Happy Holidays!

The holidays are approaching and we hope everyone enjoys themselves over the next two weeks! Whether you are getting a well-deserved break from work, visiting friends and family or just slowing down the pace a little it's the time of year to reflect and prepare for a fresh start.

We too will be slowing down (finally) for a break with our children. We hope to energize ourselves for another year of fantastic features and product development here at Eggman Technologies.

Our technical support address will still be accepting emails but we will be closed from

• December 23 - 27
• December 30 - January 3

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and best wishes for 2012 from Lorrie and Barry Egerter!

Eggman Technologies - How it Began

As many of you know this is a small family-owned and operated business. Our lives have drastically changed in the past 3 years due to our success with Live Cams (and now Live Cams Pro). Here is a little background on how it started:

How it began
I (Barry Egerter) am the author of the applications. In 2008 I started working 1 hour a night between midnight and 1am creating Live Cams as a fun project to keep my mind fresh. Within three months I completed the first release and submitted it to Apple for review. Two months (and 5 submissions later) they finally approved it for sale on iTunes. It was available in February of 2009 and sold 1 copy on the first day (at $0.99 US). By April I was selling about 5 copies per day, netting us a cool $3.50. At this rate it would take over two years to reach our goal of covering the cost of our iPhone and Macbook Pro laptop.

In May I made some changes to the app name, the logo, marketing and the user interface of the app. It supported pan-tilt-zoom controls for Axis and Canon devices and included hundreds of public cameras to view/control!
Within a few weeks of this update it reached the #6 top paid app spot in the US and was the #1 paid utility app. This forced me to decide if I wanted to pursue it full-time or keep my day job as a lead software engineer for Comcast. The idea of working from home was too tempting and I resigned in mid-June 2009.

Rough Start
Knowing that customers wanted new releases and features at a fast pace I immediately put another version in Apple's hands by the end of June 2009. The thought of losing my full-time paycheck was terrifying and I knew that I had to keep pumping out enhancements to succeed. Sadly, Apple was going through growing pains as well and the update was repeatedly rejected by their review team for having "keywords in the app name". The app was previously named "Live Cams (Pan Tilt Zoom)" but we had changed it to just "Live Cams" as part of the update. For some reason the app review team did not see this change and every two weeks after submitting the app they would reject it. We had no way of contacting a real person to discuss this and were forced to send emails (which were ignored). By early SEPTEMBER our app was still not approved even though there was nothing wrong with it. I was furious because our app reviews were becoming very negative due to lack of updates and we could not get Apple to do anything. I wrote an angry email to Steve Jobs (guessed his address and got lucky) and within 24 hours the issues at Apple were resolved! Their computers had a "cached" copy of the app name from May and as a result their app review team was looking at old data and rejecting the update!

iOS Changes - Breaking Everything!
During the months that the update was locked in "review hell" I also saw Apple release several new iOS updates. These updates were coming faster than I could keep up with the software requirements for device compatibility. As a result I found that the app was crashing for users with specific iOS versions that I could not test due to my single iPhone. I went shopping and bought a second iPhone and an iPod Touch in order to properly install and test various iOS combinations. This new business was becoming costly and challenging!

#1 in the US and Japan - OVERALL!
By December of 2009 I had put out several patches and updates to keep the software moving forward and something changed..... within a few days of my December update I saw the ranks rapidly climbing. As of December 17, 2009 it reached the #1 paid app spot in the entire app store (for the US, the biggest market). Incredible! Emails started pouring in and on Christmas day it was still ranked #1. It pulled in the biggest sales figures ever at over 40,000 copies sold in 1 day! The laptop and iPhones would finally be paid off.

Too much too fast
As 2009 tuned to 2010 I was working 18 hours per day trying to simply answer customer emails. My quality of service was drastically lowered as I could do nothing more than deflect the questions with reasonable answers. This was not how I like to do business, as I feel that a high-level of customer service is the best way to succeed long-term. My wife and I were exhausted by our schedule and we had a long discussion about how to proceed. We agreed that we did not want to be the #1 app any more and that it would be better if we could have a lower level of sales but at a steady pace. In January we raised our price and purposely changed our marketing so that the app sounded less appealing. This worked and within 24 hours we were no longer #1. In fact, we completely dropped out of the top 100 within a few days. It sounds silly but we were very happy that we might regain our lives and be able to offer our customers a better experience.

