Labnet
603 W 13th St #1A-220
Austin, TX 78701
Phone: 800-369-6507
WWW: http://www.labnet.com/ © 1996 Lab Online Services, Inc.
The Internet presents unique and incredible opportunities for any business. One way create a web page that people will want to visit is to add a video camera to your site. Some people just plug one into their computer, point it at their cat's scratching post, and walk away. Others get more innovative. KIPX in San Francisco puts a camera on the roof of the Fairmont Hotel, which shows a continuously updated view of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.
A business can point a camera at a scenic view, the Texas Capital building, various streets, anything as a promotion to their web site. Web users like to see activity and spontaneity. It turns a web page into an active site.
Believe it or not, adding video to your web site is easy. Picture putting your own live television station online. An inexpensive solution is to purchase the C-U-See-Me video camera and computer interface from any local computer store. It retails for approximately $200. The picture quality is surprisingly good for such an inexpensive package. You get a small mountable camera that connects to an interface card which goes inside your PC. It comes with the necessary software, although you may have to customize it to work on your web page.
For a higher quality video link, you can use your own video camera, like a Sony 8mm camcorder or whatever with a high quality CCD imaging system. You can also get the Snappy video solution from your local video store. It takes amazingly high-quality photographs and digitizes them into a computer file image (either gif, jpeg, etc.)
A great piece of software for automatically handling taking the pictures, and sending them to your web page is called SNAPCAP. Snapcap runs under Windows 95 or Windows NT using the Snappy camara solution, and is $79 shareware. Check out their web page for full details and lists of sites using SNAPCAP.
Go to Yahoo and type in the keywords - internet spy cameras. You will get plenty of links to interesting cameras connected to the web. Also, these products and newer ones are accessible from their companies respective web pages.
To get a video site going on the Internet, Labnet suggests the following configuration:
First, select a web page package that meets your needs. You may select anything from the promo basic web page, to the Virtual Presence site where your address reads http://www.yourname.com.
This decision depends on your budget and level of presence you wish to have on the Internet.
Then, you will need a dedicated line which will be sending camera images at regular intervals to your web page. A 28.8kbps line is sufficient for most applications. A dedicated 28.8 line from Labnet is $99/month. You will need to use your own 28.8 modem on your end, and give us a 48-hour turnaround time to setup your line.
Many people use this opportunity to configure their computer and perhaps their entire office network to get e-mail in real time. Labnet can suggest ways in which a small or home office with several computers can accomplish this using a simple peer-to-peer network like Windows 95. Call Labnet for complete details at 512-482-8064 or 800-369-6507.
Go Back To Labnet's Internet Resource Guide
Labnet
603 W 13th St #1A-220
Austin, TX 78701
Phone: 800-369-6507
WWW: http://www.labnet.com/
© 1996 Lab Online Services, Inc.