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JenniCam Celebrates 4-Year Anniversary

Posted by CmdrTaco on Fri Apr 14, 2000 07:34 AM
from the coming-at-ya-live-14,000-times-a-day dept.
Graphics Software
beebware noted that as of today, the JenniCam is now four years old. I've been a fan of this thing for the majority of that time... all I can say is it sure beats the Netscape FishCam. It's nuts how Jenni's little cam became such a fixture on The Internet... congratulations to her.
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JenniCam Celebrates 4-Year Anniversary 50 Comments More /

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  • Could someone explain the attraction to JenniCam (sans nudity) and other things like MTV's 'Real World' and some recent show on ABC? Personally I find it extremely painful to sit around in a room listening to peoples personal relationship problems, or to sit in a room watching someone cut their toenails and pretend I'm not there. For most people the idea of sitting around doing nothing but listening to people bitch and moan is boring, so what do they do? They turn on the TV and watch people do it.

    The whole JenniCam thing is pretty sick. I can understand if you watch to see if she gets naked, but you might as well just go out and rent a porn tape because the picture quality is much better. The losers who say they don't watch JenniCam for the sex are either liars, or they are those pathetic people who are so lacking in self-esteem that they have to lurk around people to feel some sense of self-worth; you know, potential stalkers.

  • Re:Well, good for her. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    it seems like a lot of people are missing the point of Jennicam. What she is doing is in no way porn, as her sex life doesn't get more emphasis in the images than her desire for cheese sandwiches. what might make it porn is the viewer's voyeristic interest, but that is up to you to create. the site is a darn fine piece of art. not 'cause the design of the site is "pretty", but because she's taken a straightforward idea to extremes and rocked some people's boats pretty effectively with it. A lot of /.ers seem to have had their boats well and truly capsized. "porn" & "obscene" & "jollies"... Christ almighty, get over it. Instead think about it in terms of space. She has left a window perpetually open on what she does, so where does she keep her privacy? and how does that window give anyone the right to judge or include themselves in her sex life?

  • Cock Tease cams (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2000, @01:52AM (#1133043)
    It's amazing how many of these chick cam sites there are. Practically ALL of them make you pay, and there's always the "oops I forgot to wear any clothes!" shots, the "I just got out of the shower" shots, the "I'm gonna mess around with my boyfriend who's not ever going to be you!" shots, all with a stupid disclaimer of that they want every minute of their life to be on the cam, whether it's naked time or not.

    Let's face it, an attractive woman who sits around the house all day for a for-pay webcam is a quick profit. She is profiting off of horny lonely men, and will not give out any refunds(a drunk friend of mine signed up for jennicam, and refused to give him a refund).

    i predict these webcams will stay popular until one evening a crazed stalker enters the home and rapes/kills her for EVERYONE(including the guest cam) to see. The media will get wind of it(since all men on the internet are creepy in the media's eyes), and all of these cams will thank god shut down overnight.
    • One pint of good Belgian Ale
    • One CD
    • 9 gallons of gas in the US
    • A third of a technical book
    • 3 weeks of dial-up internet access
    • 1 week of web hosting with 200 megs of space
    • 15 blank cdrs
    • 2 sapphire and tonics, with tip

    I think I made my point, $15 is pretty much nothing unless you're a starving college student, and even then, it's just two cases of horridly cheap beer, or one mag of really bad vodka.


    ----------------------------
  • That's cool, I guess... If you have nothing better to do than watch Jenni gain weight.

    I started one of the first Linux cams way back when the Connectix first came out. It's still up today, years later. Instructions on how to do it, etc.

    Check it out. [eunuchs.org]

  • First photogenic cyberstar, maybe; or first pretty girl you can look at as you read her diary. There have been other virtual celebrities before Jenni, and even before the Web (such as Kibo [kibo.com], for example), though they were mostly textual and didn't get quite that amount of media attention.
  • Jenni's "infamous BDSM pages"? The mind boggles...
  • Was Cindy Margolis on the Internet, and known there, before Kibo? I don't think so. Somehow, I can't imagine her taking part in USENET life using rn on a shared UNIX machine in 1991 or so...

