The Next Level
The Next Level Surveillance knows no boundaries and is ready to explore retail
Today, businesses can’t do without large investments in camera infrastructure,
and up until now, video surveillance has existed for the
sole purpose of security. Prism Skylabs aims to change that.
“Companies around the world spend tens of billions of dollars
to install millions of video cameras and surveillance networks in an
attempt to understand their particular corner of the world,” said Steve Russell,
founder of Prism Skylabs.
Prism, launched in mid-September at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco,
is working on a cloud-based service aimed at retailers that uses the existing video
infrastructure to bring new, more tangible experiences to potential customers
who might be browsing various sites, such as Yelp, UrbanSpoon, Facebook and
OpenTable. The service brings physical spaces online and enables businesses to engage
with their customers in new and meaningful ways. Moving beyond the standard
Google Street View, Prism allows Web users to explore businesses from any
Web-enabled device and get the information they need prior to entering a business.
For example, a restaurant or bar owner can use Prism to review a visual heat
map of activity to help understand how Yelp ratings affect restaurant traffic. For a
retail shop owner, it means comparing local weather against foot traffic to explain
a recent barrage of slow sales totals. On the other hand, for restaurant patrons, it
may mean observing a privacy-protected view into the same space to determine
how likely they are to find a seat if they stop by, reading recent reviews and checking
out the daily specials, or having an opportunity to book a table. And for a
shopper on a mission to find a specific item, it means the ability to see if a store
has restocked it or is still awaiting shipment.
Already, the response from both businesses and consumers has been overwhelming.
Prism, operating only since early July, was named the runner-up out of
31 companies launching at the prestigious TechCrunch event and is gaining momentum
on its closed beta program, which has garnered hundreds of applications
from businesses since the launch.
Prism is the brainchild of technology visionary Russell, the founding CEO and
current chairman of intelligent video provider 3VR, and company builder Ron
Palmeri, the guy behind GrandCentral/GoogleVoice and Scout Labs. Bolstering
these two founders is an impressive roster of scientists and engineers with backgrounds
in computer vision, search and large-scale social media site development, as
well as an impressive list of Silicon Valley investors including Ron Conway, Google
Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures and the CrunchFund, founded by
former editor of TechCrunch and serial entrepreneur Michael Arrington.
“All Pixels Are Not Created Equal”
“The security industry is prime for true disruption. For years, companies have
been looking for new ways to leverage their heavy surveillance investments across
multiple business units,” Palmeri said. “We see a tremendous opportunity for security
directors and business owners to make use of their existing camera networks
and leverage them as a means to not only optimize their business, but also grow it.”
According to Russell, Prism’s processing techniques (they’ve filed more than
20 patents in the past three months) transform surveillance video, which is often
washed out and noisy, by enhancing the resolution, dynamic range and image
quality. All business owners need to do is download free software that automatically
detects cameras and other video sources on their network without disturbing
any existing equipment. By doing so, their feeds are linked to Prism’s cloud infrastructure,
and video footage is transformed into high-resolution images, pieces of
video and useful bits of data. And it’s all stored in the cloud for secure access—
anytime, anywhere and on any device.
The point of all of this “video condensation,” as Russell refers to it, is to reduce
the data footprint of the video by more than 100 times while increasing its
informational content and focusing in on patron activity. Because there are no
bandwidth limitations and because video is no longer streaming, owners have the
ability to monitor their businesses remotely and produce real-time business reports—
Prism calls these “storyboards”—that showcase activity while still protecting
customer privacy.
Unlike Google or other technologies that apply blurring techniques after the
fact, Prism’s technology is able to pre-process foreground motion details as it
learns and understands venues—before the image and video is seen. Prism’s proprietary
technology separates out faces and bodies from activity to create real-time
visuals. Once those images are created, businesses can apply layers of foreground
activity and blurred silhouettes to create beautiful and informative privacy-protected
views, as well as build other visualizations useful to understanding a place.
“Not all pixels are created equal. It’s similar to the way a voicemail transcript
often lets you understand a message without actually having to listen to it. Our
‘video transcripts’ can take the place of actually watching camera feeds in many
instances,” Russell said.
Truly Seeing, Understan ding and Sharing Space
Prism opens up a world of applications for security professionals and business
owners, as well as consumers. Once the video feeds are brought to the cloud
through Prism, anyone from small business owners to security and loss prevention
professionals of larger businesses and chains can access real-time business intelligence
and view patterns of customer behavior.