Japan takes over
Immediately after raising our price and dropping out of visibility in the US market we suddenly reached the #1 spot in Japan (another major market!). This was confusing to us but we concluded that the news had just reached them about our app. For a few weeks we stayed at the top of the charts overseas but eventually it also calmed down.

The iPad Cometh
On January 27, 2010 the iPad was announced. We downloaded the new SDK (software developer kit) and started to investigate what the app might look like on a larger screen. Sadly we could not purchase an actual iPad because we live in Canada and it was only available in the United States. We patiently waited and by May 28th they finally started taking orders. Live Cams HD was released in June after we finally received our device and resolved some issues with the software. It immediately became a top-seller for the iPad as well.

Incorporation
With all of the excitement generated by our software we decided to form an incorporated business under the name "Eggman Technologies Inc.". This happened in August 2010 and we still operate under that name. My wife Lorrie has been working as first-line tech support (her existing profession) allowing me to focus on software and website design.

Competitors and copycats abound!
As with any success we have found that there are now dozens (if not hundreds) of similar applications trying to capitalize on our design and success. We've had people steal our data and release competing apps, copy our logo, app description and even app name! Looking on other mobile platforms you will find that there is a "Live Cams" for Blackberry, one for Android and several look-a-likes or sound-a-likes on other devices. These are not created by us but they have used our name to trick customers into buying the products. We will move into these markets in time but hope that the copycats don't cause too much confusion with the product branding. This is simply a part of business and we accept it for what it is.

Stay tuned for part 2, Eggman Technologies - Where are we headed now?.

Updates to our Live Cams Pro Product

After our launch this weekend we have found that a change to our approach is necessary. Our intention with the latest software release was to get into a "freemium" business model. This allows everyone to see our product and experience it without having to blindly purchase it first. We know that our product quality and features stand out from the crowd and that we simply needed better exposure so that we could continue to sell our software. Unfortunately since we were one of the first apps in the app store we produced our software before in-app purchases were available, forcing us to charge for the app up-front and spend money on advertising to get everyone interested. This is a very restrictive approach. We cannot simply upgrade our existing application because there is no way for us to detect or guarantee that a user has already purchased it. This necessitated the release of a brand new app.

Our recent release of Live Cams Pro was aimed at new business from users who needed advanced features not available in our existing products. After receiving our initial feedback we have found that so many of our customers love our software that many existing users wanted these expanded features but did not like the higher price. In order to continue to run a viable business we cannot simply release the expanded capabilities for free (some users have been using our 99 cent (US)  Live Cams product for over 2.5 years now without any additional costs). Our Live Cams HD product was created before universal apps were common and we felt that we also needed to put out a release which would allow someone to install a single licensed copy on all of their devices.

In both an apology and a compromise we have lowered our private camera purchase in Live Cams Pro to $1.99 US in the hopes that we can get enough volume sales to make up the difference. We also intend to eliminate the "Unlicensed" banner on public cameras and retain the 99 cent (US) fee to eliminate the advertising banners. A new release is being generated and submitted to Apple for review which will implement this approach.

In the coming days we will be communicating with Apple in order to find out how customers can be reimbursed for the difference in price from their initial purchase of private camera licenses. If you wish to ask them for a refund now in order to purchase again later at a lower price, please contact iTunes via the links on your email receipts. 

This change is a recognition that the recent outcry was primarily from existing customers who love our products and are frustrated with a higher cost to update. Live Cams Pro is the product we wanted to create initially 2.5 years ago but the infrastructure and payment mechanisms were not possible at the time. Going forward we will continue to push out regular product updates of Live Cams Pro with enhanced menus and features at no additional cost (Live Cams received over 40 updates in the past 2 years). For many existing customers our Live Cams and Live Cams HD products are sufficient and will continue to give them the features that they need most. In this case there will be no need to upgrade to the new software.

Dozens of Japanese cameras are now permanently offline

As a result of the disaster in Japan we have sadly removed (from our database) dozens of unresponsive cameras in affected regions. Immediately following the tsunami we lost all connections to cameras in Sendai/Miyagi and other severely affected regions.

