Brainstorming – WebCam, EarthCam, and Snapshot Video Links

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Brainstorming – WebCam, EarthCam, and SnapShot Video Links

“Give man a match, and he’ll be warm for a minute, but set him on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.” – Anonymous.

Hi everyone and welcome back! I am glad you made it here today, because as always we are going to take a shot at some cool ideas. Critical thinking is what we will go ahead and arm ourselves with before doing any brainstorming. Do me a favor please and look at your hands right now, this second. Yes, stop reading and look at your fingertips. Your fingers have prints that only you have. You are unique, you are special, there is no second you. You can do things that you never imagined before. Power is inside you, you just need to unleash it. Believe in you. Think about it please.

This time we will look at yet another way of obtaining links. However, this is probably the most unusual way many of us ever thought about. Today there are thousands of SEO companies with thousands of SEO professionals running around offering services, google placements, guaranteed search result spots, huge traffic, and many other wonderful things. How do we compete with these armies of SEO boys and girls? We out-think, out-smart, out-reach, out-energize, out-do, and out-everything them.

We can be number one because we can do something only few know and appreciate. We can think critically.

In this experiment we will be placing links on WebCam sites. We will be doing it with style.

Please keep in mind that the ideas and research presented on this site is for educational purposes only. We need to study the web to understand it better and it includes all aspects of it, good or bad.

Lately, it became fancy to install a webcam and have a streaming video from it online. Most oftenly people will point their webcam to the street, park, or some office buildings. Many hotels and resorts have live webcam streaming videos as well. Here is one example of such webcam: http://www.cozumel-hotels.net/webcam-hotel-palladium-resort-royal-suites-yucatan-pool-view/

I think many of us heard of these webcams many times by now. Naturally, with so many webcams being installed the webcam sites have formed one after another. These sites collect and classify webcams from different users online. Let’s take a look at these types of sites. Here is one example of such site: http://www.webcams.travel/, which allows us to add a link to our site where we have our webcam so people can come over and enjoy the streaming video.

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Of course, there is a problem here. We need a webcam and it’s live feed on our site where our link will lead the curious users. I only know of 2 ways of solving this issue:

1. We go to the nearest store, buy the webcam, place it on our balcony and create a streaming live video for everyone to see. This method is costly and time consuming. However, it will be something that a whitehat SEO business model related sites will want to do.

2. We get a feed from somewhere else and place it on our site.

We have no choice but look at the approach number two. The number one spot is pretty self-explanatory. Logically, we need a site that has a webcam feed from its webcam or webcams. Important detail here, these sites must not be webcam based, and their main purpose must not be webcams. This is because we want our links to have a long and happy life. Usually hotels work fine, with their low traffic and webcam that works 24/7. Here is our example from above: http://www.cozumel-hotels.net/webcam-hotel-palladium-resort-royal-suites-yucatan-pool-view/

How do we find sites like this one? Google of course: “hotel (Country/State/City/County/Other) live webcam”. Yes, we could just go inside the webcam catalog, pick a webcam, and take it. However, this way two webcams will be identical and there is a chance that your access will end soon. Therefore, this “easy” way doesn’t work for us.

A little note here, there are two types of webcam feeds:

1. A non-stop streaming feed. We can see people running around, ladies swimming in the pool (everyone sees this for some reason) and all the rest of the stuff.

2. Feed with constantly refreshing snapshots, every 5/10/15/120/240 minutes. For example this one: http://www.kioskitalia.it/:21/IP_CAMs/HotelPosta/meteo.jpg. If we refresh the page every 5 minutes or so, we can see the changes.

