If you’ve been thinking about setting up a web surveillance camera but were put off by the expense or hassle, Vitamin D makes it easy to turn your web or networked camera into an easy-to-use monitoring tool.
We’ve featured various motion-detecting video apps in the past, but now there’s HighlightCam, a web site that does the same thing but adds easy off-site backup and doesn’t require you to install anything.
Windows/Mac: Glow Doodle turns your webcam into an extended exposure camera, perfect for creating hand-drawn light streak art.
Windows only: Motion Detection is a free application that turns your webcam into a motion-sensing security camera in just a few clicks.
Google Maps picks up a layer from webcams.travel, giving you embedded views of public webcams anywhere you want to go.
If you have an old web cam laying around, you can turn it into a functional spy cam with only a bit of hardware handiwork.
Today Google starts rolling out voice and video chat inside Gmail—which requires a free browser plug-in download, and, obviously, a webcam. Googler Justin Uberti explains:
Mac OS X only: Free application EyeSight takes time-lapse photos with your Mac’s built-in iSight camera. EyeSight is very customisable, so you can set your photo intervals anywhere between 10 seconds to 999 days, save the images in whatever format you like, and upload the results to an FTP server of your choosing (or just save them in a local folder). If you want to eventually turn the results into a video, I’d recommend previously mentioned Gawker, but if you’re more interested in something like a web-enabled security camera, EyeSight is the way to go. EyeSight is freeware, Mac OS X only. Windows users, check out previously mentioned YawCam. If what you really want is to beef up your laptop’s security, we’ve got you covered there, too.
EyeSight [via MakeUseOf]
