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Tauranga's Tivon Coles knows where some eye-catching webcams are to be found. But then, he has been paying attention to them since the late 90s. The ones he likes are those you can control, turn this way and that and zoom in on points of interest.
"There are quite a number of cameras you can manipulate around the world," Coles says, a particularly good example being one that gives panoramic views of Sydney (www.canon.com.au/misc/webcam.aspx).
Some cameras clearly open up opportunities for people with a voyeuristic bent, but Coles' interest is professional. He is network manager and a shareholder in Enternet Online, which operates several webcams in Tauranga and Mt Maunganui, and has done so for about a decade.
Two of Enternet's cameras have remote control capability _ one is aimed at Mt Maunganui's main beach (www.citynews.co.nz/webcams/mtbeach), the other looks over Tauranga harbour from the yacht club roof that it shares with a garden gnome.
WaveCam, as the beach camera is called, was the centre of claims in a 2005 TVNZ Close Up programme that watchers had less than wholesome interests, using the camera mostly to ogle beach-goers. Coles shrugs off the suggestion, saying anyone intent on that would find more to look at on any of the web's porn sites.
Privacy from probing webcams is a tricky issue nonetheless, and one the Law Commission is grappling with as it conducts a review of privacy law that will include responses to new technology.
WaveCam certainly gets lots of traffic. It was viewed about 12,000 times in July, and nearly double that in January, providing visitors with clear enough images to recognise people. A popular stunt with beach visitors, Coles says, is to plant themselves in front of the camera while on their cellphone to someone _ often on the other side of the world - connected to the webcam site.
"We actually had a call once from someone in the United States to tell us that the yacht club gnome was missing." There are countless webcams around the world, often used by tourism operators to entice visitors to picturesque spots. Bob Prangnell, a Pukekohe software developer, saw the potential in the early 2000s for creating a program, Webcam Watcher, that would group numerous webcams into a desktop control panel, letting cyber-travellers readily switch from a camera in one part of the world to another.
Webcam Watcher, which is freeware, lists about 2700 cameras.
Prangnell has since redeveloped the software for a more serious purpose.
Netcam Watcher monitors and records images from surveillance cameras and, with a remote control add-on, allows property owners to keep an eye on things back home from anywhere in the world via the internet.
Prangnell has built a thriving business, Beausoft, selling Netcam Watcher worldwide.
"Our customers include universities, a whole bunch of police departments in America, banks... right down to people who just want to set up a one-camera system in their own home." Surveillance with a different aim is behind a series of cameras run by GNS Science, whose GeoNet geological hazard monitoring system includes webcams focused on volcanic hotspots (www.geonet.org.nz/volcano/activity/ruapehu/index.html).
GeoNet's volcano-net co-ordinator, Craig Miller, says there are cameras on White Island, and pointing at Mt Ruapehu, Mt Ngauruhoe and Mt Taranaki.
The cameras aren't much use at night or in cloudy conditions but the images they capture are supplemented by seismic and GPS data to provide a real-time record of volcanic activity.
"In an eruption one of the things we're interested in is how high an ash column is going, so we can use the webcams to measure that." Airlines have a keen interest in such information.
Miller, who is based at Wairakei, thinks they might also be valuable for people wondering whether conditions are right for a spot of skiing, a use to which he puts the Ruapehu camera.
"They serve a dual purpose. They display our logo, so promote us, and 99 per cent of the time they just take a pretty picture." But during an eruption, if the weather's clear, they can provide information of use to the geological response.
The Ruapehu camera has also inspired a series of paintings by Taihape-born artist Emma Pratt, who has been watching the mountain from her home in Seville, in Spain, since 2006.
Pratt's work, 40 Days, was exhibited by GNS in Lower Hutt, and at Whitespace gallery in Auckland, in July and August.
"It was great to present to scientists their own research tool with a new interpretation, a personal one - what the webcams meant to me," Pratt says.
What they mean is the ability for her to check out places she holds dear from the far side of the world.
Anthony Doesburg is an Auckland technology journalist.
