Pet Peeve: "webcam"

[sparr]

This is not specifically aimed at you, person who prompted me to post. It is aimed at the masses.

Having a camera, no matter how cheap, grainy, or spherical, attached to your computer does not make it a webcam. The defining trait of a webcam is how it is used, namely, to take photos or video directly to the web. If you take a snapshot to your hard drive, and eventually put it on your website, you are just using a really cheap camera in the same way any other camera would be used. Until I can see a real-time updated view of you (or your dog, or your garden, or whatever else the camera is pointed at) on the web, it is not a webcam.

</rant>

Comments

[childofmetis.livejournal.com]

I have an iSight :D I used to use an iSight as a webcam a while ago. Sometimes I still use it that way- but now it's usually to take ridiculous LJ-worthy pictures of myself.

[miketodd13.livejournal.com]

So if one uses their computer-attached video-capable camera only with things such as Skype, and Yahoo Instant Messenger, and MSN Messenger... then what would the correct term be? :)

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

make one up. pick one of the dozen brand names cameras marketed for those uses are sold under (remember when Thumb Drive and Jump Drive were trademarked names?). just don't take an existing term and try to squeeze a new meaning into it.

[miketodd13.livejournal.com]

Ah, and now we get into the semantics issue. To fast forward a bit, the point of communication is to convey ideas. We have rules for language and definitions because otherwise, we wouldn't be able to convey ideas very well. Language evolves. A word might start out with one root, meaning a particular thing, and years later mean something completely different because of how people have taken to using it.

Example: decimate. Here I will be a hypocrite, and say that it does somewhat annoy me when people misuse this term. Its original meaning was to take/destroy a tenth of. But it's come to mean more the reverse of that through common parlance. And in fact the incorrect usage has become so common, that it is now correct.

I feel that the same thing applies here.

Another good point you mention is usage of the device versus terminology. If you hit someone over the head with a gun, you still call it a gun, not a club. But to bastardize the word "webcam" into a verb, I wholeheartedly agree with you that people are not "webcamming" when they are taking pictures or videos and posting them, any more than someone is "shooting" in the above example.

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

I will acquiesce to your usage with video chat software. My primary issue is with the misuse of the word when someone is just taking a picture, like they would with any camera (USB, P&S, DSLR, whatever). If you point the device at something and press a button to take a single picture, it is a "camera". "webcam" specifically denotes (and always has, imho) streaming video (or at least some facsimile thereof).

[miketodd13.livejournal.com]

Ah, I wasn't clear on that point -- in the original post you seemed to make a note of specifically streaming it to the web, so I thought the "web" part of the "webcam" was what you were concentrating on.

In which case, like I said... I agree wholeheartedly. If someone buys a webcam but never uses it to stream video, then it's really no more than a low-quality digital camera (and one that isn't very portable, at that).