  • 1st cyberstar (Score:5)

    by Pseudonymus Bosch (3479) on Friday April 14 2000, @03:57AM (#1133061) Homepage
    JenniCam is newsworthy because, as Salon (?) said she is the first cyberstar. See, whatever star you can think of, Ronaldo, Pamela, Clinton, Gates, Torvalds and Tux (not that good example), the Pope, they are popular in the net and outside of the net. Their fame was enhanced by the net, but Jenni was created by the Internet.
    It showed that you could be a mere student and get worldwide famous, a dedicate followership, even alt.fans.jennicam [alt.fans.jennicam] and only by some pieces of networked hardware.

    It couldn't happen before the net.

    Besides, it's the only webcam available as a Slashbox.
    (What about some statistics about Slashboxes people choose?)

    But yes, 4th anniversary is not that exciting.
    __

  • So when is the JeniCam IPO? As one of the few web sites that actually make money it is past due.

  • Indeed, that feels so old. I remember the pre-cam Jenni pages, I did'nt remember that was so old. I remember that, when I saw it, I said to myself: wow, she's very exhibitionnist. Duh!
  • I'ma amazed my dead activity meter page still gets more hits than anything else on my web pages (welll except for liveice now).

    It was a silly use of image analysis to figure out just what was going on, I never quite got round to implementing an automatic Jenni-Alert for users.

    Still this whole automatic download/image analysis did one thing original.... I remember SGI claiming a patent for a random numbver generator based on a camera pointed at a Lava Lamp.... well I used the jenni images for random number generation and occasionally - this featured a lava lamp.

    So... anyone wanting to challenge this patent can talk to me for 'prior art' ;-)
  • The first time I heard about her was a little over a year ago when she was running in some poll [zdnet.com] against Linus Torvalds. I saw it here and said, "Huh?"

    I find it amusing that the number times I run into mentions of her is about as often as she shows up on /., which it to say "not much".

    Cheers,
    Ben
  • David, I'm glad you shared your thoughts about Jenni here. Especially after seeing all of these posters who seem to have a madonna/slut attitude towards women.

    I remember her from the early days of the Web, when everyone was trying to figure out how to use this new medium. Lots of the ideas were clearly crap, but there were a few that got lost in the corporate rush into the 'Net.

    Jenni came up with a simple & obvious idea (which Bezos & Co. would have patented), which in the spirit of the time was more cinema verite than voyeurism. It was a peek into someone else's world -- which was what the Internet was all about then. Yes, she was doing it in part for the sexual turn-on, but we are all sexual creatures -- at least in part.

    Now instead of people talking to each other & learning about each other, the trendy thing to do with the Internet is to make money -- in any new way one can think of. Maybe the posters who think she runs a pay-for-a-peek site are right in a way: that's all anyone expect you to do with a web cam anymore.

    A little innocence has been lost.

    Geoff
  • huh? quit lying to ourselves? I don't need to lie to myself to say I'm not interested in Jennicam. I remember back in 97 or so when it became sort of known, and sure, I went and looked at the page, maybe 5 times across a couple of weeks. then I just forgot about it, because it's just not that interesting, really.

    I respect Jenni as a (probably) intelligent human being who made something of her life and had an impact. But I DON'T respect Jennicam, nor the bigger picture that it stands for, which is to use other people's dull lives as entertainment. Not for moral reasons, she's not "selling herself" anymore than a TV actor is, anyway. My opinion of Jennicam is more or less the same as my opinion of soap operas on TV. Pure meaningless time-filling dumb entertainment. Which is fine as a guilty pleasure if you take it like that, but in terms of "how worthwhile it is for you", it's really very near the bottom of it all.

