Neat iSight trick - Seeing you, seeing me | TUAW

Caught this on MacInTouch and I'm still a little freaked out by it. If you have an iSight camera, check out this neat trick.

It's not magic, really, it's just a QuickTime movie embedded in a web page, but the fact that it displays YOUR iSight, even though it's not your web page is a little disconcerting! As Chris says, it's pretty easy to do this yourself. Install Apple's Developer Tools if you don't already have them installed. Open Quartz Composer. Create a video input and a billboard. Then drag a line from the video input to the image option on the billboard. Now export it as a QuickTime movie and embed it into your web page.

No need to fear it, however. No one else can see you. Everyone who views the page will only see themselves (assuming they have an iSight). I think it's still a pretty cool trick, however, you are free to disagree.

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Source: http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/wlg/7409

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Caught this on MacInTouch and I'm still a little freaked out by it. If you have an iSight camera, check out this neat trick.It's not magic,...

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newave

Of course you could always goto http://stickam.com and use your iSight so other users really CAN see you.

November 15 2006 at 12:39 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Daniel Gattermann

@11: My version may add to the potential paranoia: http://cinnamonthoughts.org/2006/11/14/your-isight-is-not-spying-on-you/
(It looks Matrix-like and displays the full username and hostname of the viewers computer in the video feed.)

November 14 2006 at 5:52 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

It could be used for scams... the kind that do a "we know your IP address, give us your money and you'll be safe"...

November 14 2006 at 4:12 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

jomy

XP sucks - its actually quite the norm

November 14 2006 at 2:34 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

guerro

Well, I don't know about anyone else, but, I loaded the page in Firefox on my XP laptop and it locked up Firefox immediately and I had to force quit. Strange.

November 14 2006 at 1:18 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Justin Lane

Hey iData, I can say for one that I have never seen that, as I am a new user, and a new mac user as well.

November 14 2006 at 12:55 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Justin Lane

Hey iData, I can say for one that I have never seen that, as I am a new user, and a new mac user as well.

November 14 2006 at 12:55 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ryan

Interesting side note:

This site/quartz composer trick is the ONLY way I've been able to get my Xbox 360 Vision camera to work on my Mac thus far. And it works flawlessly (great picture quality).

I've tried iChat, iChatUSB (with APE), macam, videoviewer, the mirror widget, etc. but nothing works. Except this.

Very very odd.

November 14 2006 at 12:51 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Uncle Jerry

guess I'll go put some pants on now just in case...

November 14 2006 at 12:39 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

iData

Beside the fact that the 'trick' was posted on O'Reilly Network back in July 20th, two thousand and FIVE! (A YEAR and 4 MONTHS later)... This has been posted on TUAW before...

Sure, make the argument that you get new readers everyday!

November 14 2006 at 12:32 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply