3. BuddyPress for an instant social network hosted on our servers.
4. Integration with either Justin.TV OR Ustream.TV for scalable video streaming w/ an archive system.
5. Easy to use clip creation with instant upload to YouTube or Flickr (reduces hosting costs and helps virality).
6. At launch, partnerships with over 100 charities and all camera earnings give money back to charities. Camera operators decide where the money goes.
7. Crime Data that can be analyzed to see how cameras reduce crime over time and the community can access this data anytime for free.
8. Groups and sub-networks so fans of a particular camera can share clips, screenshots and events that happen on each camera. (Similar to Facebook Groups).
9. A philanthropic arm of OurBlock will help us connect citizens to charities and local events for the homeless, families & those in need.

We’re excited to be working on all of these features now. Facebook Connect will be authenticated once and you’ll be able to chat, create clips, collaborate with others, post in the message board and comment on our blog using one account with your name & face.

Adam Jackson’s fight against Internet anonymity is very important to us. You can read more about his passion for this on his blog. Facebook Connect gives us control to promote or ban users based on their Facebook ID and require a photo or a minimum amount of friends for that person to join the site. AdamsBlock.com had issues with trolling, racism and general negativity and we want to avoid that. The original camera would sometimes have 1,100 people chatting so if it means we cut that in half and fill the chat room with real people, it will benefit the community as a whole. This isn’t strictly about entertainment, it’s about saving lives and raising money for charity.

If you want to be a part of this project, have questions for us or any other comments, feel free to email us here. The next few months are going to be very exciting and we thank you for your support.

Hello Everyone. I wanted to welcome all new visitors to the site and subscribers to our blog. This weekend, we had a terrific breakthrough in the progress of OurBlock.TV. We took part in something called StartupWeekend. You show up on Friday, meet people and build a site with the goal of launching that service on Sunday evening at 7PM. Of course, OurBlock is a bit too complicated to be just a weekend project but our working prototype, new color scheme, new logo and some new team members.

For the sake of privacy, I’m not dropping any names in this post (including my own) but I wanted to communicate changes, ideas, planning and some general things for the sake of open communication and transparency as we work closer to getting OurBlock up and running. I’ll continue to do this because a single voice is necessary to ensure there is never confusion in our plans for launching this website and I’m happy to have your support.

The demo at Startup Weekend went beautifully and I overheard that we received the largest applause according to mentions on Twitter. I wanted to copy a few quotes that I saved from Twitter after we completed our demonstration of stats, metrics and get a live demo of the new website.

1. pgkiranLove the concept of ourblocktv.com My Neighborhood is working hard in fighting crime,this can be of great help

2. RT @davemcclure: Solve/Prevent crime in your neighborhood using http://ourblocktv.com (via @ceelee)

3. AndaPROur Block comments about privacy concerns. I like the idea of community involvement to fight crime, but I could understand that.

4. shaigOurBlock is solving a large problem, I want to use their service for my complex

5. ahmed_moussa ourblock.tv http://blog.adamsblock.com/ is probably the most powerful tool created this weekend

6. TimIsHungry Watching @adamjackson present “ourblock”- an anti crime webcam network. Is big brother now ourselves? Interesting dilemma.

7. AndaPROur Block combines live video of neighborhood with opp for people to discuss what’s happening. Great crime fighting tool!

I’m overwhelmed with the tweets our team received while demoing the product at Startup Weekend and we’ll continue these demos as the site progresses and becomes more mature. Overall, there wasn’t a negative comment aside from a question from the audience that asked, “how do the cameras work if it rains?” Great question and the $49 camera works great even when wet.

Moving forward and without revealing any detailed numbers or detailed plan, we have two options for moving forward. Those of you in attendance last night saw our slide that showed the site’s two financing options. There’s actually a third that I won’t be disclosing right now. At the low end, we raise some capital with a goal of profitability within 12 months. This plan involves using an existing Video system like Justin.TV or Ustream.TV for our video recording, hosting and sharing. This is our best option for a fast launch, a cheap operating cost and more money going to charity instead of into engineering or R&D.

