Daydreamer logo

Daydreamer

New!

Daydreamer is now available on the Mac App Store, at a greatly reduced price. Get it here. You can download example files, example AppleScripts and the manual here.

Is there somewhere you would rather be right now? Chances are that there is a webcam close to it. A webcam takes pictures of current conditions at specific locations and posts them to the web at regular intervals.

Perhaps you want to keep track of the weather or freeway conditions, or maybe you just like satellite pictures. On the internet there are many URLs that point at webcam pictures which are updated at regular intervals. You can use a web browser to view the pictures, but it’s a pain to keep refreshing the picture, and it’s overkill to use a big footprint web browser to view a little picture.

That’s where Daydreamer comes in. Daydreamer can display the many webcam pictures to which URLs point and update them as often as you like. Daydreamer can even handle several pictures at once. What’s more, you can have Daydreamer make time lapse movies of the URL picture, adding a new frame to a movie each time the picture is refreshed. Daydreamer documents can be set to save each picture as it is downloaded, which lets you have a changing desktop or screensaver that reflects the current state of a webcam. You can save only the last picture that is downloaded, or all pictures.

Daydreamer has a status window which will let you see the status of downloads for all open windows. Daydreamer is Applescriptable, which adds to its versatility. With sample scripts provided with the distribution, you can view slide shows of picture folders on your computer, make those slide shows into QuickTime movies, or receive an alert email when a picture changes.

Daydreamer is a Universal Binary, and runs natively on both PPC and Intel.

Daydreamer 2.1.2 greatly improves memory performance.

Daydreamer 2.1.2 requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later.

Hints and Tips

From time to time, I write blog postings about Daydreamer. So far, I have postings about using Daydreamer in education and security, using an iSight camera, and figuring out the difference between pictures.

Downloading and Registering

Daydreamer 2.1.2 for Mac OS X 10.3 or later is available here.

Daydreamer costs $20 US. You can register Daydreamer inside the application or online.

More Details

Apple Universal Binary Logo