For the link dropping purposes, we can use webcams of two types. The main idea here is to integrate some webcam from out there into our site/page and add a link leading to it, to many specialized high-trust directories. Let’s say we decided to use a live feed streaming video webcam (example from the same site: http://www.marenostrumresort.com/en/resort/webcam_live). First thing we need to do is to look at the code of the page to see how the video is actually being displayed on the original page:

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It seems in this case the code used to display the video can be easily used to modify the video on another site. Let’s take the code below and add it to the page on our site:

var BaseURL = “http://62.81.68.162/”;

//var BaseURL = “http://webcam.marenostrumresort.com/”;

// DisplayWidth & DisplayHeight specifies the displayed width & height of the image.
// You may change these numbers, the effect will be a stretched or a shrunk image
var DisplayWidth = “352″;
var DisplayHeight = “288″;

// This is the path to the image generating file inside the camera itself
var File = “axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?resolution=CIF”;
// No changes required below this point
var output = “”;
if ((navigator.appName == “Microsoft Internet Explorer”) &&
(navigator.platform != “MacPPC”) && (navigator.platform != “Mac68k”))
{
// If Internet Explorer under Windows then use ActiveX
output = ‘<OBJECT ID=”Player” width=’
output += DisplayWidth;
output += ‘ height=’;
output += DisplayHeight;
output += ‘ CLASSID=”CLSID:DE625294-70E6-45ED-B895-CFFA13AEB044″ ‘;
output += ‘CODEBASE=”‘;
output += BaseURL;
output += ‘activex/AMC.cab#version=4,1,4,5″>’;
output += ‘<PARAM NAME=”MediaURL” VALUE=”‘;
output += BaseURL;
output += File + ‘”>’;
output += ‘<param name=”MediaType” value=”mjpeg-unicast”>’;
output += ‘<param name=”ShowStatusBar” value=”0″>’;
output += ‘<param name=”ShowToolbar” value=”0″>’;
output += ‘<param name=”AutoStart” value=”1″>’;
output += ‘<param name=”StretchToFit” value=”1″>’;
// Remove the // for the ptz settings below to use the code for click-in-image.
// output += ‘<param name=”PTZControlURL” value=”‘;
// output += BaseURL;
// output += ‘/axis-cgi/com/ptz.cgi?camera=1″>’;
// output += ‘<param name=”UIMode” value=”ptz-relative”>’; // or “ptz-absolute”
output += ‘<BR><B>Axis Media Control</B><BR>’;
output += ‘The AXIS Media Control, which enables you ‘;
output += ‘to view live image streams in Microsoft Internet’;
output += ‘ Explorer, could not be registered on your computer.’;
output += ‘<BR></OBJECT>’;
} else {
// If not IE for Windows use the browser itself to display
theDate = new Date();
output = ‘<IMG SRC=”‘;
output += BaseURL;
output += File;
output += ‘&dummy=’ + theDate.getTime().toString(10);
output += ‘” HEIGHT=”‘;
output += DisplayHeight;
output += ‘” WIDTH=”‘;
output += DisplayWidth;
output += ‘” ALT=”Camera Image”>’;
}
document.write(output);
document.Player.ToolbarConfiguration = “play,+snapshot,+fullscreen”

// Remove the // below to use the code for Motion Detection.
// document.Player.UIMode = “MDConfig”;
// document.Player.MotionConfigURL = “/axis-cgi/operator/param.cgi?ImageSource=0″
// document.Player.MotionDataURL = “/axis-cgi/motion/motiondata.cgi”;
</script>

Now, let’s look at the second type of webcam feed, where the snapshot image constantly refreshes. We simply take the url of the resource where the snapshot is taken from in the first place, and then put this url where we need it. It should look something like this: <img src=”http://www.kioskitalia.it/:21/IP_CAMs/HotelPosta/meteo.jpg”>. No this is not it, this method needs to be modified. We will talk about it in a minute.

Now, since we have a page with a webcam, we can start looking for directories where we can add the link to it. Ideally, of course, if our site is about Spain, then we probably should add a webcam from that country and so on. It’s important to remember not to have million other things on the same page with the webcam. This helps to speed up the approval of our webcam by the moderators on the sites we are adding it to.

