CWUW

Hi there. Welcome to Chris Tiberius's witty look at the world of webcams.

I pledge to bring you, the viewer, critical, yet positive reviews of those webcams that pique my interest. The goal is to provide endless hours of entertainment and to promote refined voyeurism amongst the masses.

For those of you familiar with any of my other writing, I assure you that the demeaning, biting sarcasm so prevalent in nearly everything else I have to say will here be left right out. I will positively adhere to subtlety, courtesy, and honesty when thrashing the crap out of a webcam site.

For anyone who actually takes any of this seriously, please note that I am thrashing the crap out of the style and content of useless webcam sites, pointing out why they are useless, and avoiding any sort of personality attack. Personal attacks serve only to amuse cruel, heartless bastards like myself, and I feel amused enough already.

Useless Webcams Under Scrutiny This Month...

ChrisCam: Live From Boston

I figured out of fairness I ought to begin with my own webcam. The viewer is immediately struck with the incredible load time. If I were to rate the slowest things on earth, first would be the response time of the IRS, and second would be this site's load time. Once in, however, the artful blend of solid colors and white space pleases the eye and has been known to cause arousal. Since I have no life, the cameras frequently display me hard at work. Whether or not this is interesting is still open for debate. There is lots of content however. Many witty things written and little things hidden throughout the site. About the only thing more prevalent than text is my image. This is likely due to the fact that I have an ego problem.

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The Freezer Cam

This is a wonderfully useless webcam. The proprietor of the Freezer Cam decided that it might be an interesting thing to put a webcam in his freezer. He came to the conclusion that there are far too many webcams pointed at "goldfish or coffee-pot or something else equally boring," and he wished to diverge from the flock. Note the phrase equally boring. One might assume, then, that the Freezer Cam is somehow interesting. Alas, as you might have guessed, it is dark inside your freezer. In addition, even the owner of the site admits that the camera tends to freeze and ceases to operate. Overall the originality score is swamped by the futility score. There is an attempt at artistic flourish with the "Freezer Cam" banner, and the site does manage to use FrontPage DHTML bots, to the great irritation of some.

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The Ashtray Cam

Ah yes. For all you lung-hackers out there, I present the Original Ashtray Cam. I would, however, venture to say that the "Original" could perhaps be eliminated since the uselessness of this webcam would rule out it's emulation. Although it does have plenty of content, I would admit. I suggest you first meet "Bongo" the coconut monkey, take his tour and view all of his images. Quite stimulating. Then check out the Ashtray Cam Olympics which seeks to rate each nation by the number of its people who have viewed the Ashtray Cam. If you feel like watching the cam-owner smoke, he has kindly posted the hours of the day that he spends giving himself cancer for the viewer's pleasure. Good use of streaming video offsets the rather drab color scheme. I also found it extremely humorous that there is an ad-banner for HealthyNews.com.

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Outatime's Live Cam

The horror of this website cannot ever be overstated. It is essentially a "Back To The Future" shrine with, inexplicably, a webcam. The teal background and yellow text makes for an eye-torturing experience, one that has haunted me for days now. To my great annoyance, there is a looping MIDI rendition of Hewy Lewis's "Power of Love" that simply will not stop. It has infected my mind and won't go away. If you like the trilogy, you may still hate the website. Hazy pictures captured from videotape, the music and some links is about all you will find relating to the movies. I still don't understand why there is a webcam on this page. There is local Nashville-area information and weather, which is okay, but doesn't make up for the rest of the site. Please make this song go away.

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MntnWeb.com Presents Binghamton NY

The most obviously useless webcam on the Southern Tier! Despite the fact that image I saw was from October 1997, this is useless because it is a picture, from on top of a mountain 8 miles away from the city, of nowheresville New York. I can say this because I've been to Binghamton. That's all it takes to realize how useless Binghamton is. Okay, so there's a SUNY school there, big deal. This site's lime green background and blue text is unique, grotesque, and supposedly represents the abilities of a web-hosting company. The barely legible "Weather Maps for Binghamton, NY" banner is artistically placed between too gaudy, tornado animated gifs. In case you wish to advertise your company on the page (and subsequently watch it's revenue plummet), there is a convenient link to their ad rates. Check out their bulletin board for a few laughs, sign the ubiquitous guestbook, and catch up on all the local events in the Southern Tier! Just what the web needs, another city-cam. Hey, they have had 8000 hits.

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Chris Tiberius of ChrisCam.com