It is truly a devastating disaster and we urge everyone to make a donation to their local Red Cross at:

Canada: http://www.redcross.ca
United States: http://www.redcross.org

"Send Camera Details To Support" Feature - Misused!

At Eggman Technologies, most of our effort is put into handling technical support questions and ensuring that our customers learn how to use our software and properly integrate with their own hardware. This can be challenging because there are so many variations of equipment to handle and varying levels of knowledge from the camera owner/consumer. In many cases we ourselves do not have experience with particular hardware and need time to investigate it online or via direct access to a test device.

Recently we added a new menu option that allows you to send us an email containing your camera connection details in the hopes that we would cut down on the number of emails bouncing back and forth. Prior to this we would often get simple emails like "my camera won't connect, please help!". To this we would take time to reply and ask "What kind of camera is it and what did you try so far?". A few emails later we would end up asking for direct access to the camera so that we could easily diagnose the problem ourselves. To circumvent this, the new menu option automatically populates a form-based email to our tech support account. The first line of this email states in capital letters, "TYPE OVER THIS LINE AND ASK US TO EITHER HELP WITH SOMETHING OR ADD YOUR CAMERA TO THE PUBLIC LIST".

Now instead of getting questions from our users we are getting 1-2 dozen emails a day which are simply the unaltered form letter without any explanation of the problems encountered or what the customer needs assistance with. At first we started replying to these emails and asked people to tell us what the problem is but after the volume reached a certain point we have decided to simply not respond at all to these types of emails.

We urge you to "help us help you" and be descriptive in your tech support requests. If we spend all of our daily effort answering emails and not doing any development then the product will not continue to improve. We take pride in offering fantastic service for a product that is only a buck or two but this will cease to be the case if this situation does not improve.

Some people still don't get it!

App reviews are fun to read. The reviews are a good indication of people's perception of your product. Even after 2 years on the App Store we are finding that some customers still don't understand what they have purchased or how it works.

Today I'd like to discuss the perception that the app is faulty because some of the cameras don't load. This is not true :) The software requests video from each camera and simply can't show the images if the camera does not respond. Keep in mind that your iPhone, iPod or iPad is connecting directly to the cameras and it is not reading a cached copy of the video from some server in-between.

There are numerous reasons why a camera may fail to respond:

1. The owner pulls the plug and the device is powered off.
2. The network connection at the camera is faulty.
3. The owner has configured the camera to respond only during certain operational hours.
4. Your device has requested the video over a slow connection and the request times out (over 60 secs)
5. The owner has changed the IP address or port and our database is using the old address.
6. Too many users are trying to use the device at the same time and it is overloaded.

The most common scenario is #6. The hardware that the cameras are based on is intended for private use and is generally not capable of scaling to large numbers of viewers at once. You are sharing the cameras with hundreds of thousands of other people using Live Cams in addition to people connecting from websites on the internet and users of other competing applications (at least 10 other companies have stolen our data in the past year and now offer similar products).

If your favorite camera is not responding, chances are good that it is a favorite for many people and it is simply busy. Try again later and hopefully the camera will respond.

Every few days we "scrub" the data for all 4500 cameras in the database. We disable those which fail to respond and re-enable any previously disabled cameras that are now working again. To obtain these updates your application must be launched on a Wifi network. We also add new cameras every week and you can find these by selecting the "Recent" category from the thumbnail screen.

FOSCAM, APEXIS, IPCAM Central, InCam, Cowkey, INSTAR, EasyN, SagaEye, Wansview devices supported!

Many of the popular Chinese devices are now supported in Live Cams and they offer an excellent price point for low-cost high-quality IP products.

Live Cams supports both fixed and PTZ style devices from these manufacturers and continues to enhance our offerings with each release. If you are intimidated with the high cost of popular brands like Axis, Canon, Panasonic and Sony, these highly competitive companies are worth a look.

For North American distribution, please check here:

http://www.ipcam-central.com/

All Trendnet models are supported in Live Cams!

As a very popular entry-level IP camera line, Trendnet models are fully supported in Live Cams. We have tested legacy devices and current models alike. We teamed with Trendnet representatives to ensure that all of their products have been properly added to the app. This includes legacy devices that are now discontinued.

