Creative! Live! Motion! Webcam! Sucks!

Just a shout out to Creative and any person with the wherewithall to google this product before they purchase it: "the Creative WebCam Live! Motion" might be a great piece of hardware, but the 'supporting' software is so bad the fancy 'motion' functionality the camera is supposed to have might as well not exist.

The market for this kind of device- a webcam which can pan, tilt and zoom (that is, aim itself in different directions, zoom in and out)- has been growing as the parts become cheaper and the demand grows. The demand isn't very high yet, though. Even Fry's down the road only has two or three PTZ.

This particular model was the cheapest at $130, and it has been a doorstop atop my monitor since I bought it.

If Creative had an office nearby, I'd drive by and throw a brick though their window.

Amazon lists the 'first released date' for this webcam as 6/2005, and the last update on the 'face tracking' software was 1/2006. I would have to say that the functionality of this 'face tracking' is something along the lines of watching a piece of equipment slowly short-circuit. So apparently this still-in-production device is dead in the eyes of Creative.

For those interested, smilecam out of Korea make a similar product (larger but not much), and it works very well. It has Pan and tilt as well as motion tracking capability, and it's very nice. The people who make the smilecam care about their product and whether their end users have a functional webcam and not merely a pretty whirring doodad with blue lights. Creative might as well glue on some fur and googly-eyes, and market their Live! Motion! Webcams! as Spastic! Furby! Tribbles!