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Provides: Lets you use your iSight to capture activity in front of your Mac's camera, and then save or share that image simply and automatically.

Format: Download

Developer: Freeverse

Minimum Requirements: 1GHz G4/G5 or Intel-based Macintosh, Mac OS X v10.4.10, 512MB RAM, 32MB VRAM, 500MB hard drive space, iSight or Mac compatible webcam, microphone (for noise detection), Internet connection for some features, .mac account for .mac features, iPhoto '06 for iPhoto features

Processor Compatibility: Universal

Retail Price: $39.95

Availability: Out now

Version Reviewed: 1.5.4

Webcams are sort of creepy, aren't they? I remember a while back when a good number of my web clients wanted to set them up, but none of them really had a good reason other than that they made their site look "modern." Well, after a while, "modern" translated to "creepy" with all of those webcam ads that spoke of home security, but seemed to focus solely on hot women in skimpy clothes. Is that who's robbing houses? I always under the impression it was guys in black turtlenecks and ski masks. Show's what I know.

But I'm not here to review the point of having a web cam. There are legit reasons for wanting one, including the aforementioned security purposes ("Hey, is that hot chick in the skimpy outfit stealing my Wii?"), entertainment value ("Look! The cat walked in front of the computer again! How cute!") and determining why the prospective buyers don't want your house ("Are they laughing at my Holly Hobby wallpaper?"). Okay, forget that last example. I think it may be illegal. Instead, set up a time lapse web cam of yourself at work as the Freeverse site mentions, and leave the spying to the N.S.A.

Now, if any of this sounds like something you should have, or that could prove useful, Periscope has two things going for it: ease of set up and variety of distribution. With set up, you simply launch Periscope and tell it how you want it to capture images. Your three automatic choices are whenever the camera (iSight or other Mac compatible web cam) sees movement, when the microphone hears a noise, or when a timer goes off. The time lapse is good for time lapse images, and you can of course determine the intervals at which an image is taken, by second, minutes or hours. The others are self explanatory, although I should point out a tremendously handy feature for motion detection. You can set Periscope to detect motion anywhere in the visible frame, or you can define a region of the frame in which the motion has to occur in order for a picture to be taken. This is good if you know there will be movement in one area (such as tree limbs outside a window or a bird in a cage) that you want Periscope to ignore. You can even define multiple regions, but an easier way of going this would've been to allow the user to set up a region to ignore instead of asking us to draw multiple regions around that area.

Your manual option is to use your Mac's remote to snap an image on command.

Once you've captured your images, distributing them is also a simple matter of clicking a few buttons. Well, after the initial set-up, anyway. You can have the image automatically sent to you via e-mail or uploaded to your .mac or FTP account once you've given Periscope the proper access information. You can also have the images saved directly to your hard drive or dumped straight into iPhoto. You're not limited to one option, either. You can choose all five, if you so desire.

You're also given a few photo handling options. You can add a time stamp that can be placed anywhere in the image, you can add an image overlay (again allowing you to adjust not only placement, but also size and opacity), and you can add text labels.

Now, what you don't get with Periscope is a lot of photo formatting options (or any, really, other than a slider for photo quality), and there's no option for full video. You can set it to take photos once every second, but that hardly replaces video. You do, however, get the option to be clandestine. By default, the computer makes a click noise and flashes when a photo is snapped. You can shut this off, though. Also, Periscope will continue to work even when behind a screen saver, so people need not know they're being photographed.

What it comes down to with Periscope is need. If you need this kind of functionality, Periscope provides it in a simple interface and with numerous viewing options. However, at $40.00, it's priced too high for those wavering on whether there's a need or who would use such a program simply for fun.

Me? I'll just turn it on when I leave for work and eagerly anticipate the day when the scantily clad women come to rob my house, and end up in a big pillow fight, instead.