Home security systems reviews enable homeowners to make the right decision when choosing the system to invest in. Current market has various brands of home security systems. Manufacturers give information about these systems through their websites. Although this information gives homeowners information about different systems, you cannot rely just on this information to make your buying decision. Some security companies want you to buy their security systems and they use their websites as a platform for marketing their products.

To get a security system that serves you the way you want, do some personal research before you go shopping. Look for a security system that enhances security of your home just the way you want. Nothing can give you better peace of mind than knowing that your family and home are safe. However, to achieve this goal when buying a security system you must be sure that you are investing in the right product. Reviews will help you to know the best system to invest in.

Why read reviews?

Maybe you are wondering whether reading reviews is really necessary. You may choose to ignore reviews because they are written by homeowners like you but there are various reasons why you need to read reviews before you go shopping.

Here are some of the reasons why you should read reviews before buying a security system for your home:

Know the truth about different systems: You cannot believe everything manufacturers of different systems say about them. This is because most manufacturers want you to buy their systems. Much of the information that they convey to potential buyers is biased and aimed at convincing them to buy their systems. To know the truth about different security systems, take time to read reviews by other homeowners.

Determine whether the systems give buyers the best value of their money: Your aim is to get the best value of the money that you invest in it. Security system companies sell their products at varying prices. Some sell their systems at high prices because they have a good reputation. Others sell their products at high price because they use better technology in manufacturing their systems. Reading reviews will enable you to know whether the price that is being charged by a security system is worth the product that they sell.

Suitability of the systems to your home: Different security systems are designed for different homes. Homeowners base reviews on the experiences that they have had after using the systems in their homes. When you read a review written by a homeowner whose home is similar to yours, you will know whether that system can work in your home or not.

Technology: Through reading reviews, you can tell what technology different companies have used in their security systems. You can also tell whether the used technology is effective on not.

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Why You Should Read Reviews of Different Security Systems

Officers were accompanied by Badsey the Wolf - used by Suffolk police to highlight insecure vehicles and properties - during a two-day crime reduction initiative.

Thursday, February 6, 2014 10:59 PM

Police are urging residents in Babergh to improve home security measures after finding insecure houses and sheds in a two-day crime reduction initiative.

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Officers, accompanied by Badsey the Wolf, visited nearly 100 homes in Lavenham on January 28 and Long Melford on Wednesday.

Badsey is a character used by Suffolk Police to highlight insecurities by going out into the community with officers and checking vehicles and properties.

In Lavenham 40 properties were visited and officers found keys to a property left in an insecure utility room, fishing equipment left in an insecure shed, keys clearly visible in the inside lock of a back door and additional insecure sheds and vehicles.

In Long Melford officers visited 52 properties, finding windows open at houses with no one at home and insecure garden gates leading to concealed gardens and outbuildings.

A total of 14 vehicles were also checked. They were found to be secure.

Residents were spoken to by officers wherever possible and advice and security packs containing literature on home security, immobilise and police direct were given out.

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Babergh: Police in home security warning to residents after nearly 100 properties inspected

Theres a new battle going on in tech, and the coveted prize is a spot in your home. Companies like Roomba and Nest, who put innovative spins on mundane gadgets, have spurred a new wave of smart in-home hardware. Intercoms, door locks, albino Grimaces, and egg trays are scrambling to squeeze in sensors and some sort of communication component, usually in the form of a mobile app.

Were currently in the frontier days of this next-gen hardware boom, which often means five pieces of hardware and five different apps to control our lightbulbs, our smoke detectors, our security cameras, our coffee machines, and our e-fireplaces. The hope is that convergence will eventually win the day, bringing with it less clutter, both on our phones and in our homes.

Thats the scenario Blacksumac is envisioning with its multifaceted Piper device. Indeed, its trying to win a spot in your home by being a few steps ahead of the competition. Piper is not just a security camera that streams live video to your iPhone on demand. Its also a weather station, a programmable motion- and sound-detecting device, a data-visualization tool for your in-home habits, a wireless hub for controlling other devices, and a futuristic way to pull pranks on people.

Its a good bargain for all it does, too. At $240 for the base package, it costs just a bit more than many of the single-purpose devices it might supplant things like the Dropcam Pro, Netatmo Weather Station, and Z-Wave hubs or gateways. Paying $360 gets you a bundle that might also replace a Belkin WeMo system. That higher-priced package includes the Piper base unit and three Z-Wave accessories, including your choice of a door/window sensor, a module that plugs into a power outlet to make connected items remote-controllable, and a range extender. The Piper only works with Z-Wave devices.

The hardware itself isnt all that exciting to look at, but its inoffensive and will generally blend in. It resembles a kinder, gentler, freestanding version of HAL 9000. Its about six inches tall and available in white or black, with a plastic main body housing its front-facing 180-degree camera and golf-ball-like motion sensor. The top and bottom offer speaker grilles, and around the back is a detachable aluminum stand that youll need to pop off to plug it in. You can leave the stand off if you want to wall-mount it.

