Yesterday I blogged about sharing video from a web camera. Today, I’d like to talk about sharing video from surveillance cameras. What is typical state-of-the-art today? The answer is not very sophisticated. A user typically would need to travel to be physically next to the DVR. Then they would use the user interface to burn a CD-ROM or a DVD. Finally, they would hand carry or mail the disc to its intended recipient.

Now, this is actually a pretty efficient way to transport data. I like to remind my collegues that you should never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 loaded with Magtape. Although, in this day and age, the analogy really is “loaded with DVD-R discs”. If you’re curious, a 747-400 could hold approximately 2.5 Petabytes of data, and assuming a flight time from DEN to SFO of two and a half hours, would represent a bandwidth of approximately 1 Terabit per second. That’s damm big, even by today’s Internet standards. Thats’s some Sneakernet! But I digress.
It would be really neat if you could share your video with, lets say the Police, in the following way. Save the clip in question into your MVaaS provider’s cloud. Create a group called “Police Video“. Invite your local law enforcement officer to join the group as a guest and voila, they can view the video.

Gosh, maybe there’s even an MVaaS company who has built that feature already.

That sure beats sneakernet!