Live video experiment

UPDATE: This experiment is over. See the December 21 2007 post for the latest live video experiment.

I've been wanting to provide a live video feed of the BirdCam for years, and after much experimentation, I've got something for you to try out.

To view the live video, you will need:
- the latest Yahoo Messenger application installed on your PC/Mac/Linux box
- a Yahoo id.

Details on how to download and install Messenger and get an ID are at:
http://messenger.yahoo.com/newtoim.php#q3

(You may want to use the "Custom Install" option to install only Messenger, and not the other Yahoo "optional" products.)

After you've completed these steps and have Messenger running, add a new contact named "seattlebirdcam". This will send a message to me and I'll approve the request as soon as I can (this may take several hours if I don't happen to be sitting at my computer).

If the live video is running, you'll see a "View My Webcam" label next to the "SeattleBirdCam.com" id. Just click on this label and a video window should pop up and, after a few moments, start displaying the live video feed. In my testing, I've found that a display rate of about 3 updates per second is typical.

Let me know how this works for you! Please leave your comments and questions here in this blog post comment section so that everyone can see them.

Good luck!