VolcanoCam

There are several webcam feeds available online that are for research purposes or geological survey, including a range of live webcams that monitor volcanoes worldwide. VolcanoCam is a widget that allows users to monitor up to four different webcam feeds at once, with various preset volcano cam URLs included in the program as standard.

When users first open the widget and view VolcanoCam, it becomes immediately apparent how it works and how to operate it. There is no ambiguity in the design, even users who are not familiar with how webcam feeds work will be able to set up the different feeds and cameras.

Each feed provides a Change button underneath it, which allows users to select from the included list of feeds. It is possible to also enlarge a single feed, making it take up the entire widget screen and hide the other three feeds if one is of greater interest.

Even though the program is very obviously based around volcano watching, it allows users to set up their own custom feeds and input custom URLs. This effectively means the widget can be used to display any webcam feed within the widget, providing VolcanoCam with far more versatility than perhaps the developers originally intended.

The refresh speed of the different feeds can be adjusted via the number of minutes, widget cannot be made to refresh a feed faster than once every minute, so it is still suited to slower feeds. The opacity of the widget can also be changed to make it less obtrusive, as well as the option to lock it in place and disable dragging.

While VolcanoCam seems to be originally designed as an interesting widget to study volcanoes and appreciate geological landmarks, it could easily be used as a general webcam feed widget. VolcanoCam is simple to use and easy to configure and customize, making it a very robust widget that users should find satisfying.