Livelook.tv Blog

Starwood Hotels has an innovative new marketing site called roomwithaview.com.   The site has links to live high quality cameras at their properties around the world.  This is a neat idea although I’m having trouble using the site.  For some reason I’m not able to click the individual properties within the map.   I think a better interface would be something along the lines of the wall of tvs where you could see each view in a panel.   The world map doesn’t highlight the visual appeal of a live image.

A sample from their Grand Maritian is below.  This may be the first webcam in Mauritius.

Vancouver must have the best collection of high quality webcams of any city.   The KatKam is an all-time favorite of mine.   Other good cams include the Vancam and the KitsKam, which has a great archive.  The image below is a recent sample from the archive.

The Westin Bayshore has a great new camera overlooking Stanley Park and Coal Harbor.  A beautiful HD quality view of an HD worthy scene!  Vancouver is an amazing city to visit and will be ready with live views for the Winter Olympics.

I’m getting excited for a house swap trip to British Columbia this summer.  Of course this means looking for webcams in the area and right away I found a beautiful view of the Pacific in Tofino, British Columbia on the west side of Vancouver Island.   This great view makes me excited to visit Tofino.

Long Beach Lodge

The Long Beach Lodge has done a nice job integrating the webcam image in their site.  It auto updates and has a nice overlay with weather information.   The Mobotix camera gets a little washed out with bright sun but overall the image is sharp and has nice color.  The sunset image above is spectacular.  Thanks to the Long Beach Lodge for providing a great webcam.

The Bora Bora Pearl Beach Resort has been an all time favorite webcam.  The view over the lagoon is tremendous.  The resort would be a great place for a romantic honeymoon.  Who wouldn’t like to stay in an overwater hideaway thousands of miles from anywhere.   Their webcam is a little window to the south Pacific.   Thanks to the Pearl Resorts in Tahiti for providing great webcams at all their properties.   It sure makes me want to take a vacation!

On a side note here’s a cool view of Bora Bora from Satellite Imaging Corporation.

I was recently checking out some Colorado ski cams in My Livelook and found some beautiful sunny views.  Arapahoe Basin has some new cameras with high quality images.  I really like the view from the top at snow plume refuge.  

Aspen Highlands is also looking great with lots of snow and sunny skies.  I wish they had a better way to directly access a preview image instead of forcing everyone to go to their site to view it.  

The webcam universe keeps growing with more amazing cams showing up all the time.  I recently found the webcams at Takeabreak.co.nz, a site devoted to New Zealand tourism.  They’ve developed a network of high quality webcams to showcase New Zealand’s scenic beauty.  The webcam network pulls visitors to their well designed accommodation and activity booking engine.  

The thing that immediately stood out about the webcam images was the high quality and nice overlay on the images.   A question about this was quickly returned by the CEO of Takeabreak.  They’ve developed a custom 8 megapixel webcam solution to maximize the image quality in all lighting conditions.  Check out the results on their webcam page or this sample image from the Hanmer Springs webcam. 

 Happy New Year, New Zealand!

Villa Serendipity on Chocolate Hole Bay – St. John, US Virgin Islands has brought the world an awesome webcam. View the cam at http://www.serendipity.vi. The view of the bay and St. Thomas in the background makes me think of Jimmy Buffet songs and heading for the islands.

This is a great use of a webcam for marketing a vacation rental. A webcam is another way to stand out in the crowd of rental properties. As a customer you know exactly what kind of view your going to get and can check before and after your vacation. It’s also a great way to keep your customers engaged and coming back to your website.

I’ve seen very few outdoor webcams where users pay to view or subscribe. There are a lot of sites that accept donations but just like the rest of the web most people want free. Indoor cams may be a whole different story but that’s not the focus at Livelook.

Trainorders.com is a railfan focused website that’s hit upon outdoor webcam content people will pay to watch. They have four live cams set up at railroading hot spots around the country. Tehachapi in California is their original webcam with over nine years of service. It’s been updated over time to include full motion video and sound. Members of the site can also see stored movies of past trains. It’s a pretty cool system.

I’m impressed with their innovative marketing around the images. The have a live still image of each camera with their copyright info and the site URL. Allowing anyone on the web to embed your image and link to your site is a smart move and will drive more traffic to the pay site. Linking page is here.

The Cabrillo National Monument on Point Loma near San Diego has some nice webcam views.

Cam one with a view to the north of the entrance to San Diego Harbor.

Cam two has a great view of San Diego airport and the city.

More live webcam views of United States National Parks can be found at the National Park Service Webcam page.

A good related site for government sponsored air quality webcams is the AIRnow – Air Quality site. AIRnow is a good listing of many high quality live images. Of course you can search for these cams on Livelook and save to My Livelook for your personal webcam dashboard.

Flying Frontier into San Jose last week on Spike the Porcupine I had a great view of the green springtime hills south of San Jose.  Being a webcam fan, of course had to check out what Livelook had in the area.  Morgan Hill Weather popped up just south of San Jose in Morgan Hill, California.   I don’t know how highly rated this webcam was but I just added it to My Livelook as a 5!  The view from high up one of the hills is really spectacular.   The high quality image is enhanced with a cool beta interactive control for pan/tilt/zoom.  The PTZ controls are overlaid right in the image.  Nice Feature!    Thanks to morganhillweather.com! The site had a link to a nearby telescope with another great view.  The Mount Hamilton HamCams are located at the Lick Observatory visitors center.   The cams have a commanding view of San Jose, Morgan Hill and greater Silicon Valley.   The daily movie feature is one of the best time lapse features I’ve seen.  Three minute images provide a lot of detail.