Livelook.tv Blog

The site Giglio News has a live webcam with a view of the Giglio port. The Costa Concordia cruise ship recently visited this port after crashing into rocks nearby. The webcam has a direct view of the cruise ship as it sits in the beautiful harbor.

This is a year-long time-lapse study of the sky. A camera installed on the roof of the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco captured an image of the sky every 10 seconds. The custom webcam hardware is pretty cool. I like this point “I looked into some of the “netcams” that are available, but even the pricey ones had unimpressive image quality. On the other hand, my old Canon A520 takes pretty nice pictures.” Here’s a link to the live view
http://www.murphlab.com/hsky/
http://www.murphlab.com/2011/11/15/a-history-of-the-sky-for-one-year/

The US Forest Service conducts an air quality monitoring program designed to understand the impact of air quality on forest service resources.  The Clean Air Act directed the federal land managers to determine those features of the area which are affected in some way by air pollution.   From the USFS site: “The Forest Service monitors the effects of pollution that may impair visibility, harm human health, injure trees and other plants, acidify or cause unnatural fertilization of streams and lakes, leach nutrients from soils, and degrade cultural resources, like archeological sites and historical buildings. Forest activities that can affect air quality such as prescribed burning, ski areas, and mining are also monitored to ensure compliance with air regulations for human health and to monitor possible impacts to natural resources.”

The site offers some outstanding live images of wild areas around the country.  The real time gallery page is really beautiful with high quality images and amazing subject matter.   I would love to see these images on a wall of monitors in the Forest Service offices in Washington, DC.   The National Park Service maintains many more scenic live cams around the country, it would be fantastic to see a gallery view of all their live images.

See this related post for North East air quality cameras.  http://livelook.tv/webcamblog/2010/10/21/camnet-northeast-haze-cams/

The Spanish Peaks area in southern Colorado is a beautiful and remote area of the state. I came across a webcam recently that’s sponsored by Bachman & Associates, a local real estate company. This is a great example of using a webcam to pull in visitors to your website, otherwise known as a web attraction. They’ve done a terrific job finding a stunning view. As people see this view it’s bound to entice some to visit, and maybe even buy real estate.

This is a terrific webcam image and I was surprised I hadn’t seen it before. The owners of the site might consider

Some strategies to increase the reach of a web attraction webcam:
1. Add meta information about the geo-location of the cam
2. Add the cam to webcam listing sites.
3. Tweet interesting shots from the cam. Hashtag to reach more people around a specific event. Festival, weather, etc.
4. Post images to facebook with links to the cam
5. For a great image like this one, contact TV news sites and allow them to use a small version of the image to compliment their weather cams.
6. Contact other popular webcam owners in the area or on the same topic and ask for a link or offer a preview image for their site.
7. Search for sites listing area webcams and let them know about your new cam. Locals with an interest in live views almost always have the best and most up to date listings. I found this cam on http://www.wildhorsemesacolorado.com There are lots of good examples of locally curated webcam lists.

Interesting webcam from the Talkeetna Air Taxi company in Alaska.
The view of Mt. McKinley from 60 miles out is impressive, although too bad they didn’t go with the the Stardot XL 3mp cam to really get a clear shot.  A live cam at the seasonal base camp would also be a cool addition.   The shot is a great one and the crew at TAT should be commended.   Sounds like a great way to see the mountain up-close.  The photos are amazing.   I hope to visit someday.

Mt. Fuji is a Japanese icon.   Thanks to the fujigoko.tv site the world has some spectacular live views of the legendary mountain. The Google Chrome browser makes it much easier for people who don’t read Japanese to understand the site.  I’m using the Google Translate extension for Chrome which automatically translates Japanese content into English.   The site seems to be dedicated to the five lakes region around Mt. Fuji and has many live views from the region.   Making spectacular use of high tech Japanese camera technology, the images are available in very high resolution options.   The only view they don’t seem to have is from the top of the mountain!

CAMNET has a series of webcams in the Northeast United States. The purpose of CAMNET is to raise public awareness about the effects of air pollution on visibility. This is accomplished, in part, through a network of realtime visibility cameras located at scenic urban and rural locations. CAMNET pictures are updated every 15 minutes. In addition, near realtime air pollution and meteorological data are provided to help distinguish natural from man-made causes of poor visibility, and to provide health-relevant data to the public on current air pollution levels. The air pollution and meteorological data are updated every hour.

CAMNET cameras are very high quality and produce some terrific images. I happened to check out Burlington, VT and Boston this afternoon and both had some lovely views.   The haze cams have raised my awareness of air quality issues.  In a way that’s bad, because after you start noticing it’s disappointing to know all this pollution is around.

Air Resource Specialists is the company behind many haze cams around the country.   It would be great if they could add time lapse capability to the cams.

I’d love something like Winscape for live webcams.   The high def video must look great but this would be so neat to have a live look at anywhere.  Very interesting product.  One downside is the energy use of the displays, it’s a lot more energy efficient to just go look out the window.

The guys at Time Science have some interesting products.   The Time Window product is a cool time-lapse kiosk product. 

I’d love to see one of these installed somewhere.  It seems like something you might find at a visitor center for a park or something.  Even better might be a remote image viewer for a natural history museum or Park Service Headquarters.   Definitely a neat concept.   This company is coming up with some cool ideas and I wish them luck.

On the same topic, check out the time-lapse on the Boulder Flatiron Cam. It’s been running and recording the daily weather in Boulder for over a year now.

Airport View of Loveland, Colorado has set up a series of airport based cam systems around Colorado.  The company sells four-camera systems for aviation applications.  I’ve seen lots of single cam systems at airports but this is sold as a professional grade solution.   To me it seems that it’s only a matter of time before airport weather information systems include a visual component.   At some point aircraft could even have on board views of the local conditions for landing as Wi-Fi becomes more common in the air.   I’m surprised there’s no legal disclaimer or time stamp on the images.  There could be issues if a pilot is relying on an out of date image.   I’d want the site to show a technical difficulties screen or something instead of an outdated image.   They’re on the right track and this looks like a promising business application of live image technology.

Since I’m not a pilot, I’ll just enjoy some of their views around scenic areas of Colorado.  Maybe the Telluride airport is next?