Let’s search for some places we would like to add our links: “add a webcam”

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Keep in mind that all webcams are inspected. In other words in most of the catalogs we will need to wait and depend on the approval. This means we need to make our page presentable, without any “extra” information on it. Make sure to provide a real email, and answer all the questions and requirements by the moderators. Once approved, these links will not only give us trust and link juice, but also some traffic too. It’s a webcam after all and people like them.

Some experience based advice:

1. In the “Description” field we can always write a link with the anchor we need.
2. If nobody answers your request to add, repeat it only this time to the administrators mailbox.
3. Be as accurate as possible when stating a geographical location and choose a category.

Nowadays, it’s becoming increasingly popular to display a live webcam feed from the office windows. In other words, the webcam feed has a description saying something like “this is a view from our office window” and video is right there. This let’s everyone use this idea more widely, since office can be added to almost any ecommerce site.

Many of the sites that we want to place a link on, will ask us to provide a link to the thumbnail and the full image. Of course if we provide oursite.com as a main site and a link to another site for the actual webcam (example: http://www.kioskitalia.it/:21/IP_CAMs/HotelPosta/meteo.jpg), this can be a little awkward and result in our link not being placed there.

However, there is a small solution that works like a charm.

We create a folder, inside that folder a file named 1.php with this inside it:

< img src=”http://www.kioskitalia.it/:21/IP_CAMs/HotelPosta/meteo.jpg” >

Now we go into .htaccess and add the following:

RewriteEngine On
php_value display_errors 0
RewriteRule ^(.*)jpg 1.php [QSA]

When a moderator that is checking and making sure we are what we say we are, and clicks on the link we provided in the Img, Url, and other fields, the link (example: http://ouriste.com/5/webcam.jpg) displays the webcam snapshot from the original site. This way, php and .htaccess do the magic.

Finally, here is the list of sites where the webcam, if added, will give us most results:

http://www.webcams.travel/add/
http://www.earthcam.com/add_request.php
http://www.ukwebcameras.co.uk/Addwebcam.html
http://www.agocam.com/english/add.php3
http://www.webcampedia.com/add.php
http://www.123-cams.com/123camlogo.htm
http://www.worldlive.cz/en/add-webcam
http://live.joti.tv/
http://www.camcentral.com/add.php
http://www.kitt.net/php/submit.php
http://www.coolwebcams.net/add.php
http://www.travelcams.net/addwebcam.html
http://www.webcamgalore.com/EN/submit.html
http://www.fisgonia.com/submitcam.php
http://www.the-webcam-network.com/submit.html
http://globitude.com/post/webcam
http://www.camcentral.com/add.php
http://www.camscape.com/add.html
http://www.windfinder.com/webcams/add.htm
http://www.world-webcams.net/add.html
http://www.worldlive.cz/en/add-webcam
http://sionvalais.com/add/
http://worldcam.eu/nowakamera.html
http://www.world-cams.be/add-webcam
http://www.webcam-beach.com/add-webcam
http://www.liveworldwebcam.net/submit_webcam.php
http://www.myworldwebcams.com/submit_webcam.html
http://www.webcamteam.com/anmelden_e.php
http://www.heycam.com/submit/
http://www.webcam-index.com/cgi-bin/add.cgi
http://www.webcamsmania.com/cams/add.asp
http://www.camvista.com/
http://www.webcamsmatrix.com/add_webcam.asp
http://www.fisgonia.com/submitcam.php
http://gov.biz.ua/dir/10-0-0-0-1
http://www.listcam.com/Add.php
http://earthcam.ru/add/
http://webcams.net.ua
http://www.webworldcam.com/

http://www.web-cams-index.com/submit.html
http://www.travelwebcams.eu/submit/
http://www.adventurelandtravel.com/AdvCamSubmitForm.htm
http://www.eurowebcamsite.com/en/add-a-cam.html
http://www.webcams.ru/add-webcam.htm
http://www.geocam.ru/contacts/addwebcam.php
http://www.fisgonia.com/submitcam.php
http://www.webcams.travel/add/
http://www.earthcam.com/add_request.php
http://globitude.com/post/webcam