5 Things You Never Knew About Your Webcam

Do you know what else can you do with that webcam you have with you? If you think that it can just be utilized for video chatting, think again because webcam can be used for a number of purposes. Here are few of them.

Security System

There are plenty of free programs you can use to extend the features of a webcam like if you want to have remote security system. Simply install Yawcam (Windows only) or Vitamin D (for Windows and MAC), both are free and once installed, you can configure them to live stream video and watch it remotely.

Moreover, this software can also be configured to alert you or start recording when motion is detected in the frame of view — this is great because you obviously cannot monitor the feed from the camera all the time. For general surveillance, you can setup the software to take snapshots at mentioned time intervals and upload them to a remote FTP server.

Bar code reader

Reading bar codes and QR codes is easy with a smartphone and a free app. But you can do the same thing on a PC with a webcam. Download and install bcWebCam and it will automatically connect to your webcam to show the feed. Now just place the barcode or QR code in front of the webcam, the software will take a few seconds to recognize the embedded content and show you the text/link it contains.

Fun & gaming

A webcam can literally put you into the action while playing a game. At www.newgrounds.com, you will find a collection of short, quick online games and Adobe Flash applets that use your webcam. Just head to the games section and webcam games subsection on the website. You will need to allow Flash Player to access your webcam when it prompts you — this has to be done for each game. There are plenty of games available on the site that you can play using your webcam and each of them has a different theme.

Login via face recognition

Some computers may have this feature built in, but if you have a PC running Windows and a webcam, you can enable login via face recognition easily. Go to www.luxand.com/blink or http://bananascreen.en.softonic.com and download the free software. In the initial configuration register your face with the software and set an auto-lock for Windows.

Creating funny effects

If you go to www.cameroid.com, you can use any webcam to take funny photos — either with various filters, distortion effects, scenes or frames. You don’t need to install anything or even sign up — just give the site permission to access your webcam through Adobe Flash when prompted. Once you take a photo, you can either save it to the Cameroid public gallery or download the JPG file to your computer. Even if you have not taken online college classes in photography you can still enjoy playing around with these fun effects.

You can also try out similar effects at www.seenly.com. You can also get software to create real time effects while you video chat with someone using Skype or Google Talk.

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