Thanks to Mark for pointing me towards his website, where is he has already been making good use of Google Gadgets. He point out on Pilot Geography, that sometimes the webcam gadget lacks reliability.

As discussed in the previous post, some embedded web-cams can be enlarged to full-screen with the click of the image.

There are a number of brilliant live-streaming web-cams for surfers, Coastal Watch is a great source.

This webcam showing an image of Bondi can be enlarged. It is an embedded Windows Media player, if you right click on the image and choose zoom, a full screen version can be chosen.

Another little hint, is to right click on the video and choose properties

Copy the location and past into a new browser

If your browser is set-up appropriately (and on some networks it wont be!), this will in turn open Windows Media player, which is very helpful… more later

Some live-streaming embedded web-cams you can enlarge by clicking the image, this has the advantage of producing a larger image, which can be used in the classroom; quality though is often lost.

This is one of my favourite webcams of New York.

By clicking on the image, a full screen version appears, some networks may block this feature.

Some live-streaming web-cams appear in pops-up (Another disadvantage if your network blocks these.), even using a projector the image is too small to effectively use, SMART software helps with an IWB, the image can be enlarged, alternatively if you have IE7( I love it ) you can enlarge the image without losing too much quality. Sadly we haven’t upgraded yet.

You need to copy the address from the pop-up browser

and past into a new browser.

You can then use the enlarge button on the bottom right of the browser to enlarge the image. Sadly, whilst writing this, the Niagara Falls live-streaming web-cam is not working.

The same technique can be used with static images which are periodically updated, if you wish to avoid any potentially embarrassing adverts around the sidebars. Right click on the image, and choose properties, copy the address, it will end in jpg.

This can then be pasted into a new browser to leave the image, without the adverts.

Some of you may have come across this before, this Google Gadget allows you to embed webcams in your blog or website, sadly it doesn’t allow for live video streaming webcams, but it updates nicely. This is the Geographers favourite webcam from South Georgia, watch out for penguins.

I imagine though, that if you are devising a task based around certain webcams, this gadget may come in useful when devising a simple Intranet or Internet page, hence avoiding the need to access various links.