There are lots of devices that can be attached to a network:

1. A computer (duh)

2. A printer.
3. A webcam.

I happen to live in south Louisiana which has become the hurricane capital of the USA. Since the beginning of hurricane season (last Thursday, June 1), I’ve toyed with the idea of using my webcam to broadcast live pictures of the scene outside my office window to curious viewers. Well, not entirely seriously, but it did make me think about the steps necessary to connect any webcam to any network connected to the Internet.

What would you use this technology for? I’ll let you decide…security, social, scientific, etc.

While you’re thinking about it, here’s an article on how to, you know, actually make it happen:

There are only a few easy steps involved when it comes to getting a webcam up and running:

1. Purchase a webcam and install the software that comes with it.

2. Install a separate peice of software that is capable of uploading your webcam’s images to your website.
3. Set up a web page to continually display your latest webcam image.

Note that this is not the same thing as setting up a webcam to do video conferencing. The article I’m linking to describes a one-way broadcast of static images that are refreshed every few seconds or minutes (”Hurricane Cam”).

I’ll post something on video-conferencing another time.