I have a simple Web Cam covering my garage and was looking for something a little better ( remote control / no need for PC in garage ???? ) I spotted this one


http://www.trackercam.com/index1.htm

and wondered if anyone had used one, or found a better solution ?

Have you ever heard of the X10? To find out about it, simply go to any site anywhere on the web and an annoying pop-up ad will tell you all you need to know. Not only that, but the text of the ad will mention that the camera is a great idea for security, but the images in the ad will suggest that you use it to spy on women. Some of the ads even barely suggest that you can mount them to look up women's skirts or down their shirts. Like I said, go anywhere on the entire web and you will find it. If pop up ads aren't your thing, they also offer banner ads.

Alternatively, boycotting X10 forever might be cool. It seems like you can't click anything on the web without having one of their huge ads pop up.

Rob

Oh believe me, they will never get a dime of my time. My ad-blocker software that comes with Norton Internet Security does a decent job of blocking them all (and improving my load times). I guess I didn't do a good enough job of expressing my sarcasm or frustration with x10! They must have had some serious cash to pay for all those ads....

Sadly, I will continue to support x10, although I wonder where they get the money to blanket the internet with their ads. They have popups on Hotmail, for crying out loud.

X10's products are great. I have no experience with their cameras (how many people are they getting with these ads?), but their other products are fantastic. As far as what you're trying to do, I don't see any other alternative to the xcams.

(by the way, your'e so right about the ads, they seem totally suggestive)

The all in one camera/web server packages aren't all that great.
If you have a decent video capture card in your computer you would be better off getting a higher quality camera. You can run the video(coax) up to 1000feet. Look for a camera that is color when there is light and switches to B/W during low light conditions. www.supercicuits.com has a good variety of cheap stuff or you could try commercial CCTV cameras like sony or JVC. I prefer the "cyberdome" camera made by www.kalatel.com or the "spectra series" from www.pelco.com but you'd be looking at 2-3k for the camera alone.

Alan

Go to this page to stop the ads for a month at a time...

That is just sad that a company I've never done business with needs a page like that... I could see where maybe because I use YaHoo each day that maybe I would need to click on something like this (because I agreed to a user agreement), but that is just sad!

Thanks for the link though! I'm loading it from all the work computers to stop the ads.

Sadly, I will continue to support x10, although I wonder where they get the money to blanket the internet with their ads.

I guess they got all that money because their pop-under campaign, by all accounts, has been hugely successful. Depressing but true, and I gather it really spurred a lot of other marketers to follow suit.

Is X10.COM not distinct from the X10 specification at this point? Can't you get X10 wireless stuff from somebody less annoying?

A couple of overview links on X10 here and here .

Thanks for the link though! I'm loading it from all the work computers to stop the ads.

The part that sucks is it's only good for 30 days. maybe setup a batch job to run every 30 days to hit that page...

Attached is one of the pictures from the X10 cam mailed to me at work with it's Xray Vision software It's Boomer and Pepper kicking it in the yard. Not exactly the quality the ads show, eh?

The part that sucks is it's only good for 30 days.

Assuming the cookie works (I have my doubts), I'm sure it's possible to hack the cookie and change its expiration date.

Actually it's much easier than that...

http://www.x10.com/home/optout.cgi?DAY=999&PAGE=http://www.x10.com/x10ads1.htm

The "DAY=" parameter said 30 by default. 999 is a much nicer number if you ask me...

I use OmniWeb under MacOSX (it's too bad it's not available for other OSes ), and it has the best ad-stopping support I've ever seen, built into the browser or not. Here are the things I have selected that prevent me from seeing basically anything annoying:

• Don't load anything from sites matching these expressions (followed by a list of real regexps -- the default one catched 95% of all ads)
• Don't automatically load images whose sizes match the standard sizes for ads
• Don't automatically load images that aren't from the site which loads them (I don't actually have this one selected as it breaks Yahoo!, but the first item takes care of most of this sort of stuff, anyway)
• Scripts are allowed to open new windows only in response to a link being clicked

While I constantly see X10 pop-{up,under}s on all my other OSes, I never see them running OmniWeb. It's bee-you-tee-ful. It's like it's 1993 again.

Okay, Tony, that was pretty cool.

Gotta love the X10 people for making it easy on us.

Not exactly the quality the ads show, eh?

Not exactly, given that either Boomer or Pepper (not sure which one) looks like a huge slug! No slugs in Texas, eh?

Is that Boomer or Pepper in your pic??

Is that Boomer or Pepper in your pic??

Boomer, the slug that sleeps on his back with legs in the air...

I was thinking "slugs" when I saw that picture too!

Calvin