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The Buffalo News - Say What?

The Buffalo News article published August 18th was specifically slanted to examine webcams and their use for video surveillance. Why the News chose to include buffalowebcam in this article is somewhat uncertain...in as much as video surveillance is not what buffalowebcam is all about. Never have people's pictures been captured for any other purpose at all, except when they emailed and asked us to do so for their own personal use.
On the contrary, buffalowebcam is about the everyday image of western New York. Hopefully, it is these images that motivate people to find out more about living here, and coming here to spend money on the various goods and services that Buffalo and the Niagara frontier has to offer. One individual, Charles Okonski, from Los Angeles, actually made a special trip to Elmwood Avenue, not only to have lunch at Pano's and shop at Half and Half, but to request a screen capture of his family for relatives and friends. Why the News article chose to quote two women shopping in Half and Half, that had obviously never even seen the cam pages, is again strange. If the author, Stephen Hagenbuch, had been to the cam pages himself, he might have told these women that their image was so relatively small that no one would have recognized them anyways...thus assuaging their fears of privacy invaison.

First Webcams...Invaison of Privacy or Cutting Edge Public Relations?

Talking with a local restauranteur...he confided to me that he liked the idea of having a "Live" webcam in his dining rooms and bar area, but when one of his regular patrons found out about this possible new cam agenda, he told the owner he would never frequent the establishment again...as long as the cams were live.


I told the restauranteur that first of all, someone would literally have to stick his or her face directly in the cam to actually be recognized. Secondly, when Firstwebcam puts a cam inside a restaurant, it always gives patrons an optional route to their table or the bar. Third, we don't hide our cams. On the contrary, we expose them and positive publicity has always followed. Finally, restaurants are public places, and shouldn't have their policies dictated by people who, obviously, have something to hide. The internet is a powerful and economical way of reaching out to the entire globe to show your ambiance and likewise, popularity.


The Cove Restaurant and Marina, in Deerfield Beach, Florida was one such place and a valued client of Firstwebcam, until Hurricane Ivan blew their roof off this past October. They had pioneered, along with FirstWebcam, a "Live" view in their main dining room, not to mention a shot of the Hillsboro Bridge that drew an amazing million page views in one week during the aforementioned hurricane. Perhaps what was more amazing, was that their cams never ceased to operate, even after the storm had passed. Later this summer they will again be broadcasting from their famous location on the Intracoastal Waterway. And, while they had their concerns over these privacy issues, they were always aware that their popularity had ultimately increased, not only in south Florida, but all over the world.