Plugging Piper into a power source is all you need to do, because it doesnt have an Ethernet connection; it only connects via Wi-Fi. Once you plug it in and press the lone button on the back of the unit, it readies itself for about a minute. Then, a light on the front turns blue, and you hear a slightly creepy-sounding Piper is ready in a robotic female voice.

To complete the initial setup, you need to install Pipers free iOS or Android app on your mobile device. The Android version of the app is due out on February 14, but at the time this review was written, the app was only available for iOS. (Its a little hard to find; the best way to find it in the Apple App Store is to search for Blacksumac.) To finish setup, you connect to Piper as your Wi-Fi network from the app. The app then prompts you to enter your home network password. After about two to three minutes of configuration time, youre done.

From there, youll simply be using the app for everything. The apps main interface shows you a dashboard of the current indoor and outdoor temperatures, an events log, and a Simon-like wheel of main settings: Stay mode, Away mode, Vacation mode, and an off switch. The Stay mode is designed for use at home, where you may not want the motion-detection sensor enabled. The Away mode is designed for when youre at work or out for a few hours, when the motion- and sound-detection sensors might be more useful; like a home-security system, it beeps once you turn it on to give you a grace period for leaving the home. Vacation mode is designed for use when youre totally out of town, so the alerts are also sent to neighbors and other trusted friends that can check on your home.

Along the bottom of the app are a few tabs. Live Video streams footage directly to your phone from Pipers fish-eye lens. Theres about a one- to two-second lag between the live action being captured and when the video feed shows up on your device. Pipers lens has a crazy 180-degree field of view, so setting up one of these units along the wall of a room gives you an outstanding field of view. Video quality is less outstanding in fact, its the devices overall weak spot. The murkiness might make it hard to recognize any burglar you catch on camera.

Those video-quality shortcomings are mitigated by the viewing options. The video controls and navigation are great: You can finger-scroll around a scene in real time, pinch-and-zoom, and break the feed into four separate screens. That mosaic view lets you frame and zoom each video window independently, which makes the Pipers video feed seem like a multi-camera security setup. You also get a basic brightness adjustment for seeing things in the dark, as well as a light-bulb icon that lets you turn any Z-Wave-connected lamps on or off remotely while you watch live video.

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This Tiny Gizmo Is All You Need to Automate and Protect Your Home

Jasper The Hamilton County School Board, led by Superintendent Thomas Moffses, recently conducted a series of workshops at all three elementary schools - South Hamilton, North Hamilton and Central Hamilton - to update the public on safety and security concerns at the schools.

The first workshop took place at South Hamilton Elementary (SHE) in White Springs on Monday, Jan. 27. The second was held at North Hamilton in Jennings on Tuesday, Jan. 28 and the third at Central Hamilton on Thursday, Jan. 30.

Moffses explained that what he was presenting was a continuation of something that began in May of last year.

The Florida Department of Educations facilities team came into the county and did a review of our facilities...all facilities...and then came back and gave recommendations to the board, specific to elementary schools, said Moffses.

The DOE team, he said, found a multitude of safety and security issues at all three schools, including fencing, limited parent pickup and bus loading areas, building structural problems, aging portables, inadequate fire exits, and central heating and air conditioning concerns.

Twice in the past, in 2008 and 2011, Moffses said, the DOE recommended closing both North and South Hamilton.

Central Hamilton, Moffses said, is also nearing that point. The DOE, he said, stated that all of the countys elementary schools are at an age to be replaced.

That all was presented to the school board, and from that point, they continued and said Hamilton County was eligible for a construction project, said Moffses, who then told the audience that there are numerous steps the school board must complete before presenting a plan to the DOE in August.

This is a continuing process to go through and do an evaluation of what may or may not take place in the future, Moffses explained before engaging everyone in a video that was put together by General Services Coordinator Chuck Lambert and the Hamilton County High School TV production crew, who visited each school to film critical areas of concern.

The video Moffses presented, he told the board, was an edited version of each school site, and that each facility had unique issues. The full videos for each school, he said, are lengthy, but are available for viewing.

Excerpt from:
Workshops uncover building safety issues at HamCo elem. schools

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) February 06, 2014

Hireology, the leading selection management platform for distributed enterprises, announced today that the company will attend the HandyPro 2014 National Conference in Plymouth, Michigan.

As a preferred vendor for the senior modifications and handyman services company, Hireology will introduce franchisees to their unique hiring solution while at the conference.

"Attending the HandyPro National Conference will be a great way to meet with our HandyPro franchisees and introduce ourselves to those who are unaware of our services," said Hireology's Account Executive, Michael Shulman. "We are looking forward to helping HandyPro streamline and organize their hiring process in the field."

The 2014 HandyPro National Conference will take place in Plymouth, Michigan from Wednesday, February 5th to Friday February 7th, 2014. If you are a HandyPro location owner and interested in learning more about Hireology, please click here.