You will find many camera profiles in Live Cams for Trendnet because each of their devices follows a different protocol. Many other devices are OEM versions of Trendnet hardware and also share these profiles. When adding a camera to the app you can always check our "Supported Camera" list to see which  one to use based on your specific model:

http://livecams-iphone.com/profiles

Astak Mole and YOICS

While working on our latest version of Live Cams (4.9) we spent some time looking at our competition on the App Store. To this day it surprises us how much money some people are spending on applications that do very little compared to ours!

The latest example is an app named "Yoics camera viewer: IP and web cam viewer".  The application currently costs $9.99 US and allows people to view video from their Astak Mole devices. The current release lacks PTZ support and the customers appear to be frustrated because of this.

Live Cams has supported PTZ on Mole cameras for almost a year now, yet it seems to be unknown to most! Astak is only one of the 80+ manufacturers supported by Live Cams, so it makes sense to buy the all-in-one application rather than a separate app for each camera you buy!

We'd love to hear from some owners of Astak Mole cameras on the forums so that we can find out if there are additional features that they'd like to see in the future.

New features arriving soon!

We are still waiting for the 4.80 and 1.80 releases of Live Cams and Live Cams HD to be approved by Apple. With these releases come several exciting new features (among other enhancements)!

TV OUT
For those using an iPad or iPhone 4 with a component video cable or a VGA cable you will be able to view the fullscreen video for a camera on your HDTV. This is currently a very simple implementation (nothing is shown for any screens other than the video screen) but should get the ball rolling as we start to figure out how far we can take this!

REORDER PRIVATE CAMERAS AND FAVORITES
This one has been on our to-do list for a long time and we've finally got it ready. We have replaced the "Add Camera" button with a new title, "Manage". If you select either "My Cameras" or "Favorites" the button will become enabled. After selecting this you will see a table which lists all of the cameras in text form and it will allow you to delete them (or remove from favorites) or reorder them. Simple drag and drop allows you to change the order of items in the list. Pressing the "back" button will repaint the screen with the new sequence.

We do not currently have support for assigning cameras to groups (and we know many have asked for this) . We hope that this initial step gives our users better control over their camera lists.

IMAGE ORIENTATION
From the video screen for a given camera you can now choose the tool icon and select "Image Orientation". This will give you several choices such as "Normal", "Flip", "Mirror" and "Flip + Mirror". If you change the orientation you will notice that Live Cams remembers this setting on subsequent loads of the app. Each camera can be configured independently using this option.

"Light My Way" submitted to App Store, along with Live Cams 4.7 and 1.7 HD

We've just submitted new versions of Live Cams and Live Cams HD to Apple for review. These releases resolve all known display bugs in the previous version and introduce some new graphics to further enhance the look and feel of the app.

We have also spent some time working on a brand new application called "Light My Way". As you can probably guess, it's another flashlight app! This particular application uses licensed graphical backgrounds to show different scenes while allowing simple taps to activate or deactivate the LED flash on iPhone 4 devices. The first release includes 4 different scenes and is fairly simplistic. As we do with our Live Cams products we will continue to enhance and release free upgrades for all customers who purchase the app.

The app will be free for a few days initially (when approved) so be sure to grab a copy before it becomes a paid app. We will be adding a large number of customization features in the future so you will be sure to see some great functionality as time goes on!

Hermosa Beach Camera and Hotel Riccione in Italy

For those who are interested in a decent HD view of a beach, I highly recommend the Hermosa Beach HD camera. You can add the camera using Axis Profile 1 and the following information:

Profile: Axis Profile 4
IP: 71.254.156.56
Port: 8000
Camera #: 1

I am not going to add the camera into the public listing because it would likely degrade the performance of the camera too much. I urge you to make donations to the owner if you enjoy the camera:

http://www.hermosawave.net/webcam/videocam.php

For a beach view at a hotel in Italy you can try the Webcam di Riccione:

Profile: Canon
IP: 95.240.2.94
Port: 80
Camera #: 1

Please visit their website at:

http://www.riccionehotels.com/webcam/webcam-riccione

Identity Theft - An Acceptable Practice with Apple

It seems that identity theft is something that is A-OK with Apple. Yang Ke from QUUS.US has stolen my app name, product logo and app description, in addition to my camera database which is password protected because it is intellectual property that I created and belongs to me.

Since stealing these items they have also effectively replaced me in the app store ranks. Their version of my software has now taken the #1 free iPad app slot and the #7 paid app spot in the US. I was previously at #13 and have dropped far out of the top 100 since their claim to being "me".

