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by Alan Williamson.
Original Post: View your WebCam on your Blackberry
Feed Title: Technical @ alan.blog-city.com
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Feed Description: (Technical) the rants of a java developer trapped in the body of a java developer!
While looking for address book software for my Blackberry I stumbled upon this really cool application that claimed to let your view your webcam on your Blackberry in realtime. I thought this too cool to be true and was even sceptical of the screen shots and marketing claims.
It is fair to note at this stage that I have not downloaded any software for my Blackberry yet and it's been over 12months since I have had it. Email on the move is just so cool in itself how can you improve on features! Well you can.
Terratial (http://www.terratial.com/) produces a range of software that lets you view various images on your Blackberry. You can have a webcam view, screensaver, or even an image browser. I downloaded the application over-the-wire and it installed it with no problems. You register online for your own webcam, but I just played around with the demo cams to see how good it was. The photo here is of the Atlanta Traffic WebCam; not much use to me here in Scotland mind you, but it serves to prove the point; your Blackberry has much greater depth!
One of the nice features of this software is the way it can transfer images to your device; either via WAP or via email. That's really cool due to the way the wireless operators bill airtime. For example, T-MobileUK charges me per KB when I WAP something, however it is free for all email I consume! So as you can appreciate, the more data I can pump down the 'free' channel the better my monthly bill looks.
Looking at the Blackberry Java API for integration to their email and address book, this looks relatively easy to hook into. Using the email application as a transport layer for your applications. It got me thinking. I could write a Java MIDlet that would sync with the address book via email. I could then write a CFML application to maintain/manage my (LDAP) address book via a web interface. Hit a single button, and boom, the email is generated and sent to my Blackberry to update its address book. The same process could work the other way, with the Blackberry generating an email to the webapp.
At any rate ... time to setup the webcam in the childrens playroom so I can keep an eye on them ... where ever I may be! :)
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While looking for address book software for my