Filed under: Software, iPhone, iPod touch, App Review
My wife needs an intervention for her Live Cams addiction
It's a problem worthy of an episode of Intervention. Yes, I'm ashamed to admit that my wife is addicted to the Live Cams app on her iPhone.It all started when she was searching for new apps in the App Store, and she noticed a little app called Live Cams [US$0.99, iTunes Link]. It sounded innocuous enough -- the app provides a way to search, browse, view, and in some cases, control live web cams all over the planet. At a price of less than a buck, Live Cams couldn't harm anything or anybody, could it? We were both sure that the developer, Barry Egerter, couldn't have any evil intentions, so she bought Live Cams and installed it on her iPhone.
That's when I noticed the changes coming over my wife. Rather than conversing over dinner, she would stare at her iPhone, occasionally touching the screen to switch to a new webcam or aim a camera at a new target. She'd interrupt my constant attempts at reaching a new high score in DoodleJump [iTunes Link] by waving her iPhone in front of my face, forcing me against my will to look at cute kittens cavorting on a cat cam in Tokyo. And when she started waking up at 3:30 AM to see what the "Really curvy road in Slovenia" looked like in daylight, I knew she had a problem.
Apparently, she's not alone. The app was at the top of the iTunes App Store charts last night, and she's somehow hooked me on Live Cams as well. After all, I can stop looking at the feed from the Shamu Cam any time I want to. Really.
Live Cams is a very addictive app. As my wife put it, "It gives you insight into what's going on all over the world right now." The idea behind the app is simple -- display the most recent feed from thousands of webcams around the world. Launching the app brings up a random 4 wide x 3 tall grid of webcam images, and swiping the screen to the left brings up another grid of images. Every time you bring up the random screen, there are another 108 images you can look at.
Tapping on any of the small displays fills the iPhone screen with the image, and there are buttons to let you control cameras (if they're controllable over the Internet), snap a picture of the screen, or put a webcam on your favorites list. My wife has well over 100 webcams on her favorites list, including several showing ponds in Africa where wildlife (lions, elephants, wildebeest...) can be spied from time to time.
There are some views that are spectacularly beautiful, such as the Brooklyn Bridge cam, the Eiffel Tower cam, and my personal favorite showing the hillside town of Positano in Italy. Some cams are simply for fun, including the delightful Cat Cam in Tokyo. And there several cams that don't deserve a second look, like the one showing the inside of a server room in Milan, Italy.
If you have your own private webcam, it can be added to the app as well. All you need is the IP address and port, user name, and password, and within seconds that cam appears on your iPhone screen. Hey, if I had the money to buy a bunch of webcams, I think I'd have 'em set up to watch my cat during the times we're not in the house.
Live Cams is just about the most fun you can have for a buck. And I'm willing to bet that my wife and I can get a group rate on an intervention for our Live Cams addiction... if we admit that we have a problem. Check out some of our favorite screen shots in the gallery below.
Gallery: Live Cams - A fun addiction
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
pax copia said 1:10PM on 12-23-2009
I think it's weird that people are paying for these kinds of things. Tantamount to a bookmark list. Funny albeit sad. In the future people will probably pay per click I mean touch. C'est la mort.
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Wonderboy said 1:22PM on 12-23-2009
I disagree with your sentiments. The $1 isn't paying for access to the feeds themselves, which are obviously freely available, but instead for the interface which is apparently very easy to use and makes the experience more fun.
It's like comparing manual html authoring with Dreamweaver. Sure you can design a website from scratch for free, but if you're interested in a better experience you can pay money for Dreamweaver; if not, more power to you.
I for one couldn't care less about live camera feeds, but this does sound like a cool interface idea.
BOK said 2:20PM on 12-23-2009
That's quite a dramatic leap you've made there, pax. You're on an Apple blog, which I presume means you're an owner of Apple hardware, and you can't grasp the value of a good interface?
pax copia said 5:32PM on 12-23-2009
There are great web sites that link to feeds that have good user interfaces. Pay to play, given this particular "app" is not as good a interface as your run of the mill free bookmark list.
trayser said 3:00PM on 12-23-2009
@pax copia :
Well I assume then, people don't need to buy any programs since they could easily code them themselves.
By the same logic, I do see many weird things around :
its weird that people buy a pizza when they can make one themselves.
Its weird that people pay for oil-change when they can do it themselves.
Its weird that people buy clothes when they can stitch them themselves.
Its weird that people pay and study in college when they can learn things themselves
:-)
We pay $1 and much more for many trivial tasks that we can do ourselves, because most of the times we don't have necessary skills to do those things and even when we posses the skills, we don't want to spend much time on it.
This is not anything new. However, in case of computers and internet, it is somewhat assumed that everything has to be free.
People wrongly equate free knowledge and information to free products and services that deal with knowledge and information.
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pax copia said 5:37PM on 12-23-2009
It's a bookmark list. It is not a pizza, not a recipe, not an oil-change, clothing or school.
If you foster pay to play then please send me 5¢ upon reading my posts. Thank you in advance.
Scott said 12:42PM on 12-24-2009
Comparing a native app with controls designed for touch and a specific device to a generic bookmark list is ridiculous. Sadly, I think everyone realizes this but you.
moler said 1:41AM on 12-24-2009
I think this app is just exploiting voyeuristic nature of human beings.
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Barry Egerter said 11:23AM on 12-25-2009
It might seem like I'm trying to exploit certain habits but the reality is that the app is supposed to be a private security system viewer for your iPhone. I found many public cameras while I was developing it and it was the best way for me to integrate various brands of cameras and expand my features. Before I knew it I had hundreds of public cameras that I used to showcase how the app worked and suddenly the app was becoming more popular for the public cameras than it was for the private security systems.
Being #1 in the US store shows that people are generally just interested in seeing what the rest of the world looks like. With only 3500 active cameras in the database it's hardly putting a dent in the number of places that people want to see but it has definitely shown me a lot of unique landmarks and places that I've never seen or heard of before.
I'm also now in a position to strike deals with large content providers that may further expand the number of cameras available in the app. After the holidays I will be talking with as many as possible so that I can give people more of what they want to see while offering private camera owners the features and tools that they have been asking for.
leverenz said 4:19PM on 12-24-2009
My wife has the same addiction.
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