Web Cameras

A web camera (or webcam) is a real-time camera whose images can be accessed using the World Wide Web, instant messaging, or a PC video calling application. more...

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Web-accessible cameras typically involve a digital camera which uploads images to a web server, either continuously or at regular intervals. This may be achieved by a camera attached to a PC, or by dedicated hardware. Videoconferencing cameras typically take the form of a small camera connected directly to a PC.

History

Started in 1991, the first webcam was pointed at the Trojan room coffee pot in the computer science department of Cambridge University. This webcam is now defunct, as it was finally switched off on 22 August 2001. The final image captured by the camera can still be viewed at the webcam's homepage .

As with many new technologies, webcams and webcam chat found early commercial adoption and aggressive technology advancement through use by the pornography industry. The adult industry required 'live' images and requested a Dutch developer to write a piece of software that could do this without requiring web browser plugins. This led to the birth of the 'live streaming webcam', which is still available in various forms today.

Web-accessible cameras

In addition to use for personal videoconferencing, it was quickly realised that World Wide Web users enjoyed viewing images from cameras set up by others elsewhere in the world. While the term "webcam" refers to the technology generally, the first part of the term ("web-") is often replaced with a word describing what can be viewed with the camera, such as a nestcam or streetcam.

Today there are thousands of webcams that provide views into homes, offices and other buildings as well as providing panoramic views of cities (Metrocams) and the countryside. Webcams are used to monitor traffic with TraffiCams, the weather with WeatherCams and even volcanoes with VolcanoCams.

Videoconferencing

As webcam capabilities have been added to instant messaging text chat services such as Yahoo Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Windows Live Messenger, and Skype, one-to-one live video communication over the internet has now reached millions of mainstream PC users worldwide. Increased video quality has helped webcams encroach on traditional video conferencing systems. New features such as lighting, real-time enhancements (retouching, wrinkle smoothing and vertical stretch) can make users more comfortable, further increasing popularity.

Many companies have tried to jump on the ' bandwagon, most notably 'vdolive' (an Israeli company), Spotlife (a Logitech daughter company) and many others; most of these have since failed.

Read more at Wikipedia.org