There is another option that requires we build the entire thing ourselves and we’re exploring the exact cost of this but it’s not cheap and it will mean the site will take 8 months or longer to deploy and cost more and less money will go to charity for the first year while we try to get the site up. Neither myself or Adam want to follow this path. We want to put the site up IMMEDIATELY and grow extremely fast with very little overhead and have every single penny go to charity. This has and always will be our goal and if not giving money to charity is the only way to get the site up then we won’t do it. That’s the reality of this.

I also wanted to clarify something that I’ve been receiving inquiries about via Email. Adam Jackson is the creator of this project and my chief adviser but as a company, I’m currently acting alone. Adam is unpaid and is graciously helping me with this project to ensure the scope of AdamsBlock / OurBlock remains unchanged and on schedule. His contacts and insight have been amazing and I’m lucky to have him around. I want to stress that this isn’t Adam’s Project and unfortunately, he’s still getting hate mail. It’s very sad and I wish it would stop. Send it to me instead (owner@adamsblock.com) and I’ll gladly mark it as spam.

The future? It’s uncertain right now. I can say that nothing will be publicly available for you guys until at least September. It looks like we’ll be launching the site on the 1 year anniversary of Adam’s launch of the site which was on October 16th, 2008. We’ll see how that plays out but I’m trying to make it sooner.

I wish I had more to share with you at this time. I did want to once again thank you all for the continued support and we’re anxious to get this launched. All inquiries can be mailed to us and we’re always looking for OurBlock broadcaster signups.

One more thing. A new AdamsBlock.com site design will be up today Stay tuned.

San Francisco saw a drop in crime while the AdamsBlock webcam was live. Many media representatives spoke to local law enforcement and confirmed that in October, November and December, crime on that block had gone down. What fantastic news this is for all local residents and for the police force but since the camera went down, crime is on the rise again.

At the turn of the new year, there were two stabbings in the area and last night, a drive by shooting that would have been caught on camera happened. Shots were fired into a liquor store, 6 people were injured and 1 man was killed. Could this have been prevented with the camera on? Probably not but it may have helped if those committing the drive by knew the camera was up and forced them to rethink where they drove by to shoot. Alternatively, the crime still may have happened and the exact car description and possibly identification of those responsible could have been proven. The camera pointing in that direction was zoomed in on that street corner and was broadcasting in high definition. It would have acted as perfect evidence for police officers and used in court. However, the result of last night’s shooting resulted in the vehicle getting away toward Oakland and the shooters still at large.

I can align with some opinions that people don’t want to be on camera at all times and they feel that their lives are being exposed for the entertainment of anonymous Internet viewers but I have been looking at crime on that block where Adam’s camera was and I know that dozens of crimes could have been prevented if a camera was still broadcasting that street corner.

I’d like to take a moment to put some positive thoughts out to those who lost their lives tonight and the families affected by this horrible incident. Crime will continue unless we can add more police, improve neighborhoods, educate our children and truly get drugs off the street. The camera won’t fix everything but it’s a band-aid for an even larger problem. We have to do something and fast.

I have been very lucky to have Adam Jackson on board for a lot of the big decisions. I know he doesn’t like being talked about these days but I can say that he’s done a lot to ensure I continue on just as he had originally planned. I’m shying away from the media coverage as of late due to the negative turn things took when Adam went on the news back in December. The media wasn’t responsible for things going awry but a lot of the attention wouldn’t have happened if he stayed away from the coverage. An interview performed right after the cam went offline has finally been posted on a popular tech blog called VentureBeat. I’m going to highlight a few of my favorite bits. Thanks again to Adam for agreeing to answer these tough questions.

VB: What do you mean by rethink?

