We've set up some demos of the different technologies the WebCam world allows whenever you decide to set up a WebCam.

As you may have read on our "Hardware" section, there are several ways to connect a WebCam to a computer. Let's rereview them as a summary:

• Serial Cameras : This type of cameras connect to the serial port of a computer and often don't provide live video; mostly indicated for snapshot-only sites, surveillance sites, weathercameras and places or events which don't require neither audio nor live video streams. They sacrifice the video streams for the high qualitty of the shots they provide. They are quite easy to set up.

• Parallel Cameras : Probably the most extended type of cameras in the past, use to plug into the printer port (either sharing the printer or not) and provide live video at an acceptable frame rate. Most of the times, the image qualitty of this type of cameras is lower than the serial, digital or network ones, but are the cheapest and fair solution for implementing a streaming camera to broadcast live video events, even with audio with the appropiate software. They're extremely easy to set up.

• VideoCapture Cameras : Many people does not want to invest on a computer camera and want to take benefit of their handycam used to film them on holidays, skiing and so... Since most of the newest VGA cards already support video capture, people just plug their handy cams and with an appropiate driver for the capture card (or VGA capture driver) they turn they handy cam into a WebCam. You just need to match your capture card video system with the one in the camera (NTSC for USA, PAL for Europe,...) and find the appropiate cables to make the connections (often offered by either the VGA/Videocapture card or the handy cam itself). Installation of this kind of cameras is average difficult.

• USB Cameras : They're the present of a good connectivity, a nice frame rate and image quality, along with affordability. Since the introduction of the USB port into the newest computers, most users are migrating to this technology, which allows multiple devices to be connected in a chain way (up to 127 devices!) and you don't even need to turn on/off your computer for the Operating Ssystem to find the USB device you're installing. You get more frame rate and in most cases, more image quality than the parallel cameras. Again, you can easily broadcast live video and audio with the appropiate software. They're extremely easy to set up too.

• Network Cameras : Network cameras have been used for surveillance/security purposes but this does not mean they can't be as much useful or easy to set up than the rest. Imagine you want to put a camera on the roof of a 10 stories building. Unless you put a computer side by side with the camera (far expensive solution!), you'll have to use a Network camera, which contains an embeded small computer in it, with a web server. So using UTP cable (network cable), you connect the camera (and its embeded computer) to a network hub, assign an IP address to it and you're done! Network cameras often offer a high image qualitty and sufficient frame rate to see what's happening somewhere live. Network cameras may seem more expensive than the rest, but in fact, they're cheaper if you take in consideration that you don't need to buy an extra computer to put it many miles away from you. The installation of this type of cameras often imply some computer and network knowledge, but it's still quite easy. The network set up part may require the assistance of a network technician.

• Digital Cameras : Some digital cameras, used to take snapshots of your family, friends, trips... and replacing the standard film roll cameras, can be used as video sources too. Some digital cameras come with a video driver for you to install it on your Operating System so the appropiate WebCam software recognizes the digital cameras as if it was a video capture source. Actually, most of the times this would be a snapshot WebCam, but there are digital cameras that do support full video (lower frame rate, higher image qualitty). Don't expect audio with this technology unless you add it later. Installation is fair easy.

Once you have started your own WebCam after viewing some samples, it's time to PROMOTE it, make it available to people so other users may be able to find it and return to it once they've bookmarked your site.