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

[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).