  • what am I doing answering to an old thread on /., as if anyone read those... anyway :) yeah, you get the idea. I don't criticize anyone individually; I think Jenni is to be admired for what she has done and for the strength it must have required of her, and for making the point that a life voluntarily with no privacy *is* possible and thinkable. and I respect the people who go to the site, because, well, who am I to criticize them, as if I didn't waste time too with other things that are quite worthless too. it's only in the larger cultural picture that I criticize Jennicam, in the same way that I pretty much despise most of what's on TV.
  • So what are the consequences of Jenni-Cam and alike? I also watched Jennicam a few times until a TV-Show came up here (germany) called Big Brother.
    In this show you can watch a couple of people who are isolated in a house (at their own will) and every week one of them is elected to leave. The last one gets o lot of money. As this show came up I was somehow shocked. Ok, I know there are enough idiots who want to be in tv at any price, but think of the consequences. It supports the tollerance of being watched. Things like this
    risk our privacey on a long term basis.

  • Privacy issues (Score:4)

    by Gepard (10087) on Friday April 14 2000, @04:56AM (#1133078)

    Warning: Flamebait material ahead.

    I am, as usual, stunned at Slashdot. These are the people who are privacy freaks, I mean a lot of people here are all for encrypting every little byte of data on their drives. The sheer number of venomous comments directed at ``Big Brother,'' the CIA, the NSA, the DIA, Congress, corporations, or whatever else Jon Katz decided ``threatens geekdom'' leaves me amazed.

    But a lot of people are huge fans of JenniCam! Seems like a huge privacy violation. Granted she's doing it voluntarily, but still---we never want anyone spying on out private lives, no sir, absolutely not! But spying on other people's lives? Hehe. Sounds like fun, to all the voyerism fetishists in this audience. Everyone else's privacy can go to hell.

  • Well, I fell for her after seeing her web pages and having numerous emails and phone conversations with her, so I think your judgement is a shade harsh.

    But read my original message a bit closely, and you'll realize that I echo your thoughts to a large extent - and that's why I quit viewing the JenniCam entirely.

    D

    ----
  • I suppose I really should have mentioned the sequel.

    After having run the archive for years (albiet not having updated it in well over a year), I was contacted by someone proporting to be her. The message was chilly-cold corporate: You no longer have permission to use those pictures, take them down or we sue.

    I thought it was much unlike the Jen I knew, but this was confirmed by others. As I said on the page I created immediately after I received the request: "I change, Jen changes, we all change. Allow me to shed a tear".

    Note that I never made one thin dime from my archive, although at the time I was asked to take it down I was considering using it as a traffic source for some of my other projects.

    D

    ----
  • The moment I saw the old pages she created at Dickinson college, I fell in love with Jenni. When she was knocked off server after server due to the popularity of her content, I gave her a home on amazing.com.

    And then she created the JenniCam. I well remember that dramatic moment, her always loveable enthusiasm: "I got a cam for my birthday!* And you do know what I'm going to do with it, don't you?"

    I didn't. But I soon found out. At first it was something special for her favourite fans. Then word spread. I didn't like it because I knew my server couldn't handle the hits. So she got another server, had someone design her JENNICAM format, and off she ran. I liked the personal feeling of her old pages more than the almost corporate look she has now, but that's just me.

    At first, I loved the cam just as I adored its object. I lovingly collected the best images into an archive that was probably the most popular thing I've ever done on the Internet.

    But then she told me she could never, ever love me - and I told myself "You know, watching this thing is just twisting the knife in the wound. It hurts like crazy and doesn't get me anywhere". And so I stopped, cold turkey. From watching the thing in every spare moment I could get, I basically stopped. For a while I maintained the archive because my fellow fans loved it so much, but that fell by the wayside.

    The JenniCam was not the first webcam, but it was the first webcam to feature a girl's life. It spawned thousands of imitators, none of which had quite the "real" spirit of the original. Curiously, sometimes the simplest ideas are the hardest to think of - and the most apparently obvious once they're created. I can tell you through numerous email and phone conversations with her that she is a highly creative and intelligent woman.

