UpperWestSideCam(tm)
Frequently asked Questions (FAQs)
version 1.6 (last updated 02-March-97)
Copyright © 1996-1997 by David HM Spector, All Rights Reserved

Over the last several months, all sorts of wonderful folks around the world have written to us via the Cam-Comments feedback address and given a lot of feedback on the UpperWestSideCam.

First off, we'd like to say thank you for writing and sharing your experiences and comments with us about our little experiment -- we really appreciate it. Although we try to answer all of the email we get, we hope you'll understand if we can't get to all of them.

One thing we have learned is that people really seem to like our view of the Upper West Side, and there are a lot of questions that come up about the view out of our window. Hopefully we can answer some of those questions here. Please continue to let us know what you think, and if there's something you would like to know about that you see on the camera, drop us a note!

regards,

David & Michelle

Here are (in order) the most frequently asked UpperWestSideCam questions:

0. What a kool camera! Do you mind if we link to your page or use your images?
We are always extremely flattered when people ask this kind of question. We don't mind if you put a link to the UpperWestSideCam on your web page, or if you ocassionally "grab an image" for non-commercial use on your own page(s). However, we do request that 1) you drop us a note to cam-comments@zeitgeist.com to let us know you have set up such a link and, 2) if you wish to use our images, that you give us credit on your page (you'll note that on our pages we practice what we preach!). If you wish to use our images or content for commercial purposes, we may have to talk about "other arrangements" -- we will decide each request on a case-by-case basis. And, finally, if you intend on pulling images continuously (i.e., every 2 minutes, 24hrs/day), please contact us in advance -- this kind of thing tends to eat a lot of our available bandwidth and can make the UpperWestSideCam inaccessible to others as well as affect our Internet access which we use in our consulting business.

1. What is the name of the store we see in just across the street from the camera, and what do they sell?
The store across the street, at 276 Columbus Avenue is "Jerry Grant's Gallery of Exciting Jewelry". They sell all sorts of interesting jewelry, including watches, rings, necklaces, etc. Occasionally they also feature designer hand-made (and hand-painted, no less!) ties. David owns several of these and also has a very nice pocketwatch (a very pretty Skagen) that was purchased there.

2. Where are we looking when we see Columbus Avenue on the UpperWestSideCam(tm)?
(For a more detailed view, please go to the end of this document, where you'll find a map...)

The camera is pointing south, toward midtown Manhattan (of course what is meant by "midtown Manhattan" depends very much upon where you are -- David's father grew up near 169th Street in a neighbourhood known as "Washington Heights" in the 1920's. He considered "midtown" to be the Upper West Side :-).
The left-hand side of the picture is East -- if you were to continue in that direction on 73rd St. for 1 block (plus a few paces) you would arrive at Central Park in under 5 minutes (you would also be right next-to the Dakota -- where John Lennon lived, and Yoko Ono still lives -- which is a very beautiful piece of NY archtiecture built in the 1880's). If you were to walk to the right of Jerry Grants, (west on 73rd St) in 4 blocks (about 1/4 mile or 400m) you would be at Riverside park on the Hudson River. Along the way you would pass the landmark NY Savings Bank Building, the Ansonia Hotel (now a condo), as well as Rutgers Church.

3. What is the eatery across Columbus Ave. (the one with the big letters)?
The restaurant is called The City Grill. Its an establishment specializing in American Bistro type fare. Quite nice actually. The prices are reasonable too -- most entrees are under US$15.

4. What are all those white and olive colored trucks that are always (single-, double-, triple-) parked on Columbus Avenue?
Heh-Heh. Oh. Them. They're NYNEX trucks. NYNEX is the Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC) for the New York and New England^* (Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire) area. About 125 feet to the right of the UpperWestSideCam, in the middle of West 73rd St., is the Central Office facility for a large piece of the Upper West Side (including the ISDN switch that connects Zeitgeist.com to the Internet). They also dispatch a lot of the intallation and service calls from this location, so there are always a zillion NYNEX trucks of various sizes flitting about.

^*For the geographically-correct, we're not snubbing Connecticut in our definition of "New England" -- they have their own phone company called Southern New England Telephone, or "SNET," which is not a part of NYNEX.

5. Why is the picure fuzzy or black sometimes? Sometimes I see green lines in the picture, is there a problem with my browser?
Since the window the camera is in faces south, it tends to get a lot (and I mean a LOT) of sunlight. Sometimes there is so much sunlight it overwhelms the daylight filter (the thing that makes the images somewhat fuzzy or murky-green). When this happens you will see bright flares or even a mostly black image. This happens becuase the WinCam.ONE doesn't (yet) have an auto-iris, so the camera can be overwhelmed by too much light. The product manger tells me that they are working on this for a future version of the camera.

There are ways to compensate for this using StarDOT's driver software for Windows/DOS systems, but since we're using a fairly souped up UN*X system we have to use some image processing tools to deal with it as best we can.

Regarding the green lines: Do not adjust your browser, there is nothing wrong with your picture.. Actually, its technically known as a "race condition" between the camera and the software that grabs the image. Ocassionally the server software is a little too fast for the camera and it tries to grab an image before the camera hardware has finished scanning all of the parts (lines) of the CCD (the little integrated circuit chip that actually "sees" what the camera is pointed at); the result is usually totally or partialy missing scan-lines. Just wait about 90 seconds and your browser should automatically try to reload the image (or reload/refresh the page by hand) and things should be better.