AJ: From this point forward, in the next generation of the project, all the domains will be private, and the owner of Adam’s Block will not have any personal information up. Everything is a lot more private. That’s the way it has to be. There’s a reason why police officers’ phone numbers are not listed in the phone book. You don’t want to arrest someone and give them your home address. I never intended the project to get so big. And that’s where the fault was. I had been used to the negativity. But it was finally for my safety and my girlfriend’s safety that we kind of shut things down to take a break.

VB: If you did it over again, what would you do differently?

AJ: I think if I were to do it over again, I wouldn’t do it again. But if I did, certainly I would consider some of the privacy concerns and be a heck of a lot more private. Even putting the camera in my room, I’d make it more hidden. My lifestyle wasn’t really set up to fight crime with my transparency at that time. I think that if I were more private on the web, like now, I could have actually finished the project.

[During the project,] I transitioned from a Web 2.0 person to a mainstream person. Simple things we take for granted just being in the tech scene, like having my phone number on my blog and my Facebook totally open, in addition to my Twitter stream and Flickr stream. I would check [those sites], and there would be a post of someone saying, you live here! And being a Web 2.0 person [at first], I didn’t really consider that to be a threat. If you were mainstream, like Billy Joel, that’s what would happen. People would ask you for an autograph or maul you. So I kind of locked down my social internet life. It was the most challenging part, going from a very public to a very private lifestyle. It’s like being robbed of my life and having to start over.

The thing is, there are hundreds of web cams run by private citizens in San Francisco. And I run into people who say, I’ve done the same thing for 10 years, and I never got that many people. A lot of them were jealous. But when I started, I just thought it would be a web cam — not a monetized service.

VB: What’s next for the project?

AJ: One of my friends has taken over the project, though I’m still involved. I just want to make sure [the web site] is still charitable and still run with the right intentions. I told him my plan for Adam’s Block, and he may have his own objectives. I wanted to have a web cam on every street corner in America, globally. I wanted to buy web cams and have broadcasters all over — a neighborhood watch on a global level. In return, I’d get a portion of the advertising. I encourage all broadcasts to give at least half to local charities, to give back to the communities they’re in. All of my proceeds so far, which were just about $1,000, went to local and national charities. All the equipment went to charity. That has always been my goal with this. Never to make a lot of money [for myself]. We partner with a couple of organizations that run the web site. It’s a public records site. They can index public records, or show crime in certain areas by Google map. We [could] give a web cam link to all these areas. It’s a really low investment thing because all you need is the cameras.

You can read the full interview at VentureBeat.com

AdamsBlock was a complete success. I’m reviewing the site stats for last month and 200 thousand people tuned in to see what was going on at one street corner in San Francisco in a two week time frame. That’s pretty astounding and something to be proud of. I sat on the outside looking in as AdamsBlock went from a little webcam in someone’s window to being featured on Fox News and NPR and I also saw the missteps that Adam took when the project was in its infancy.

I don’t think anyone expected the site to go viral but it did and just as Myspace fought to keep their servers chugging in 2004 as millions joined every day, AdamsBlock was fighting to stay alive amidst many mistakes that were made. Each mistake was another nail in the coffin and I did some research to find out what those were.

Adam was too transparent. Everything about him was on the web and still is as I write this. That’s a horrible misstep and one of the primary reasons AdamsBlock failed. Not to blow smoke up anyone’s ass but if Adam was trying to be Batman and reduce crime, why the hell would he take off his mask on the evening news? This was a huge mistake and one that everyone agrees was pretty stupid.

The site design and approach were all wrong. Calling the camera “the worst neighborhood” was a complete lie. The site didn’t mention helping the community or lowering crime which we all know is what resulted in the camera being up but the site didn’t reflect that at all! The site just had photos of homeless people and claims that sounded like they came from a reality TV advertisement. I spoke to Adam about this in depth and I don’t think he was thinking clearly when the site was thrown up. The guy gave money to charity and reduced crime in the neighborhood but I think he was going for shock value when the site was in its infancy and he sure did get it but it was a stupid approach and offensive to a lot of people.

