It seems like almost everyone has a web cam these days. Web cams are great for many people because you can send images to a web site that can be viewed by friends, relatives, and business associates. Several companies use web cams to talk to their customers. Oprah is a big supporter of the web cam and often uses the web site, Skype, to speak with her audience. Before you run out and buy a web cam so you can talk to Oprah, you need to know a little bit about this technology and what makes one web cam better from the other one.

A web cam has a small camera that captures the images and broadcasts them to another web site where other viewers can see them. The images you see are considered “live” although they do tend to have a short delay. Typically web cams work with 2 different types of broadcast signals, streaming images or Java. Streaming images work similar to using a video camera and Java will take little pictures and send them, causing the delay.

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