I believe that one of the most under appreciated technologies available are web cam feeds. No I am not talking about two people sitting at a computer talking to each other. Instead, I mean the feeds that give you a live look at places around the world. Now we can even view these feeds all through the iGoogle page, thanks to My Webcam(Auto Refresh).

Now let me get the most blatantly obvious downside of My Webcam(Auto Refresh) right out of the way. It does indeed slow down your iGoogle page significantly. You will notice that your iGoogle page is constantly loading the new images. While you can edit the time between refresh, I remedied this by creating a tab dedicated to these live web cams feeds. It is really quite a marvel to be looking at a live feed of Paris in one eye and the New York Skyline in another. In fact that tab has turned into my eye into the world. I would highly suggest it.

It is fairly simple to get the My Webcam(Auto Refresh) gadget set to your favorite feed. Just go to the gadget settings and insert the URL of the Webcam feed. This is easily obtainable if you are using Firefox. To get the URL just right click and select copy image location.

So if you can get past the inherit slowdown of your iGoogle page, I highly suggest looking at the worldly views available through the My Webcam(Auto Refresh) gadget.