I've seen movies about this on TV and not surprisingly I can relate to the main character (Sandra Bullock) who has her identity stolen in cyberspace and eventually loses her home and livelihood. I'm not letting that happen to me!

I urge everyone to contact Apple at AppStoreNotices@Apple.com and let them know that you don't like scammers stealing my name! I have demanded that they remove the apps from sale but they have done nothing other than forward emails to the other author asking for their "opinion".

They said it was a coincidence:

"we are so sorry that we have a these coincides with barry egerter , we have replaced our logo and app name when we found this problem. we promise that the infringe of the barry egerter is totally unconsciously, we are so sorry once again ."


Would they also like to replace my lost revenue and future business as a result of their scam? If my sales continue to slide at their current rate I will be forced to close my business and look for other work. This is not acceptable.

BP Oil Spill

Lately we have been getting a lot of requests for the BP Oil Spill video feed. This feed is currently being streamed using a video format that is not compatible with Live Cams. There are however several cameras included in the public lists that may show the effects of oil arriving on the shoreline in the Gulf region. Check the beach cameras and look for the Gulf Shores feeds (as well as any from the Alabama coast). Tar balls have been reportedly found in the past few days and they will likely increase in frequency as this disaster continues.

Keep in mind that the cameras and bandwidth expenses are owned by the businesses that are being affected by this disaster. Many restaurants and businesses along the coast are being shut down or downsized due to the impact on the tourism industry. If there is anything you can do to help them (financially or otherwise) we urge you to do so.

Barry will be live on cam shortly!

My wife Lorrie and I are in Dallas on vacation and will be visiting the leafy sea dragon cam at the Dallas World Aquarium. We'll snap our own pic and post it shortly!!!

Sadly I forgot to make a sign but will wave and point to my iPhone.

Update:
We did it! The aquarium was absolutely amazing and one of the highlights of our Dallas trip. Admission was $21 each but the sights and surroundings were well worth it. I love animals and particularly aquatic life so this was a fantastic place to visit. I also found it very interesting to see the PTZ cameras mounted inside of the two tanks that are viewable via Live Cams.

Here are a few photos:

This is a photo of my wife pointing to the Sony PTZ camera found in the Manatee tank. This camera can be found in the app via "Search", then "Animals", then go to "Dallas World Aquarium - Manatees".

The camera is in a waterproof enclosure and mounted from above the water surface. It dips just below the surface and has the PTZ features locked out. When this camera was first added to the app it was wide open but I suppose too many people were abusing it so the owners set the fixed position and allow video only now.








Here is a close-up of the camera in the enclosure:

And here is a view from a little farther back where you can see more of the tank. The camera is on the upper left side just above the family watching the manatee swim past.

Next up were the leafy sea dragons. They use a similar device and enclosure but in this case the camera was mounted deeper in the tank and attached to some of the rocks.

This shot was taken with my iPhone from just outside the tank window. You can see one of the sea dragons on the upper right and the camera in the center towards the back.

And now you'll see a picture that I took from "inside" the tank using Live Cams to snap a photo of the sea dragons. The best part of this photo is that you can see my wife and I looking into the tank as I snap the photo using the app! (It's a little dark but you can see us squatting down and waving)

Database updated - Jan 23

I've done another weekly sweep of the database to see how many dead links should be removed or temporarily disabled. For those of you who wonder about the contents here are some figures:

• There are a total of 4879 cameras in the database
• 1539 are currently disabled (because they fail to respond or contain "questionable" content
• Of the enabled cameras, here is the breakdown by brand
• 696 are Canon devices which all support PTZ and streaming video
• 1186 are Axis brand, supporting streaming video and sometimes PTZ
• 532 are Panasonic, supporting streaming video and sometimes PTZ
• 91 are Sony, supporting streaming video and sometimes PTZ
• 381 are Mobotix (high definition cameras), none of which support PTZ
• 352 are JPEG stills that are pulled on an interval from a host website
• The remaining cameras are a mix of various brands and capabilities

I manually spot-check every few days to see which ones have gone offline or have been password-protected. I also screen the content as best I can to eliminate cameras found in people's living quarters or in children's daycares (and yes, there have been a few and I'm surprised these are even installed by anyone!).

