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There is a light bulb at the fire station in Livermore, California that has been burning for 110 years. It has only been turned off for short periods, but unlike every other incandescent bulb, the filament has not burned out. The bulb burned at 60 watts when it was first used in 1901, and now is a 4-watt night light. Today, this light bulb is available to everyone on a round-the-clock webcam that updates with a new photo every 30 seconds (although it’s kind of hard to tell). Link -via a comment at reddit
Previously: Livermore’s Centennial Light
A delightful elderly couple try to figure out how to use their webcam. You don’t have to be tech-savvy to get a lot out of life. -via The Daily What
Thanks to a webcam set up in Decorah, Iowa, you can watch Bald Eagle babies hatch live. Two of the three eggs have hatched, so while you wait for the last one to make its debut, you can entertain yourself by watching the fuzzy gray baby birds. You never know what you’re going to get, though – the other day, the eagles brought a dead rabbit back to the nest and ate it.
At about six feet across and deep, the nest weighs about 1.5 tons. It’s in a cottonwood tree about 80 feet off the ground and was first built there by the eagles in 2007 after the first one fell in a storm.
The Smithsonian National Zoological Park has installed a streaming webcam in a cheetah’s den, so that we can keep an eye on a mother cheetah and two cubs.
Female cheetah Zazi is raising a cub she gave birth to and another mother’s cub, both born in December 2010. Cheetahs that give birth to only one cub, called a singleton, cannot produce enough milk to keep the cub alive. The cub born to Amani, a first-time mother, was hand-raised for 13 days before being placed with Zazi, creating a litter of two that will likely help stimulate milk production from Zazi. These cheetahs are at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) in Front Royal, Virginia.
Link to webcam.
If you don’t see any action on the webcam, there is a gallery of baby cheetah pictures. Link -via KTAR
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Taichi Inoue made this unique touchscreen system. As the pictures at the link illustrate, the screen lies at the bottom of a water tank about eighteen inches deep. But the user needs to insert just two inches of a finger into the water to activate a feature on the screen. Inoue accomplished this by directing a webcam at the surface of the water. The webcam then measures the location and depth of the finger to provide instructions to the computer.
Peek into a nest with Molly the mother owl and her baby Max (and more eggs) on this live webcam. I saw her eat a rat this morning! Nom nom nom…
Live feed from inside an owl box! This is the first year that an owl has made it a home. Molly laid 5 eggs in Feb, one died and one has hatched. 4 more will hatch this week live on camera.
From the Upcoming 
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If you’re interested, my interview for Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere mentioned above was conducted using a new and free web service called wetoku.
wetoku is still in beta, but I can tell you this: it’s one to watch out for. The interview was a snap to set up – all I had to do was plug in my webcam (otherwise it sits in a box somewhere on my bookshelf) and click on a link sent to me via email. The web page consisted of the image of the interviewer (in my case, Eric Olsen of Blogcritics and Technorati) and the interviewee (me), and a simple chatbox where we can text each other. The interviewer presses the "record" button and we started talking. Simple!
It’s easy to see how wetoku can be very useful (just view all of the interviews done by Technorati for their State of the Blogosphere report). I won’t be surprised if we see many more wetoku interviews popping up in many blogs.
Neatorama reader Nick Schwartz sent us this intriguing account of an "angel" captured on a webcam from a scuba club in Cozumel, Mexico:
"One of my bookmarks is a scuba club in Cozumel – which I have never been, but I’m from Buffalo, NY and its nice to see something tropical once in a while. So point of all this being, I opened the app and saw what looks to be an angelic figure walking through the scuba club. I don’t have any program to zoom in on this image but it’s certainly something interesting. Some say angel. Some say a bunch of coincidences coming together at the moment I opened it. "
… and soon after, the "angel" was gone:
What do you think? Is it an angel or just Buzz Lightyear showing up for a little night dive? Thanks Nick!
A new $2 million surveillance project in Texas lets you patrol the US border with Mexico from the comfort of your own home, and report any suspicious activity you see.
The project results in one crime bust in the six week it has been on, but it was a biggie: "virtual deputies" spotted three suspects trying to smuggle 540 pound of marijuana across the border. According to Wired:
The exact location of the cameras is not disclosed, but according to a press release about the project, "a significant number of Texas landowners" requested that the cameras be placed on their property.
More than 21,000 people from several states, including as far away as Ohio, have signed up to be virtual deputies so far. BlueServo claims its web site has received more than 5 million hits, resulting in about 1,000 e-mail reports of suspicious activity. The average camera watcher spends about eight minutes on the site examining video.
What do virtual deputies get in return for their efforts?
Aside from the satisfaction of knowing they’ve done their part to combat crime, they get the opportunity to become targeted consumers.
Link | Here’s the webcam: BlueServo – via Attuworld