    Incidentally, her BDSM pages, which were erotically charged creations, were taken down by her when she received one too many insulting comments. And she stopped doing her incredibly creative "shows" when she got death threats if she didn't continue. I consider this to be the depressing side of creative expression on the Internet.

    Sadly, we've drifted apart over the years, but I still remember her fondly and wish her luck, wherever she is and whatever she does.

    D

    (*) I don't remember if it was birthday or christmas or whatever -- but it was a gift from her parents.

    ----

  • Anybody want to see a CmdrTaco cam? (Score:3)

    by Guppy (12314) on Friday April 14 2000, @03:09AM (#1133083)
    Well?

    Seriously, once you take out the fact that Jenni happens to be a pretty young lady (who sometimes gets naked) and replace it with a guy, the concept looses some of it's charm (OK, maybe not for the geek girls out there).

  • JenniCam - what's in it for me. (Score:5)

    by jabber (13196) on Friday April 14 2000, @02:31AM (#1133085) Homepage
    Kudos to Jenni, congratulations for sticking to your guns and putting your life on display.

    Kudos to CT for seeing JenniCam as worthy of a Slashdot article.

    I've seen posts here, mostly commenting how JenniCam is about Jenni 'doing' her boyfriend. Grow up guys. Read the journals and get a clue.

    /Disclaimer: I am NOT a JenniCam subscriber. I just pop in now and again out of curiosity.

    Some time ago, Jennifer went through a messy situation with her folks. At that same time, I had a very similar thing happen in my family. I'm a grown adult, but it still shakes you to the core to see your parents at each other's throats. Reading about Jenni's experiences, having a glimpse inside her feelings - which she bravely puts on display - helped me realize, confront and resolve my own issues. Jenni, thanks.

    That was a rather singular event, but it made me a fan of Jenni's courage. She's forced me to consider the fact that I'm neither special nor typical - just like her. So she takes her boyfriend to bed on the Internet. So what? She also does yoga, pets her cats, hacks on her PCs, watches South Park...

    She's one of us, whatever US means. She just doesn't hide any aspect; doesn't consider things dirty or inappropriate. Such restrictions are ours to place on ourselves.

    So, Jen, thanks a bunch for exposing your self (and I do mean SELF, not body). It's nice to know another person. Best of luck in CA.
  • Uh, he said "the web wasn't around then". Not "the Internet". The web wouldn't be invented for two more years.
    ----
  • <i>Surely everyone realises that webcams have been around for a lot longer than this. The Cambridge Coffee pot claims to be the first, dating back to 1991.</i>

    And I was strongly affected by the bravery of that little coffee pot in baring its every waking moment to the world.

    No duh. Nobody said that Jenni was the first "webcam". There were even peoplecams long before her -- I remember there was some lady programmer who had one at her desk, and people watching THAT one crashed her work server, so she got rid of it. (Men with deskcams didn't seem to have the same problem....) Jenni was the first webcam subject to go online 24/7. There still aren't many ... at least, many who do this for personal reasons and aren't hired by Seth Breidbart.
    ----
  • Not the first webcam site.

    The first lifecam. Don't make this into something it's not, and the people who are flaming back with "fishcam" and "coffeecam" are also missing the unique aspects of Ms. Ringley's innovation.
    ----

  • Not geek news, what?? (Score:5)

    by Julius X (14690) on Friday April 14 2000, @01:56AM (#1133090) Homepage
    I'm kind of surprised, as I haven't really seen any posts backing up CmdrTaco on this one.

    Honestly, I agree with him, that Jennicam was the first(if not the first, than one of the first) sites on the internet that showed just to what degree someone could go on a website.

    Jennicam is one of those sites that really shows why the internet is such a stronger medium than we've ever had available before, because one can expose themselves to the entire public, but at the same time, be completely hidden as well.

    I, for one, admire Jenni, and think that she, if nothing else, deserves a little recognition on /. when such an anniversary comes about. She launched a net trend, the webcam, which should definitely be counted as "news for nerds". But in any case, it's definitely "stuff that matters."
    (This isn't just pr0n here guys, take some time to actually read the site)


    -Julius X
  • She has also recently sold her bed on Ebay for $2,760!

