Startup of the week:
Who they are: Flock, a neighborhood security startup funded by a local accelerator.
What they do: Install solar-powered, license-plate-reading cameras in neighborhoods to track who comes and goes. The idea is to let police use that information as evidence when a crime occurs in the area.
Why it’s cool: The cameras, which also have backup batteries, already have logged useful evidence in two cases, said Flock founder and CEO Garrett Langley.
On Tuesday night, a man’s lawnmower was stolen from his yard in a neighborhood outside Atlanta that uses Flock technology. The man saw a pickup truck speeding away from his house with his mower in the back. Flock found a truck in its records that had left the neighborhood around the time of the theft, and gave its license plate number to police — hopefully making it easy for them to make an arrest.