ureadit

If you tune into my blog page, you’ll see that I now have a “driveway-cam” that looks down my driveway here in Southern California. There’s really no practical use for putting this image on my blog; I just thought it would look cool. Normally, I use the camera for security, but on a whim yesterday, I decided to splinter off a bit of its bandwidth to show my driveway on my blog, with updates every five seconds.

Yes, I’m a geek, and I’m always on the lookout for something cool to do. To me, video has always been one of the coolest things. And I don’t think I’m alone in my opinion. Video is a big hit on the Internet, stressing out the classic TV industry as it scrambles to find a way to monetize it. Everybody is familiar with YouTube, Hulu and other similar sites, providing a virtual limitless experience of interesting videos. Why is video being deployed on the Internet? Because the technology allows it, and it’s just a matter of time before geeks like me start to use it.

 

I’ve been online since the days of CompuServe and 300-Baud dial-up modems. It was cool back then to chat and read the news. I could actually read the news off the modem as fast as it arrived! Nowadays, it’s impossible to read news as fast as it arrives on my fiber-optic link, but who cares? I can now watch news videos instead of watching text chugging across my screen. And I can play online games, pitting my skills against a world-wide selection of gamers. And I can call anyone in the world on the phone for next-to-nothing.

My only complaint is that I won’t live another 100 years to see how much further this technology will take us.

If you’re interested in getting the source code for this driveway camera, just leave me a comment. I developed it using ActionScript 3.0 in Adobe Flash. The camera itself is a DLink DCS-900. Some assembly required, batteries not included.

Best,

Dan

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