Henchman's Helper -- page filled with webcams

Today's Very Short List reviews Henchman's Helper: a webpage filled with live video cams and weather information from around the world.

The site’s attractions include 42 live webcams from around the world, 9 constantly updated weather graphics, and a large, ominous-looking infrared satellite image of North America.

VSL reviews Henchman's Helper

• [Ugly Canuck]

  It’s not live, but the concept is grand.
  What would it take to get it really live? What’s the problem? What’s the bottleneck/hindrance in tech terms?

• [Bledsoefilms]

  First off, let me say that the graphically, this is pretty awesome. It’s got a great aesthetic- love the idea.

  I gotta go w/ Mojave here though- these imagines clearly aren’t live. Most of them are only 3-4 frames that on a cycle. This might not be true with all of them, but it’s certainly true with most of the surveillance videos- besides, night and day transition way to quick.

  I think it’s kinda misleading when you call these “live webcams.” I’d be inclined to simply call it as it is- a really awesome concept art design.

• [joelf]

  When you click on the image it brings up the latest still image. It’s as live as I can get it!

• [joelf]

  #13 posted by Andrew W

  You need to click on the image. It gets bigger.

• [Scuba SM]

  Ah, finally, something suitable to have running on my second monitor full time.

• [antquinonez]

  too bad they’re not live.

• [NJAldwin]

  Awesome. Definitely something to run on an auxiliary monitor.

  I can’t help noticing that the “Ross Hall Pendulum Cam” thinks it’s October 3, 1970. Talk about not live–I didn’t know webcams even existed in the 70′s! Hehe.

• [Reverend T]

  Nice piece of web art.

  The visual style also reminds me of NINs “Survivalism” video.

• [Anonymous]

  There’s always this ancient thing, if you want *live* webcams.
  http://www.butterfat.net/goocam/

• [chezzo]

  Definitely not live – the fact that some of the cams flicker between daytime and night-time shots is a clue!
  And of the cams which are constantly either day or night, some are wrong – it’s definitely not dark in Poland right now!

• [joelf]

  Here is the bottleneck:

  This site uses PNG’s, CSS and hotlinked images to do what it does.

  For this to have live images, I need to find images that are a single updated image. this single image needs to be able to be hotlinked directly. I used to have a pile of live images, but I kept getting the “Please don’t steal this image” message, because i’m displaying a linked image on another webpage.

  The site is Creative Commons, if you want to improve upon it, please do! Have fun, and use it only for the powers of good.

• [Bonnie]

  Lucius Fox would not be amused.

• [Andrew W]

  “… [I]nfrared satellite image of North America” where North America equals mostly just America.

• [Mojave]

  Doesn’t really seem “live” to me…when you bring up an individual cam it’s just static shots.

• [Astonishment]

  Of course I’m reminded of Ozymandias in “”Watchmen,” Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons’ graphic-novel…

  http://www.agrifonte.com/sonrisa/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/watchmen10.jpg

  …and soon-to-be-a-major-nerdfest-motion-picture….

  http://www.neomanox.com/manoxfilms/carteles/Watchmen/Ozymandias.jpg

• [Ugly Canuck]

  Ah so.
  thanx joel 4 response.

• [seyo]

  Wow, talk about synchronicity re:henchmen. My friend just IMed me this link. I LOLed.

• [joelf]

  Hey there! I made that! Thanks bb!

• [snsr]

  Joel – S I C K.
  I love it- one of my new favorite sites. It’s simplicity is inspiring.