We Didn’t Start The Fire

Billy Joel performed a song called “We Did’t Start The Fire” which contains many historical events. It got me thinking, but not in the direction you might think. My mind doesn’t work like most do.

There is a cellphone app in the Google Store called Fireplace. It is a video of a crackling fire. Many people will think that a goofy little app and on a cellphone it may be. However back in the 50’s it was a welcome thing. We didn’t have cellphones; what we had was TV.

I was living within the New York TV service area and the TV station WOR (channel 9) had a video they used at Christmas time of a crackling fire in a fireplace with Christmas nusic in the background. They played this Christmas eve and Christmas morning. The idea was that many people in New York didn’t have fireplaces and this was a neat way for them to have one in the house. It also was useful to allow the TV personel to have the time off to be with their family.

Recently, I have noticed a shopping channel doing the same thing.

You can add this idea to a number of other somewhat prolific webcams and things.

There are webcams at the Antarctic station, up on Mauna Kea Hawaii, traffic cams around the world, webcams on various boardwalks, cameras to watch wildlife, a webcam at the crosswalk near Abbey Lane and so on.

I think the webcam which holds the record of being on the internet the longest is the Netscape Amazing Fishcam (http://www.fishcam.com). When you used the Netscape browser there was a special keyboard command to actually bring up the cam in the browser, so you didn’t have to search for the webpage.

Besides webcams there are audio feeds like Rivieria.Fm (a community station in Torquay England), various music and radio station feeds around the world, an audio feed to listen to whale songs and so on.

There are tracking applications and websites to see what specific ships may be passing your area and track weather.

But as I say, much of this new technology started with a fireplace.