    Big deal. She bought it two years ago for $3100.

  • Actually it's news because its netculture. You can think its ridiculous, pathetic, etc., but it is part of what's going on on the net.

    Four years of voyeurism. Damn.
  • People that defend pornography generally view pornography. At least, that's what I've seen.

    This is flawed logic, and highly circular. People who defend porn and view porn, don't go around saying that it's not porn. I view JenniCam, and I view porn, but I don't think that JenniCam is porn any more than life in and of itself is pron. The voyeurism slant doesn't work either, because she's openly letting you into her life.

    Also, it's not a 'show' because she is, as much as possible, not changing her normal lifestyle to appease an audience.

    Obviously Caimlas doesn't watch Jennicam, because he/she doesn't like porn, and has somehow decided that it is porn, but making judgements on it, and the truthfulness of the people who participate in it in that context, is stupid.

    Kevin Fox
  • She launched a net trend, the webcam, which should definitely be counted as "news for nerds".
    I agree it's "news for nerds", but I would argue that the Cambridge coffee pot [cam.ac.uk] was the first Webcam to become famous, and to launch the trend.
  • Granted she's doing it voluntarily

    Well, then it's *not* a privacy violation, is it? And if it's not a privacy violation, then what exactly are the 'privacy issues' of which you speak?

  • Course, most "naked girl" webcams don't go to the extent that JenniCam did when it had full on sex on camera. THAT's vouyerism, but it's not legally porn unless its shown explicitly sexual purpose- in this case it was just something that happened on camera, along with the rest of jenni's life.
  • Drunk men waste far more than $15.00 just ordering drinks. Ever been sitting at a bar and go to pay for that one last drink and sit there intently trying to count those one dollar bills in your pocket, hoping not to get it wrong, then just say "fuck it" and pile the entire mess on the table and ask the bartender to keep em coming until you run out? Just losing $15.00 on a binge should be considered a fortunate fate!

    Actually, drunk men used to end up enlisted in the Army. I'd just take the $15, write it off, and remember that far worse things can happen...
  • Thanks! I'm glad *you* got the joke. Honest to goodness, some people need a humor IV drip.
    -russ
  • I only watch Jennicam for the stories.
    -russ
  • I agree. People might take it as an offense, but the only reason they're saying it's not porn is because they view it, and they don't like the stigmatism of looking at porn. They view porn as a bad thing (and it is).

    People that defend pornography generally view pornography. At least, that's what I've seen.

    -------
    CAIMLAS

  • Re:Cock Tease cams (Score:3)

    by weave (48069) on Friday April 14 2000, @02:53AM (#1133120) Journal
    Let's face it, an attractive woman who sits around the house all day for a for-pay webcam is a quick profit. She is profiting off of horny lonely men, and will not give out any refunds(a drunk friend of mine signed up for jennicam, and refused to give him a refund).

    No refund? Of what, $15.00 for a year of one-minute peeks instead of once every 15? That's something to get upset about?! :)

    Drunk men waste far more than $15.00 just ordering drinks. Ever been sitting at a bar and go to pay for that one last drink and sit there intently trying to count those one dollar bills in your pocket, hoping not to get it wrong, then just say "fuck it" and pile the entire mess on the table and ask the bartender to keep em coming until you run out? Just losing $15.00 on a binge should be considered a fortunate fate!

  • JenniCam is porn? I went there once, for the first time, after visiting the BOFHCam, a JenniCam spoof. But I wasn't really impressed. It was sort of boring. All I saw was a stupid desk. I like BOFHCam better.
  • Also known as the Trojan Room Coffee Pot [cam.ac.uk], which is located in the Trojan Room [cam.ac.uk]. It was around in 1991, but not connected to the internet (there wasn't one then) until later (see the biography [cam.ac.uk]).