This information is then analyzed, enabling business users to react swiftly. Security
professionals can use the information to prevent loss of revenue, while marketers
can use ongoing feedback to tune messaging, and on-the-ground business
operators can use the information to modify current offerings to meet immediate
customer needs.
Prism also uses application programming interfaces (APIs) and video analytics to collect multiple data points into
easily scanned dashboards. It integrates
easily with point-of-sale (POS), electronic
article surveillance (EAS) and
other systems to report data, exceptions
and reports with visual context;
these include customer counts, social
media and general Web mentions (for
example, FourSquare check-ins at a
business or Facebook “likes” of a business),
and even weather data.
With Prism, retailers can fine-tune
merchandising efforts by having access
to visualizations that show traffic over
time in response to display positioning
or product shifts within the store, and
compare that resulting traffic data with
transaction data from the POS to measure
effectiveness. Restaurants have the
opportunity to continuously monitor
congestion—and even share that with
its customers—to effectively distribute
traffic, reduce wait times and make for
an overall better experience for their
customers.
“One of our ‘video-synths’ is able to
show a store manager how many of a
specific item were purchased and where
they were picked up, how many people
entered the store through the front
door, how many people tweeted about
the company and how many used Four-
Square to check into the location within
any given time period. This type of
information mashed-up between previously
siloed sources has never been
readily accessible,” Palmeri said.
The Creamery, a San Franciscobased
coffee shop, is Prism’s first public
customer and the first to report on the
company’s technology. While the owner,
Ivor Bradley, is classically trained at
the Four Seasons, he also embraces new
technology such as user review website
Yelp, location-based social networking
website FourSquare and Google Places,
among others. Bradley also has a surveillance
network but says he rarely
uses or monitors the footage.
“Being able to determine how social
media activity is impacting my business
is absolutely critical,” Bradley said.
“My customers are very tech-savvy and
are very active on Twitter, Facebook,
Yelp and such. To be able to aggregate,
visualize and understand how one positive
review or negative status update affects foot traffic in the days following
not only helps my business, but also
helps me serve my customers better.”
Equipped with real-time data about
their business, owners, like Bradley, as
well as security professionals have an
unprecedented opportunity to build
relationships with their customers. It
provides new communication tools for
businesses to reach customers wherever
they are and enables patrons to share
visuals and information with their personal
networks—narrowing the gap between
the online and offline worlds.
“With Prism, I’ve created custom,
privacy-protected views of my shop
that I’m able to syndicate across The
Creamery’s website, Twitter page, Facebook
and Yelp profiles. My customers
can now get a real-time peek into what’s
actually happening—what coffee is
brewing, what the specials are, if we’re
caught in the lunch rush—all from their
laptops or smartphones,” Bradley said.
Spacing Out in San Francisco
Consumers increasingly expect the
same ease and access they have online
in the offline world, and businesses
are trying to convert online browsing
into offline purchasing, a phenomenon
called “online-to-offline convergence.”
By providing an in-depth view of offline
spaces online, complete with multiple
levels of information, Prism provides
consumers with that immersive
experience they’re craving.
Consumers are able to use a smartphone
to see how busy a restaurant is,
connect with services such as Yelp and
OpenTable, or engage with friends by
sharing real-time images. This results in
a more integrated view of and deeper
connection with what’s happening inside
and outside a business—physically, socially
and statistically—than ever before.
Russell and Palmeri note that Prism
offers businesses a significant competitive
advantage in the midst of the hundreds
of options served up to consumers
on various directory and mapping sites.
“Think about the process of finding
a new dinner spot online,” Palmeri said.
“There’s a massive difference between a
retailer with a present-day Google Street
View image, where the visual stops at the
front door, and one with a Prism view,
which shows not only the interior design
of the space but also whether or not it’s
crowded and what the night’s specials
are, along with a list of user reviews
about the place and a ‘book a table now’
option. As consumers get used to having
the Prism view option, those businesses
that don’t offer it will begin to feel like
darkened store fronts.”
The sky’s the limit
The Creamery is just the first of many
public customers to come, says Russell.
Prism is already working with a number
of businesses, including restaurants,
fashion retailers and drug stores, in its
closed beta program, with use cases being
unique to each venue and space.
“The possibilities are endless, and
we’re just getting started,”
Russell said.
This article originally appeared in the November 2011 issue of Security Today.