I may have missed some because it all depends on the time of day that I check and the area that the camera is pointed to. If anyone has seen cameras that should not be available, please contact support. Be cautious here, I have had dozens of emails about the rooms with the "Dora" bedsheets and wallpaper. This is in fact a doggy daycare and not a childs room!

Cameras may go offline due to maintenance, poor internet connections, or the owner is intentionally removing the camera (perhaps it was not intended to be public!). If a camera goes offline I can't honestly answer why because I don't own or operate the devices, nor do I know who does (in most cases, some of the cameras have been submitted to me by the owners but only a few hundred in total).

#1 in Japan!

Even after returning the application to it's regular price of $1.99 US it is now ranked #1 in Japan!

It seems that North Americans are not willing to pay $2 for my work at all, but the Japanese love it!

Thanks again for your continued support. I'm busy getting another release ready and still catching up on support emails from the past two weeks.

Barry

App Store and Product Names - What happened to the concept of copyright?

I'm outraged. Being at the top of the charts brings out the competitors like you wouldn't believe, but some have now crossed the line, the legal one!

My product is named Live Cams. It was first released as i-c-LiveCams in January but changed later that spring to be simply "Live Cams". After becoming a top 10 app in the US and Canada in June there was a deluge of app submissions that mysteriously contained the "Live Cams" keywords. The most notable was Mobiscope changing their app to "Mobiscope: Spy Live Cams".

I didn't have a problem with this because it was commonplace for people to use keywords to boost app sales at the time. I was flattered by the attempts to duplicate me so no biggie.

Things are different now. A quick search on Live Cams in the app store turns up a much more bold and nasty approach by some large organizations.

Several times between September and December 2009 I attempted to contact EarthCam to see if I could get permission to include some of their content in my application. I was willing to discuss profit sharing if necessary and shared my thoughts via email. No answers whatsoever, not even a polite "no thanks".

On December 23rd an application was released by EarthCam and it was named "Live Cams Free". To add to the attack, their product logo prominently contains the words "Live Cams" and a graphic image.



I ask you to boycott their free application or to at least write reviews that state their shameful use of my product name in their own. To think I was willing to work together with them!

I'd love to get your thoughts on this. It's really too bad because they have some of the best cameras in famous places and yet they take this approach to marketing themselves. Dispicable!

Wow - Christmas sales figures have just arrived!

I'm shaking.

The iTunes Connect website just became accessible again after being turned off for the holidays on Dec 23rd and I've just now received my sales figures for the last 5 days.

Wow!

I'm not sure what to do or say right now. I've thought about it and decided that I would publish the numbers since the #1 app last year (iFart by Joel Comm) did the same.

The numbers?

Dec 25 - 40,336 people bought the app
Dec 26 - 28,703 did the same

That's $48,327 profit in 2 days!

I think I need a drink. Happy Holidays everyone, and thanks for giving me a heart condition for 2010 :)

Holiday Challenge - Want your picture on iTunes?

I've seen enough reviews now about the app being fake that I've decided we should all show how these cameras are in fact real.

I'd like to ask everyone who knows the location of one of these cameras to make up a simple sign that reads "Live Cams for iPhone!" and hold it up so that you can get a screenshot of yourself with the sign. Try to get your face on camera if you want to be seen :)

You may have to ask a friend to take snapshots with the iPhone while you hold up the sign, or perhaps other customers will see you doing this and send in snapshots for you....

I'll take some of the best ones and post them as my screenshots on the App Store and will post all of them on my website/blog for others to see.

Remember, these cameras are not owned or operated by me. They are publicly available cameras that are hosted on various internet sites. As cameras go offline or are protected by the owners they become unavailable in the application. Due to the HUGE number of people currently purchasing and using the application its quite possible that by the summer there will be very few cameras left to view. The owners must pay for equipment and bandwidth costs so there will likely be a shock when they find the new audience that is now watching.... These cameras have been available online for years but never concentrated into one easily accessible collection like my app has. Because of this the usage has been much lighter and the traffic negligible in the past.

Take your photos now and get your image on iTunes for your friends to see! Please keep it clean, no obscene gestures or poses. I look forward to seeing the submissions.

To submit, go to the user forums, sign up and post the photo here:
http://livecams-iphone.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=68