6. Why does the view ocassionally change?
Umm... well the camera sits in one of my windows, so now and again, we move it slightly to get a different view. Sometimes astute UpperWestSideCam fans notice it just after I've moved it and send me a note asking us to move it back or in some other direction -- we have been known to move it if the request is framed politely enough.

7. What are your plans for more cameras?
we have at least one more camera that should "go live" in Q1 1997 (we were aiming for the first week of January, but, unfortunately, "real work" got in the way)... it will look "up" (north) Columbus Avenue, and show some of the outdoor cafes (well, in the summer they're outdoor cafes :-) and some of the interesting folks who wander by. But, stay tuned... there may well be other things (other devices?) going up here on the camera page that will be amusing, and hopefully, interesting...

We also get a large number of requests to put cameras at other popular locations (like in front of Zabars the world-famous deli/gourmet food store, or in Central Park). Being a bit of a "hardware geek," David is playing with some cameras attached to radios for "remote applications," but unfortunately, due to the realities of location/permission/security its not very practical to be able to put camera in these locations. But, then again... who knows what may happen in the future... :-)

8. Does anything really wacky happen in range of the camera?
You bet!! Some of the most interesting events are when I (David) look up from whatever I happen to be working on (I'm a software developer and network designer) and glance out the window to see folks standing on the corner with a banner destined to be immortalized on the UpperWestSideCam. Generally, I see about 5-10 people a week standing on the corner looking up and gesturing like they are looking for the camera. It's pretty wild.
Sometimes we even get avian visitors (note: thats avian, not alien... :-) to the UpperWestSideCam; click here to see a recent "visitation."

9. The Upper West Side seems like a really nice part of town! Where can I find out more about it?
There have been a number of books written about Manhattan's Upper West Side; one of my favourites is: "Upper West Side Story - A History and Guide" by Peter Salwen [Abbeville Press, NY, 1989, ISBN: 0-89659-894-2], which is a charming look at the West Side from historical, architectural and social perspectives. A fun read!

10. How many people come to look at the camera every day?
Well... its hard to know for sure of course, because of all of the caching servers, and such, but our webstats programs tell us that there are between 5,000-10,000 hits per day.
And, we expect there will be a lot more since the New York Times (the online version) has done a story about the UpperWestSideCam (1/9/96) in it's CyberTimes section. The article was written by Lisa Napoli (who was a lot of fun to talk to) and the photographs are by Carrie Boretz (who not only made me feel very much at ease considering I was having my picture taken for the New York Times, but made me look pretty good, too!).

 11. How do I view the MPEG files in the movies directory? When I try to download then, my browser brings up a "Save this file as..." dialog and never shows me anything!
There are a two different ways to view the MPEG files, both of which require that you already have some "helper application" that "knows" how to decode and play these kind of files.

The following is a list of applications that can be used to view the MPEG files in our movies directory:
[Please note: we provide this for "informational purposes only." We cannot and will not be held responsible if these, or any other program(s) you download from the Internet do something "unexpected" to your computer! As with any program you load on to your system, please(!!) exercise care and regularly back up your information.]

Macintosh, MacOS and QuickTime are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.
Windows, Windows95 and Windows/NT are trademakrs of Microsoft Corp.

In order actually view the file, provided you have installed one of the programs above or the equivilent for your system, you can do one of two things: 1) save the file for viewing later, or 2) view the MPEG "in-line" from your browser.

To save the file, you would (under Windows) "right-click" on the filename of the file you wish to download (translation: move the mouse-pointer over the filename, then click on it with the right mouse button), and then save it to an appropriate place on your hard drive. On the Macintosh and other platforms, you would have to use other key-combinations which vary depending upon your individual settings. Once you have saved the file, launch the viewer application, and open the MPEG file from inside that application.

To view the file on-line, you need to tell your browser which program to use to view MPEG files. Under both Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer this is done by adding "helper applications."

In Netscape, you need to go to the "Options" menu, select the "General Preferences" menu item, and then click on the tab labelled "Helpers." You should see a long list of file types, and nextto them indications of what to do with files of those types. Scroll down until you see an entry that reads "video/mpeg" -- this is the entry you want to modify. Click on the button labelled "browse" and then use the file dialog to locate the application you wish to use to view the MPEG files. For example, if you are using Windows95, you could use the dialog box to get to the windows directory (usually C:\WINDOWS\ )and select the mplayer.exe file, and then press "Ok"

MS Internet Explorer, version 3.0 is already set up to use the mplayer.exe file that ships with Windows95. If you wish to use another program, you need to select "Options..." from the "View" menu, and then click on the "Programs" tab. Once you get the list of file types, scroll down to the entry for "Movie Clip (MPEG)" files, and press the "edit" button. You can then use the file dialog to select a new program with which to view these files.

If you are using Netscape under Windows 3.x, we would suggest looking at some of the shareware seach sites (such as shareware.com from C|net Central) and searching for the keyword MPEG under the "Windows 3.x" section. We don't have any Windows 3.x machines left so we haven't been able to test any of these programs, but we've heard from several UpperWestSideCam devotees that there are workable MPEG viewers out there.

UpperWestSideCam Map (or "who's who" and "what's what" at/near 73rd & Columbus)

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