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World Webcams

Webcam is the name for live cameras whose pictures are available on the web. Thousands of cameras have been set up around the world to capture live images. Most of them show a new picture every 4 to 60 seconds. Some update every hour. Some sites automatically update their pictures and for some you have to click to get an update although this is becoming rare.

Since we provide travel information, we have Webcam links on many of our city and place pages in the World Links section.

Click here to go to the Web Multimedia travel topic. More and more travel and other sites are adding video movies or streaming video and audio. You will need to download some additional software to see and hear this stuff. Fortunately, most of it is free.

Thank you "The Living Earth" for letting us see the earth from space.

Click here to see where it is day and night in the world right now. You can also get a globe view of day and night by clicking here.

Click here to go to the Earth and Moon Viewer homepage. It's wonderful.

Click here to go to the University of Wisconsin Space Science and Engineering Center for various live shots from space including beautiful world-wide composite images.

Below are two sections.

Things To Remember When Viewing Webcams
Time	The United States is one of only 7 remaining countries on the planet that cling to the 12-hour clock as its standard time measure with its AM and PM notation. The rest of the world uses the 24-hour clock. If a webcam picture shows a time without an AM or PM after it, it is probably using 24-hour time. Instead of AM and PM, 1:00 PM becomes 1300 Hours up until 12:00 AM (midnight) which is 24:00 hours. 0300 AM is just 0300 Hours. Wikipedia has good articles on the 12-hour clock and the 24-hour clock.
Date	When you see the date shown on a webcam picture, be careful. You might mistakenly think the webcam is not being maintained as the date is so old! What do you think 08/01/2008 represents - 1 August 2007 or 8 January 2008? Well, it all depends on the country the webcam is in. Wikipedia has a nice article about calendar dates including which countries use which of 3 calendar date systems. (The third system uses a year-month-day sequence but you can always tell this format because the year is expressed as 4 digits - 2008-01-08. As usual, the United states is in the minority with only a small number of countries that use the month/day/year numeric date sequence. (Of course, the United States is in the majority on one standard - and that is driving on the right side of the road.)
No picture	This may be because it is taking a long time to download the page, or the webcam picture or software needed to view it, or it is a popular website and overloaded with demand. This is especially noticeable if you have a 56K modem and they are using fancy graphics along with the webcam picture. The camera may be off due to a malfunction or for maintenance, but they will usually tell you that on the page. In rare causes the webcam may be switched off due to security concerns. Cruise ships transiting the Suez canal are required to turn off their bridge webcams by the Egyptian government for security reasons.
Black Picture	It may be night and they just leave the camera on. If you know the country the camera is in and can locate the country on a world map, go here for a nice view of where it is day and night in the world.
Different language	Don't be surprised to find a webcam page with the text in a different language than your own if it is another country that does not speak your language. Often, it doesn't matter as you know what the webcam is about since you got to it through an English search. But, if you want to read the text in English, if the language is a major language, you can quickly get it automatically translated by using Google's language tools or one of the other web page machine translation tools that are out there.
Adult Photos and Ads	With the proliferation of ads on websites, even if you knowingly aren't visiting an adult website, you or your children may be exposed to nudity of explicit sexuality in both pictures and text at a webcam directory site.
Special Software	Although the majority of webcams will run using Windows Media Player or one of other free multimedia players that you can download, more and more webcams are using Active-X controls and Java scripts. They will normally detect whether your browser accepts this software and tell you if you need to allow Active-X controls or Java scripts to run. Of course, this is your decision. Some webcams require other special software applications that you need to download and install. Unless the software (Active-X control, Javascript, or applications, is from a well-known company like Sony, it can be risky as it may contain a virus. Make sure your firewall and anti-virus software is up to date and operating whenever you are on the web.

About Our Listings

The Webcam Locator section contains websites that have lists of webcam locations in the world with links to them. Think of them as Webcam search engines!
The Webcam Systems section contains websites that have downloadable software you can install to get the capability to receive and have control of the remote camera. The video will be updated much faster and look better than the stationary camera video that exists at most webcam sites. Webcam sites have to install special hardware and software to transmit this better video picture and let you have control of it. But once you see it, you'll be very impressed and wish all the webcam sites had the system.

Webcam Locator

Note: We do not knowingly list webcam directory sites that have adult ads or adult webcams.

Sonrisa yachting. This is an international yacht broker website, and of all webcam directories, they have the most comprehensive webcam list in English that we have found. It is just a straight-forward, lengthy, alphabetically list by the webcam name which is usually a city or country name but may be a prominent landmark name. The country and a link to view it are provided. Simple and elegant!

DMOZ Webcam Directory. A great site to find both webcams around the world and information on buying and using webcams.

WorldLive.cz. This is the most comprehensive webcam site we have seen. It is in Czech and partially in English. We take you to the English version. On their home page is the link webcams.worldlive.cz which takes you to a list of categories. Just search until you find what you want. Also on the homepage is a link called maps.worldlive.cz which takes you to a world map with red dots showing webcam locations. Click on an area of the world to expand it and keep clicking until you have zoomed in to the region or country you are interested in. It shows a list of webcams for that area. Click on a name to go there. Unfortunately, even though you selected English on the homepage, once you start to zoom in on the map, the pages revert to Czech text.

LiveViews.org. Another excellent site to quickly get to Webcam sites via scroll lists: one for states of the United States and one for countries of the world.

Leonard's "Cam World". Although they list a lot of webcams, they have an annoying popup ad in the middle of their pages that obscures some of their information.

Online Camera. Organized by categories and locations. Here is their find page that lists all the categories and countries they cover.

Webcam Central. A great Webcam site that categorizes sites and links to them. Click on their "LocationCam" button on the home page to get a list of countries they cover. Then click on a country to see and go to all the locations for it.

Webcam Galore. *** Highly recommended. They have one of the best selections and their user interface is very easy to use.

The Webcam Network. They have the most exhaustive list of places in the world including almost every major city in a country although this does not mean there is necessarily a webcam at that place. They will list the closest webcams to a place even though it is in a different country.

WebworldCam.com Another good webcam directory except they don't indicate whether a country has any webcams until you click on a country name and get a page with no webcams.

Webcam-Index.com. Another good webcam directory.

Yahoo! Webcam Directory They have an extensive list of Webcam sites and Webcam index sites divided into an Indoor and Outdoor directory.

World-Webcams.net A beautiful website with webcams for many countries. You can view the site in English, Polish and German.

World Weather Webcams This site links to weather webcams from around the world.

EarthCam Another excellent site listing Webcams around the world by categories.

Webcam Systems

Live Webcam Site. The icon shown on the left is used on our World Links pages to show you that one or more webcam sites are available at this place. You then click on the icon to go to a selected webcam site for that place.

Canon Webview™/LiveScope™ The Canon company has developed an amazing webcam video system. If a site has installed the equipment, you can view the video camera picture using their free downloadable Viewer program. They have two viewer versions: a Java Version Viewer that can be used even through firewalls and a Helper Version Viewer.

The icon shown on the left with the letter C next to it is used on our World Links pages to show that the webcam site has the Canon Webview™ capability. You can click on the icon to go to a selected Canon Webview webcam site for that place.

Click here to go to the Canon Webview™/LiveScope™ site.
Controllable Webcams of the world. By country.

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