Blog Webcam News continually updated

Lately a website called Webcam Chatroulette is creating a lot of buzz in the blogosphere, and unless you just emerged from under a rock you have probably heard and used it too. Those who are truly clueless, here is an extract from Wikipedia. Webcam Chatroulette is a website which pairs random strangers for webcam-based conversations. Visitors to the website randomly begin an online stranger chat (video and text) with another visitor. At any point, either user may leave the current chat by initiating another random connection.

When you go to Webcam Chatroulette (could be NSFW, be warned) you face a random stranger on webcam and he faces you through your webcam. A webcam is essential to chatting on Chatroulette. What if you don’t have a webcam or you don’t want to show yourself to random people on the Internet? Can you use Webcam Chatroulette without a webcam? Of course you can, thanks to virtual webcam software.

Using a virtual webcam software you can use a pre-recorded webcam video, or any video for the matter, and get into Webcam Chatroulette. This is how to do it. Read the rest of this entry »

A webcam left rolling on a laptop in a Kingsport hotel room has led to the arrest of a maid on theft charges.

The woman, Debbie Davis, 43, 164 Birch St., Mount Carmel, allegedly stole medication from guests in two rooms.

According to reports from the Kingsport Police Department, officers responded to Americourt, 1900 American Way, at 2 p.m. Wednesday. A 29-year-old guest from Wartburg, Tenn., reported that medication had been taken from his room — and he had video of the maid stealing it.

The victim said that on the previous day he had left the room but “accidentally left his laptop webcam on.”

Police said the video it collected revealed a maid, Davis, unzipping his bag and removing a bottle.

Read the rest of this entry »

Innovative farmers in the ailing farm industry have been transforming their working farms into Farm Parks, and there is a difference. The whole raison d’être of farm parks is to welcome visitors, particularly children, to feed, pet, cuddle and generally enjoy baby animals. It’s a matter of out with the Friesians and in with the pet bunnies, lambs, goats and other long-suffering creatures.

Farm parks are going one step further, and several have live webcams to view the young animals. Leader of the pack, as you might say, is Denbury Farm in Somerset. After dark there is even the opportunity to view badgers, foxes and other nocturnal creatures on the prowl. Read the rest of this entry »

PowerBookMedic has received what they believe to be the final revision of the iPad midframe. The frame apparently still contains webcam holes that are of a slightly different style and no longer allow the current iSight modules to fit snugly.

The most notable feature in this frame is that the webcam holes remain. The holes appear to be a slightly different style and don’t seem to allow one of the currently used iSight modules (such as in a Unibody Macbook) to fit snug into the hole. It, however, seems strange that multiple versions of this midboard frame have the webcam holes when no currently known model includes a webcam.

Generally manufacturing companies that have two different revisions of a product will try to save money on production by using interchangeable parts, but from the looks of this so far, all of these prerelease parts are being made to house hardware that is not available on any model. This could be attributed to either a late minute announcement that will have people pulling out their wallets, or it was a last minute design pull. (The fact that the camera holes made it from supposed prototype to final revision could possibly support some type of late announcement theory….though we seriously doubt it.)

Bristol Zoo -Great Britain. Live streams of Gorillas, Birds, Rhinos and more. A great pleasure
Henry Doorly Zoo -Omaha, nebraska. A controllable cam showing the penguins. Great!
Buenaventura Hummin Bird Cam – Ecuador. You see an actual streaming feed of humming birds at their feeder. It’s not exactly live, but updated every day. I love those birds! “We are proud to present our first Webcam in the Forest – the ‘Puro’ webcam, which shows streaming wildlife footage from the breathtaking and remote tropical forest of Fundación Jocotoco’s Buenaventura Reserve, Ecuador.”
Munich Zoo Cam  -Bavaria, Germany, the “Hellabrun Tierpark”. Several cams showing the elephant house.
Panda Cam-Sichuan, China. Watch the giant Pandas live!
Froggy Cam  -Austia. You like toads and frogs? Froggycam rotates among habitats of fire-bellied toads, african dwarf frogs and the beautiful leopard frog!
Otter Cam-Scotland. Otters in care at the IOSF rehabilitation centre on the Isle of Skye.Here you can see Lelly and Tweed, who are both about 6 months old. Lelly is the smaller female and Tweed is larger and male. They spend a lot of time sleeping but if you are patient, as when watching otters in the wild, you may see them coming out to feed or squabbling over a fish! Read the rest of this entry »

The China-based cyber-spy network known as “GhostNet” is a sophisticated group of hackers capable of logging its victims’ keystrokes, stealing their documents, capturing images from their screens—and staring creepily at them through their webcams.

