The return of the webcam

Through a series of miracles yesterday, I stumbled across something I’ve been searching for forever: an OS X driver (plus a fix for OS X 10.3) for my old USB QuickCam. (I also found an add-on that lets me use said USB cam with iChat AV. Whee!) I then downloaded a program called EvoCam, and just like that, the webcam is back up (view in popup). (No guarantees as to how long it will stay up.)

How’s that for a bit of nostalgia? Back in the early days of weblogs, a lot of folks had webcams…it was part of the package. Posts, a list of links to your friends’ sites, a webcam, link to your Amazon wishlist, maybe a link to your Epinions page, an about page, a guestbook or little chat widget in the sidebar, etc. It was a social space to move around in. Now that everyone is reading everything in RSS readers, a lot of that sort of thing has been lost. RSS readers are not that social, even with so-called “next gen” newsreaders that recommend sites based on what you already read. It’s mostly just information in, information out…little time or opportunity for play. Thank God for sites like Flickr, LiveJournal, and Fark, where people can still go to hang out and play around with the web and their friends a bit.