Henchman's Helper -- page filled with webcams

Posted by Mark Frauenfelder, January 22, 2009 11:16 AM | permalink

Today's Very Short List reviews Henchman's Helper: a webpage filled with live video cams and weather information from around the world.

The site’s attractions include 42 live webcams from around the world, 9 constantly updated weather graphics, and a large, ominous-looking infrared satellite image of North America.

VSL reviews Henchman's Helper

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Discussion

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#1 posted by Bonnie, January 22, 2009 11:28 AM

Lucius Fox would not be amused.

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#2 posted by Mojave, January 22, 2009 11:38 AM

Doesn't really seem "live" to me...when you bring up an individual cam it's just static shots.

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#3 posted by seyo, January 22, 2009 11:58 AM

Wow, talk about synchronicity re:henchmen. My friend just IMed me this link. I LOLed.

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#4 posted by joelf, January 22, 2009 12:04 PM

Hey there! I made that! Thanks bb!

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#5 posted by snsr, January 22, 2009 12:10 PM

Joel - S I C K.
I love it- one of my new favorite sites. It's simplicity is inspiring.

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#6 posted by Bledsoefilms, January 22, 2009 12:19 PM

First off, let me say that the graphically, this is pretty awesome. It's got a great aesthetic- love the idea.

I gotta go w/ Mojave here though- these imagines clearly aren't live. Most of them are only 3-4 frames that on a cycle. This might not be true with all of them, but it's certainly true with most of the surveillance videos- besides, night and day transition way to quick.

I think it's kinda misleading when you call these "live webcams." I'd be inclined to simply call it as it is- a really awesome concept art design.

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#7 posted by joelf, January 22, 2009 12:22 PM

When you click on the image it brings up the latest still image. It's as live as I can get it!

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#8 posted by Scuba SM, January 22, 2009 12:28 PM

Ah, finally, something suitable to have running on my second monitor full time.

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#9 posted by antquinonez, January 22, 2009 12:31 PM

too bad they're not live.

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#10 posted by NJAldwin, January 22, 2009 1:25 PM

Awesome. Definitely something to run on an auxiliary monitor.

I can't help noticing that the "Ross Hall Pendulum Cam" thinks it's October 3, 1970. Talk about not live--I didn't know webcams even existed in the 70's! Hehe.

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#11 posted by Astonishment, January 22, 2009 3:40 PM

Of course I'm reminded of Ozymandias in ""Watchmen," Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons' graphic-novel...

http://www.agrifonte.com/sonrisa/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/watchmen10.jpg

...and soon-to-be-a-major-nerdfest-motion-picture....

http://www.neomanox.com/manoxfilms/carteles/Watchmen/Ozymandias.jpg

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#12 posted by chezzo, January 23, 2009 3:35 AM

Definitely not live - the fact that some of the cams flicker between daytime and night-time shots is a clue!
And of the cams which are constantly either day or night, some are wrong - it's definitely not dark in Poland right now!

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#13 posted by Andrew W, January 23, 2009 7:19 AM

"... [I]nfrared satellite image of North America" where North America equals mostly just America.

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#14 posted by Ugly Canuck, January 23, 2009 8:36 AM

It's not live, but the concept is grand.
What would it take to get it really live? What's the problem? What's the bottleneck/hindrance in tech terms?

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#15 posted by joelf, January 23, 2009 11:09 AM

Here is the bottleneck:

This site uses PNG's, CSS and hotlinked images to do what it does.

For this to have live images, I need to find images that are a single updated image. this single image needs to be able to be hotlinked directly. I used to have a pile of live images, but I kept getting the "Please don't steal this image" message, because i'm displaying a linked image on another webpage.

The site is Creative Commons, if you want to improve upon it, please do! Have fun, and use it only for the powers of good.

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#16 posted by Ugly Canuck, January 23, 2009 11:28 AM

Ah so.
thanx joel 4 response.

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#17 posted by Reverend T, January 23, 2009 1:26 PM

Nice piece of web art.

The visual style also reminds me of NINs "Survivalism" video.

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#18 posted by joelf, January 23, 2009 4:14 PM

#13 posted by Andrew W

You need to click on the image. It gets bigger.