Ok, this one is a bit odd. Currently, I have a pretty picture of my city's skyline at night. It's nice and all, but I got to wondering: what if I could get a webcam stream that would change it automagically at intervals. I know you can do this with a set of photos, but what I want is a webcam stream that is either constant, whenever I have a network connection, or ever 5, 10, 15, or 30 minutes. I did a bit of seaching, but the only thing I found was a page on tucows for a piece of windows software that does exactly what I want. Except for the fact you need to keep the program open all the time.

I wonder if there is a mac program, or a plugin that does this, as that would be very sweet. And when my internet signal drops, it detects this and keeps the current photo, or can drop back to one of the in built wallpapers, so I know something is wrong. I am also unsure of if I want the stream to have a timestamp on the pics or not, as I don't know if that would get in the way.

there is a stream here:

http://www.clickondetroit.com/wxcam/1807532/detail.html

but it is quite grainy as it is, and blowing it up to 1024x768 would kill it.

any ideas? i'll find the webcam stream I want to use.

here's the link to the tucows software page:

http://www.tucows.com/preview/416354

oh, and that software I linked to is shareware. If someone knows of something that can do what I want that is freeware or open sorce, then great.

thanks.

-digital

Some of this may help.

I tried there first, as well as tucows, sourceforge, macupdate, and versiontracker.

there are 3 pieces of software on that page that do exactly what I am looking for, but all 3 are horrid shareware. I really would like something that is freeware, open source, or at the very least, donationware, but donationware that is not nagware.

-digital

Hows about writing a script that grabs the feed from the web cam and sets it as the desktop? Shouldn't be too hard.

A savy scripter could probably do it. You could put a condition in there that if it can't connect, it just waits x minutes and tries again. Scripting isn't my strong point, but it should be possible.

The last time I checked, AppleScript couldn't connect to a webserver. PERL can, but not AppleScript.

Is this something that is really worth pursuing? If there seems to be enough latent interest, I might be convinced to code something up in REALbasic... Don't hold your breath, though, it would probably take the better part of a month before I've got something out on the streets.

I was thinking a really simple app that runs in the background and changes the desktop picture at regular intervals. Users could have their choice of image sources: a URL or a folder on the hard drive.

Peace,
Drew
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