The chat room was hugely responsible for the fall-out of AdamsBlock. I believe the chat room is very important and one of the reasons the project was a success but it also exposed a lot of the truths and lies about the neighborhood and filth of the world would come to the chat room to discuss race, color, economic situations and social classes and pretty much be ignorant. Good hearted people who came to watch would leave and write letters because of what they read in the chat room. I was going through old emails sent to the contact address for AdamsBlock and many of them start off with, “Adam, what you said about black people in your chat is wrong….” Adam didn’t say anything like that but mainstream viewers see a chat room and assume it’s Adam speaking there. The chat room will remain but I’m taking a very unique approach to this which will be discussed more as the project is completed.

Communication from Adam was not very good. His weekly community chats were great but ensuring everyone saw the video wasn’t followed through. OurBlock will have weekly updates on our blog with traffic info, donations, new signups and more really cool stats. I want everyone to know what’s going on with OurBlock on a week to week basis and I’m going to make it very easy to give feedback. I’m creating an OurBlock social networking space for broadcasters and fans to communicate and collaborate, there will be weekly YouTube videos from me where you can spread news virally as well. Finally, this blog will be here to answer common questions on a global level. Before, complaints and feedback were answered one email at a time. If I sense a trend, I’ll post my response to the blog so everyone can be educated and it will also help me manage emails a lot better.

The final thing that hurt AdamsBlock was the lack of partnerships. I’m partnering with everyone that I can on this. I’m securing private and public partnerships and the backup I’m going to receive from everyone is going to keep the project going strong for a long time. Securing a lawyer has been very important to me as well. There are more minor details that I’m doing differently and I feel strongly that you’ll love where OurBlock is going. This is going to be an epic project that will actually change people’s lives and I’m so happy to be working on this.

Thank you very much for your continued support. There will be many more updates as OurBlock evolves into a finished project.

Welcome and thanks for stopping by. This is the first of many posts to the official OurBlock Blog. In the past, the project formerly known as Adam’s Block was something that inspired people, outraged others and turned heads around the world. Mistakes were made and many of the problems arose because things just weren’t handled correctly. Things are going to change and I wanted to set a few things straight by responding to some common questions that have entered my inbox.

1. Why OurBlock and why is AdamsBlock still the primary domain? I have purchased and initiated the transfer of OurBlock.TV from a fan of the site who preemptively bought the domain a few months ago. He was fair in allowing us to simply recover the domain from him but there’s a 60 day period from his old registrar so we’re waiting for that. AdamsBlock will still work throughout the site but our branding, company name and image is “OurBlock.”

2. Are you continuing with Adam’s Vision and making this project a charitable organization that is trying to help communities or is this just another greedy company? OurBlock will not be a not-for-profit company at first but I’m working on that as quickly as possible while still trying to build a product that can actually be profitable. Adam has entrusted me to continue things as he envisioned and I intend to maintain The Adam’s Block mission of reducing crime, strengthening communities and giving a large portion of earnings to local charities. I’m allowing camera operators to make money as well but encouraging them all to donate their money to charity as well and document the money they’ve given so we can have a running meter that shows OurBlock contributions to our local communities.

3. How do I sign up to broadcast my block? I’m only focusing on The San Francisco area at this time but I welcome all interested parties to navigate to our signup page so I can place them on a list. I’m targeting one area at a time and I hope to have 30 cameras live at launch in San Francisco. Once I reach around 100-200 cameras in San Francisco, I’ll move to other cities.

4. Where do you live and what’s your story? I’m just a guy who met Adam when he first moved to San Francisco. I fell in love with his venture and even though I’m as broke as he is, I too enjoy helping people in my community, donating my time and money to helping people and feel that this project can do more good if properly handled. The message will remain positive, I’m not looking to get rich and everyone that is a part of this won’t be getting rich either but we will be making a difference and that’s why I’m doing this.

Thanks for reading this first entry. There will be many more like it and I will be nearly transparent with this project updating everyone along the way. Thanks for reading and now here are some social media presences for OurBlock.

• Twitter
• Flickr
• YouTube
• Blog