About Hireology

Hireology is the leading selection management platform for distributed enterprises. Their award-winning Selection Manager includes everything an operator needs to manage their hiring process, including a fully-hosted career site, integrated job postings, compensation analysis, pre-hire assessments, interview guides, background checks, skills verification and more. Franchise systems, banks and financial institutions, healthcare systems, dealer networks, and other multi-site operators use Hireologys web-based platform to deliver consistent and repeatable hiring decisions in the field - leading to lower turnover and increased profitability per location. For more information, please visit our website.

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Hireology to Attend the 2014 HandyPro National Conference

Work on a $700,000 project designed to reduce some of the worst impacts and risks from the flooding that plagues Kaeo is on schedule and now more than 50 percent complete.

Bruce Howse, Land/Rivers Senior Programme Manager for the Northland Regional Council, says the work on the project began late last year and aims to protect the town from destructive, high-speed floodwater rushing through it.

Mr Howse says while the scheme includes a roughly 1km long network of three-metre high stopbanks, it is not designed (nor intended to) stop flooding from occurring.

"What it is designed to do is to deflect damaging, high-speed floodwaters away from the town with a series of stopbanks and essentially convert it into slow-speed back-water flooding."

Mr Howse says the work - at this stage expected to be finished on schedule at the end of next month - is being funded via a roughly 50/50 split between central government ($386,000) and a targetted rate on approximately 2200 local properties.

He says good progress has been made to date overall, with a several-hundred metre long flood wall on the Whangaroa College grounds complete and scheme drainage and the works main stopbank from the Pohue Pa to the college progressing well. A large spillway cut upstream of those works was also about 50% complete.

Mr Howse says collectively, the Kaeo works will slow the speed of future floods and should make them much less damaging and dangerous.

"Its definitely not a silver bullet solution but it will make it easier for residents to protect flood-prone properties with sandbags and other tools like flood shutters."

"Kaeo is built on a floodplain and has flooded for as long as recorded history. Its position and local geography means a practical and affordable solution to stop flooding from happening competely is simply not possible."

Meanwhile, Mr Howse says a temporary river crossing for machinery to haul earth across the Kaeo River from the spillway to the stopbanks has also been working well.

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Kaeo flood risk reduction works 'progressing well'

Del Mar's new turf course is expected to help lure a future Breeders' Cup.

DEL MAR If you think putting in a new turf course at a race track is as simple as watching grass grow, well, you dont know worms about turf.

For an understanding of how involved it is to put in a new grass course for 1,200-pound race horses at Del Mar, know this: It all started Oct. 1, 2012 when sprigs of Greg Norman 1 (GN1) Bermuda grass were planted on a sandy, 12-acre plot in Coachella Valley.

Now February, 2014, that grass is mature and more than ready to be cut, rolled and transported to where the new and improved turf will meet the surf at Del Mar. For nearly a year and a half, the Pacific Sod Company has followed a stringent growing and maintenance plan developed by Del Mar to grow the new turf course.

Thats almost a year and a half of growing, which is unheard of (for a project like Del Mars), said Leif Dickinson, turf and landscape superintendent at Del Mar. It was costly to do, and we dont have NFL money here. But what we have is turf that is as strong as we can make it. That was the key. Grow strong turf and grow it for as long as possible. Its in very good shape. Its ready to go.

Dickinson said the original plan to roll out Del Mars new grass was delayed by more than a month because of soft ground discovered along the backstretch. The plan called for the turf to be put in by early January. The old turf course was installed in 1959-60 for the 1960 summer meeting. It had 53 meetings run on it before it was dug out last fall. It had hidden challenges.

A lot of areas had to be dug out, said Dickinson, who installed Santa Anitas present downhill turf course in 1996. We found soft spots that were difficult to compact. Were at sea level or below here. If you dig down too far, the way it was described to me, its kind of like a cookie on top of a milkshake. If you break through the cookie, theres nothing left below but milkshake. Weve had to re-form the cookie in some areas that needed it. It had to be re-compacted and sealed.

Dickinson said the target date for installing the new grass and sod has been pushed back to Feb. 21 or thereabouts. He said even if the turf doesnt go in until early March, the course will be ready for the Del Mar summer meeting that goes from mid-July to September.

With our climate, well be OK with the latter part of February or even the first part of March (for placing the new turf), Dickinson said. Thats when things actually start to grow here anyway. Its not a deal breaker. Were just anxious to get it down.

When Del Mar opens in July, its tracks will sport vastly different looks and its turf will be treated very differently. The turf course will be wider, making it more attractive for a future Breeders Cup because the turf course will handle 14 horses instead of the 12 in previous years. Del Mar remains in ramped up discussions with Breeders Cup officials who want to bring the games national championships, two days of Grade I racing in early November, to Del Mar, possibly as early as next year and certainly by 2016.

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Del Mar: Where new turf will meet the surf

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