In a report released last month, Canadian researchers concluded that GhostNet has cracked at least 1,295 computers in 103 different countries, specifically targeting the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan activists and officials. Stealing documents and logging keystrokes—that I understand. You can get all sorts of useful information reading someone’s e-mail or looking at their bank records. But peeking at them through their Web cameras? That seems creepy even by the standards of shady cyber-spying rings. It’s one thing to read the Dalai Lama’s IM conversations. It’s another to actually watch him LOL. Read the rest of this entry »

ChatRoulette is a new website that connects you face to face with Internet users around the world. When you go to the site and hit Play your webcam turns on and you’re connected to another person. Most times you’ll hit Next within a few seconds and be connected to someone else. Sometimes people stop to chat. Basically, instead of surfing the web, you’re surfing people.

ChatRoulette evokes patterns of behavior that are as old as the Internet. Our fascination with spontaneous and random forays into anonymous online interactions echo those of early text-based chatrooms and bulletin board systems in the 1990s and even earlier. Shock, boredom, play, and voyeurism characterized these early online environments as much as they do now. In ChatRoulette, there is no registration or login; staring into the bedroom of a complete stranger is fascinating and completely disconcerting. Read the rest of this entry »

A new webcam mounted on the Blue Fin Building at Bankside allows local residents to get a glimpse behind the hoardings as preparatory works for Tate Modern’s extension get under way. The webcam captures an image of the building site to the south west of the existing Tate Modern gallery every 15 minutes during the working day. The images can be viewed as a time-lapse sequence to give an indication of progress on the site.

In January Mayor of London Boris Johnson visited Bankside to start enabling works for the gallery’s extension. The Mayor wielded a shovel at a symbolic ground-breaking ceremony in one of the three oil tanks of the former Bankside Power Station. The oil tanks will form a key feature of the expanded gallery designed by Herzog and de Meuron which Tate hopes will be completed in 2012.

This week Tate unveiled a new open-air exhibition on the hoardings around the building site by Swedish artist Martin Karlsson. Tate still has a long way to go to raise all the funding required for the £215 million extension.  Follow the progress with the webcam. More webcam from London and England

The St Mawes Ferry Company has fitted a live webcam to one of its ferries, the Duchess of Cornwall, which runs all year round between St Mawes and Falmouth. Mounted in the Duchess’ wheelhouse the webcam uses 3G mobile technology to upload an image every 10 seconds on to the ferry’s website. Once online visitors will see a picture of the 120 year-old route looking forwards over the ferry’s foredeck.

Toby Budd, from the Ferry Company, said: ”We had already tested the technology in the summer with the ‘Cow Cam’ on our Jacks Cow when we moved it around the river. “After the cow was sold we decided to fit the webcam to the Duchess and already it has proven very popular with people checking that the ferry is running, as well as just taking a look to see the view, stormy days are often the busiest.” Paul Harry from Falmouthphotos, who installed the webcam, said: ”This has been a really fun project, normally webcams require broadband and so it took quite a bit of development to get the mobile element working.

“We are now looking at other webcams, mobile and fixed, that we can install around the river in addition to the cameras already installed at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall and on Gyllyngvase Beach.”

A tenacious technophile helped Boston police recover his two stolen laptops by remotely activating one notebook’s webcam and spying on the Stoughton family who was using it.

But Waltham entrepreneur Josh Bob, 30, didn’t stop there: He recorded the surveillance videos and posted them on his blog.

“It was frustrating, no question, but to be honest, I was mostly angry. They had taken my multihundred-dollar laptop and given it to an 8-year-old to watch wrestling videos and Scooby Doo on YouTube,” Bob said. Read the rest of this entry »