Earthcam, A Hackensack Company

[Editor]

Hackensack company has recorded World Trade Center rebuilding from the beginning
Myles Ma/NJ.com By  Myles Ma/NJ.com   
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on May 10, 2013 at 6:00 AM, updated May 10, 2013 at 10:42 AM



EarthCam founder and CEO Brian Cury in his Hackensack office with the modern and original iterations of the EarthCam cameras.(Myles Ma/NJ.com)

HACKENSACK — When workers hoisted the spire to the top of One World Trade Center earlier this month, EarthCam had eyes on the proceedings.

The Hackensack company has had cameras on the World Trade Center site since days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The attacks were watershed moment for the company. When CEO Brian Cury founded the EarthCam website in 1996, it was a pet project to index Internet-connected cameras.

EarthCam.com started as a directory for a handful of Internet-connected cameras that were around in 1996. Interest in the site increased to the point that Cury started to make and sell his own cameras.


 
EarthCam.com is still around, offering visitors a way to see the crowds at Times Square, hear the waves crash on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, see how the work on the boardwalk is progressing at Seaside Heights, and hundreds of other sights.

Those cameras are supported through advertising, but the company really earns its money through EarthCam.net, a sister service that helps companies and government agencies document construction projects.

After 9/11, businesses who wanted to keep tabs on far-flung projects but didn't want to deal with heightened travel restrictions turned to the EarthCam to keep an eye on their work. To date, projects EarthCam has documented include the Barclays Center and the George W. Bush Presidential Library.

"Putting a camera on something to be able to document and show it to the public is a great tool to be able to tell the story," Cury said.

EarthCam has become more sophisticated since Cury was making cameras himself. In addition to the cameras, the company sells software and maintenance services.

The software allows construction managers to look at detailed pictures of a project over the entire duration of the work.

The cameras have grown in power, as well. The first camera Cury trained on Ground Zero took images at half a megapixel. The latest EarthCam cameras stitch together photos to create 1,000 megapixel images.

While the company has been located at the same Kennedy Street office since the beginning, it has grown from 3 to 75 employees, with hundreds of freelance installers worldwide.

"I'm really comfortable here," Cury said of Hackensack.

That might be because he's a local, having grown up in Englewood and New York City, now with homes in Alpine and Chelsea. He's fond of calling New Jersey "The Silicon Garden."

"I think there's a lot of technology around us," he said. "Listen, some of the greatest inventions come from New Jersey and I'm trying to carry on that tradition."

[Editor]

Grant aims to help Hackensack webcam company build Upper Saddle River headquarters
Tuesday October 8, 2013, 5:32 PM
BY  HUGH R. MORLEY
STAFF WRITER
The Record

Ever wonder what's happening on the Abbey Road crosswalk, scene of the famous Beatles album cover?

Or what's going on at Andy Warhol's grave site?

Or how busy the historic main street in Prague is?

Hackensack-based Earthcam, with its global network of webcams shooting scenes that are streamed live on the company website, will show you.

The 17-year-old company, which supplies webcam technology and services to government agencies, construction, security and hospitality companies, screens live webcam video on its website as a way to promote its products and generate interest in the company.

That interest prompted the New Jersey Economic Development Authority Tuesday to approve a grant of $540,000 to help the company build a 41,544-square-foot headquarters in Upper Saddle River, with a total project cost of $6.2 million.

The company told the EDA that aside from the Bergen County site, it was also considering moving to Orangeburg, in New York State.

To get the full grant amount, Earthcam would need to add 80 new jobs to its existing workforce of 80, which have an average wage of $42,000.

Al Koeppe, chairman of the EDA board, called Earthcam an "extraordinarily interesting hi tech niche company," that deserved state support.

"It's real jobs, number one. It's not an insignificant base of employees. That's important," he said.

"There is not only a business retention, but there is a business attraction element to this," he added, saying that companies like Earthcam can draw other hi-tech businesses into the state, and encourage tech-entrepreneurs to try their hand in the state.

The streams on the company's website include images from cameras pointed at the Abbey Road crossing in London, Warhol's gravesite in Pittsburgh, and in Prague. Other streams on the site, which the company says draw viewers from 192 countries worldwide, show the view from cameras in Times Square, atop the Statue of Liberty, on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, inside the Elvis Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas the Atlantic City boardwalk, and the Great Falls in Paterson.

The video has helped has boost interest in Earthcam's 750 products, which include cameras, recorders, mounts and accessories, and installation, management and monitoring services, to the point where Earthcam is now looking to dramatically expand out of its existing, 12,000-square-foot facility.

The EDA awarded about one-third of the grant under the Business Employment Incentive Program, which gives breaks in the form of tax credits that can be used to reduce the income tax paid on each new job created with the state grant. The remainder was awarded under the Business Retention and Relocation Assistance Grant program, which awards business tax credits to companies that decide not to move jobs out of state.

Email: morley@northjersey.com

[Homer Jones]

Maybe they can set up a camera  on Anderson Street showing progress on the train station. Now that would be exciting.

[irons35]

They would need to speed it up by 1000x to see any discernible progress