    A close relative (but much younger) is AT&T Laboratories Cambridge [att.com]'s Smart Beverage Dispenser [att.com]. It, however, does not yet conform to rfc2324, Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0) [nottingham.ac.uk], and rfc2325, Definitions of Managed Objects for Drip-Type Heated Beverage Hardware Devices using SMIv2 [nottingham.ac.uk], "is not sufficiently flexible to represent the advanced multiple beverage dispenser". But, "Development of a revised MIB supporting multiple dynamic beverage options is under way". Hooray!
  • The whole JenniCam thing is pretty sick. I can understand if you watch to see if she gets naked, but you might as well just go out and rent a porn tape because the picture quality is much better. The losers who say they don't watch JenniCam for the sex are either liars, or they are those pathetic people who are so lacking in self-esteem that they have to lurk around people to feel some sense of self-worth; you know, potential stalkers.
    This is interesting, because I think it gets to the heart of why Jennicam is an interesting idea (I've only been to the site once myself, got bored and didn't stick around.) I mean, this person is upset at the idea that Jennicam might not be about sex.

    Jennicam let's us all be Jimmy Stuart in Rear Window, in that movie, the disturbing thing wasn't just the murder, it was Jimmy Stuart in his wheelchair watching all the other people's lives and watching them. Watching the sad parts of their lives and the happy ones with a coldly judgemental voyeurs eyes...

    Of course, if you want judgemental voyeurs, looks like Slashdot is the place to get them! ^_^

  • ... once she started shagging her boyfriend onscreen.

    Have you seen the screen captures? Yikes! It's a wonder that the Christian Coalition hasn't sprung on this yet!
  • Moderators, what do you mean "offtopic"? I thought it was a very funny cause/effect joke.

  • Not JenniCam(quite humurous): (Score:3)

    by Rabbins (70965) on Friday April 14 2000, @02:05AM (#1133132) Homepage
    Try NOT Jenni.com Live [notjenni.com].

    AMEN!

  • The unfortunate thing for me (maybe i'm not alone) is that every time I visit thesync.com I see the pic for Jenni Show and the latest Geeks In Space tittle.
    I'm not sure what is sadder, that I would think Jenni would actually be on Geeks In Space, or that I'm disappointed every time I visit that she's not.
  • Here read this article [apcmag.com]. It has a history of Jennicam and how it became famous plus a few emails from flame wars Jenny got in over her webcam site.
    Anyway, her site was the first webcam site, so this makes her a pioneer of something that's now a common aspect of Net culture. I would call that geek news.

  • I think the Slash effect broke it (Score:3)

    by nlvp (115149) on Friday April 14 2000, @01:49AM (#1133165) Homepage
    Jennicam is currently experiencing technical difficulties and will be back online as soon as possible...

    Taco, it might just be possible that by trying to celebrate her anniversary, and Slash-ing her URL, you broke her.

  • Re:Cock Tease cams (Score:4)

    by Crispin Glover (123499) on Friday April 14 2000, @06:36AM (#1133169)
    I've said before and I'll say it again. If Jenni would get a 20ish model/student/might-be-lesbian roommate, I might actually subscribe.

  • Earlier webcams (Score:3)

    by luckykaa (134517) on Friday April 14 2000, @02:02AM (#1133176)
    Surely everyone realises that webcams have been around for a lot longer than this. The Cambridge Coffee pot [cam.ac.uk] claims to be the first, dating back to 1991. It wasn't strictly a webcam at the time since the web hadn't been invented yet, but the principles the same.

  • Re:Huh? (Score:3)

    by h_jurvanen (161929) on Friday April 14 2000, @02:08AM (#1133190)
    What? I never even heard of her and her cam until this article.

    Jenni's been on Letterman. Since the media-savvy intelligentsia recongizes Letterman as the metric of who has made it or not, it is now officially you who is behind the times.[1]

    And, I'm surprised that nobody has brought up the fact that JenniCam can be had as a Slashbox!!

    Herbie J.

    [1] Just kidding, of course, although she has been on Letterman. And I don't want to hear any guff about "what is Letterman???" If I can get it here in Finland...

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