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.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-14-2006 @ 12:02PM
LaRoche said...
This is confusing, if not misleading. Can the trick be modified to allow a web-site host to monitor the isight of his viewers? If all the trick does is show a local isight image to the owner of the same isight, then it isn't a big deal.
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11-14-2006 @ 12:27PM
bob said...
thats quite cool actually, you could freak some people out with that one, though it only worth doing on a mac specific website for obvious reasons
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11-14-2006 @ 12:35PM
Jonathan Wight said...
This trick CANNOT be used by third parties to capture images from your iSight.
The video is completely local and does not leave your machine. You can look at the bandwidth meter in the Activity Monitor to check.
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11-14-2006 @ 12:39PM
uncle jerry said...
guess I'll go put some pants on now just in case...
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11-14-2006 @ 12:48PM
iData said...
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!
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11-14-2006 @ 12:51PM
Ryan said...
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.
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11-14-2006 @ 12:56PM
Justin Lane said...
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.
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11-14-2006 @ 12:56PM
Justin Lane said...
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.
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11-14-2006 @ 1:18PM
guerro said...
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.
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11-14-2006 @ 2:35PM
SubGenius said...
XP sucks - its actually quite the norm
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11-14-2006 @ 4:12PM
Ed said...
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"...
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11-14-2006 @ 5:52PM
Daniel Gattermann said...
@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.)
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11-15-2006 @ 12:39PM
newave said...
Of course you could always goto http://stickam.com and use your iSight so other users really CAN see you.
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