The Provident blog was featured on the typepad.com homepage on Friday. (The Provident blog is hosted and powered by Typepad, along with millions of other blogs from around the globe.)

Every weekday, Typepad features one blog on their homepage… past ‘featured blogs’ have included some of the most well read (and my own favourite) blogs like Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink! and The Tipping Point), Chris Anderson’s the Long Tail, Guy Kawasaki and marketing guru Seth Godin… which is some pretty amazing company to be included with.

Similar to when this blog made the front page of Reddit.com, our inclusion on Typepad.com has resulted in many new people finding us as well as signing up for either an RSS or email subscription.

Thanks Typepad!

The Courier ran a story today about the recent string of rooftop burglaries that have been happening on the Westside.

One of the easy additions to your alarm system that will combat these types of burglaries is having a glassbreak detector installed in each room. At a minimum though, every door and window really needs to have a contact on it. It is not good enough any more to simply rely on a single motion detector in the upstairs hallway.

Over the past week, we have been very busy speaking with both brand new and older clients about this issue. If it has been a few years since your alarm system was installed, please give us a call or e-mail to come by and offer some suggestions for maximizing the level of detection your alarm provides.

UPDATE: a condensed version of this story was also published in Saturday’s Vancouver Sun.

Here is a link to the story on CTV News from Wednesday regarding the effectiveness and utility of security cameras in fighting crime. One of our technicians, Jason Mackay and myself were interviewed for the story at a client’s location on Granville Street where we are installing a CCTV system with more than two dozen cameras, several of which are located on the exterior of the building.

Provident will be featured in a follow-up story tonight at 6:00pm regarding the Vancouver Police announcement that they intend to install and monitor CCTV system on the Granville Mall.

You can view the streaming newscast live by clicking here at 6:00pm

My post about useless alarm systems has generated a lot of attention… besides being the most commented upon post on this blog, as well as the single largest generator of emails to us directly, it was recognized by Reddit.com as their top link of the day.

Reddit.com is a news aggregator site where stories/posts and other new things on the Internet are posted and then voted on by readers. The more people who vote a particular post ‘up’ (vs. those that vote it ‘down’), the higher it gets ranked and moves up closer to the top of the home page… the idea is that it creates a democratic news source for what is going on in the world and what is popular on the Internet on any given day. On Friday, the post about “Why millions of home alarm systems are completely useless” made it to the #1 spot on Reddit which resulted in tens of thousands of visitors to the blog from more than 100 countries (and 3,453 cities). As a result, we were awarded the “Gold Reddit” (which is the image at the top of this post). The Gold Reddit is awarded to the source of each day’s top link, as voted on by thousands of readers from all over the planet.

To give you an idea of how far and wide our traffic on Friday was, here is an image of only 500 visitors to the blog (there were more than 25,000 on Friday alone!)…

Thanks Reddit!

This blog was featured in a story called “Bonding by Blogging” in the October issue of Profit Magazine.

The story is about the growing number of corporate blogs that are being created every day. This blog was singled out as we have built up a sizable (1,000 +) daily readership in a reasonably short period of time.

As mentioned in previous posts, this blog is being read by people all over the world… which has resulted in international media about both home security issues as well as the blog specifically.

Thanks!

The Vancouver Sun printed a story this morning about the increasing number of Vancouverites who are switching their home phone service to Voice over Internet Protocal (VoIP) services.

The story mentions how there are about 90 providers in the Lower Mainland and lays out some of the differences between the service offerings of a few of the companies.

I was quoted in the article about the negative implications for alarm systems when people switch to any type of VoIP service.

Here are links to previous posts I have written on this issue about Shaw Digital Phone (here is another one) and Rogers Home Phone.

When I get a proper PDF copy of today’s article, I will post it here as well.

We were featured in a story on tonight’s CTV News regarding the security incident that occurred yesterday at YVR. Specifically, I was asked to comment on the importance of quick response during any security incident.

As CTV reported, between the time that a “suspicious” item was noticed going through an X-Ray machine and the airport screeners notifying CATSA (the National agency responsible for all airport security in Canada) and the RCMP were notified, nearly 45 minutes had elapsed. That was enough time for five flights to depart and all but ensure that airport security would not find the item (which they did not).

In this month’s SP&T News (a national security magazine)
I was quoted in a story about the pros and cons of two-way voice alarm systems.
Most people are familiar with the, seemingly, omnipresent Alarmforce radio ads where
they demand that you “identify yourself immediately”. Alarmforce is one of the many companies
who utilize the type of 2-way voice systems discussed in the article.

Given the amount of advertising that Alarmforce does, most
people are aware of, if not annoyed by, the ads… which invariably results in
both clients and prospective clients asking what we think of 2-way voice
systems.

As mentioned in previous posts, the 2-way voice technology that Alarmforce
uses is also provided by just about every other alarm company in the world… in
fact, many of the new keypads and alarm system control panels manufactured by
the leading alarm equipment manufacturers like Honeywell, GE and DSC have a
2-way voice capability. All an alarm company needs to do is activate
this function and ensure that the monitoring station is able to handle the
incoming calls. Many of the systems that we install are “two-way voice capable”,
we just elect to not use that particular ‘feature’.

As I mention in the SP&T article, I’m not a fan of using
2-way voice in a burglary detection role. The main reason is that 2-way voice
is simply an alternate form of verification prior to dispatch (ie. rather than
calling you on the phone and requiring you to pick up a handset to confirm that
an alarm is false, the monitoring station operator will just dial and then speak directly through a
speakerphone). The net result is the same, precious minutes are being wasted by
checking with you first before dispatching anyone to respond. As a result, I
believe the 2-way voice feature to be largely a marketing gimmick with limited
real value.

Here is a link to a previous post where I outline the
response procedure at Provident.

However, in the SP&T article, I did point out that I believe
that 2-way voice systems can offer some value in a medical monitoring
scenario. Similar to those old “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” commercials,
using a wall-mounted speaker to speak with a client after they have pressed a
medical panic button is what the technology was originally intended for, and
where I believe it still offers the most value.

For the majority of Provident clients who utilize medical emergency monitoring services, we typically will dispatch both the Paramedics as well as our own response team (to bring the keys to help the Fire Department and Paramedics get inside) as well as call the premises. The only added feature in a 2-way voice capable system is that the client will not have to answer the phone to be able to confirm that they need help… but either way, we are already on the way with keys.

Our medical monitoring service can be completely customized to your specific requirements (for example, whether or not we should dispatch paramedics prior to arriving ourselves is your call). For several clients, we also have some important medical information kept on file so that when a medical alarm is tripped, our operators are prompted with specific and relevant medical information to pass along to Paramedics during the initial dispatch (such as if a pre-existing condition exists and what drugs/treatments should not be used).

So… should you add 2-way voice capability to your system? Probably not. But if you have any specific requirements or concerns such as medical emergency monitoring give us a call to discuss some alternative ways that we can increase the value that your alarm system can offer.

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Both this blog, and my brother Stephen’s real estate blog (he is the President of Ubertor.com) were featured in this week’s Business in Vancouver magazine.

As mentioned in the story, we are receiving emailed questions from all over the world. We also have nearly one thousand people registered to recieve notification when new entries are posted. If you would like to be added to this list, please click here.