Finally, we have completed some major upgrades to the AshevilleLiveCam.com website. Pardon our dust as we move into our new digs. The new site design is just the beginning! Here are just a few of the upgrades we’ve made over the past few weeks:

• Brand new site design (obviously)
  This is more than a cosmetic change, as we’ve switched from the bug-ridden system that we had before to an all-new and easy to use publishing platform.  We’re still working on converting all the pages from the previous incarnation, but they will show up in time.  We’ve also got lots of new features waiting for you.  NO MORE YELLOW!  I actually liked the shocking yellow colors that we had before, but enough people didn’t like it that we decided to change it to more neutral blue.
• New streaming cam viewer
  We upgraded the viewer on the old site because we were in the process of upgrading this one and it looked so FINE, that we made a “yellow” version for the old site design.  The design isn’t all, though, the new viewer is much larger than the old version, for added clarity.  You’re welcome!
• Brand New North Cam
  We previously had 2 of the cool programmable Pan-Tilt-Zoom cameras, one facing East and one facing West.  Well, North has joined the party and is panning, tilting and zooming away as we speak!  Don’t feel sorry for South Cam, it won’t be left out for long….
• Upgraded Infrastructure
  One of the things I liked least about the old setup we had was that while it worked just fine, the quality of the streams left something to be desired.  That has been addressed with some major upgrades in our infrastructure allowing us to stream the 3 PTZ  cameras at a higher resolution and bitrate.  All this means that those bigger video streams are clearer as well!  This is in addition to the new cloud-based streaming server that we mentioned before.

Needless to say we’re super excited about the new site and the upgraded streams, but we’re not resting on our laurels here.  We expect to be adding new features to the site, not the least of which is the crowd-favorite SkyCam.  It needed some repairs, but we expect you to see it perched on the roof again anytime now.  Now that the conversion is done, you can expect more frequent updates to the blog as well.  So keep an eye on this space, because the best is yet to come!

Bluegrass Music Jam
Thu. Feb 04, 10
Marion, NC
Celtic Adventures
Fri. Feb 05, 10 – Sun. Feb 07, 10
Asheville, NC
Old Fort Mountain Music
Fri. Feb 05, 10
Old Fort, NC
FENCE Hunter Pace
Sun. Feb 07, 10
Tryon, NC

Well, here comes the snow again.  Schools dismissed early, everyone around me has left and you can bet the grocery stores are packed and running out of milk and bread.

Hopefully, my power will stay on this time….

Right now it is pretty foggy, so there isn’t much to see when the cameras zoom, but you can see the flakes fall when it is zoomed all the way out.  The fog should clear up once it really gets underway, so keep checking back for better views.

Just a quick note to say that since we’ve moved the video streaming host offsite , we’ve had to change the Flash file that served up the video.  To make things easy, we changed the way it looks, too.  If you can’t see any video, check to see if you’re looking at the old file or the new file.  Your browser can cache the file so it doesn’t have to download it again.  The new file looks like this:

The old one looks like this:

If you’re seeing the blue and white file with no video, then you need to clear your browser’s cache to get the new one.  How you do this depends on your browser, but you can follow this link to figure it out:

http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser’s-Cache

It’s VERY IMPORTANT that you do not have AshevilleLiveCam.com open in a browser window or tab when you are clearing your cache.  Your browser will not clear the cached files from sites that it is currently displaying.

It happens all the time.  Something is happening downtown, word gets out and AshevilleLiveCam.com gets flooded with viewers attempting to get the low-down and see it for themselves.  Inevitably, when that has happened, the video feeds would slow to a crawl as all the streams jockeyed for position, with some being left out in the cold without any video at all.

Rest assured, we have heard your laments and we have taken action!  Streaming multiple live feeds to the internet is no easy task, and it is not inexpensive.  Over the years, we’ve done everything we could to make the site more enjoyable and more reliable.  I’m working on a post describing the long history of this site, in all its incarnations.  Interesting reading for sure, but not very relevant here.  What is relevant is the latest step we have taken to make sure every person who wants to see the live views can do so.

The real problem was lack of bandwidth.  Even though we have a pretty good connection to the internet by Asheville standards, during high-traffic periods, it would simply be overwhelmed.  A while back, we moved the website itself off of our own servers onto the internet “cloud” to make it more reliable, but we were still serving the internet streams from our own data center located on the top floor of the BB&T building.   We resisted offloading the video streams to an external host for many reasons, price being the biggest factor.

However, a new day has dawned for AshevilleLiveCam.com as we have finally set up a streaming server on an external host, in the hopes that we can provide a better viewing experience for all our visitors, be they locals or out-of-towners.  Just in time for the next batch of snow!  So to all our loyal AshevilleLiveCam viewers, ENJOY!

P.S. – That’s not the only change afoot.  We’re also working on an all new site design (the header image above is a little preview for you) and on bigger, better video streams including the return of everyone’s favorite SkyCam!  Keep an eye out in the next few weeks for big changes.

Organizations accepting international currencies:

• The International Committee of the Red Cross
• British Red Cross
• UK: The Disasters Emergency Committee
• The French Red Cross
• UK: Merlin
• Germany Red Cross
• Italian Red Cross
• Ireland: Concern Worldwide
• Oxfam Great Britain
• Plan Canada

A new high water mark has been set for the site traffic!  On Friday December 18, when the snow started pounding us, AshevilleLiveCam.com more than doubled our previous record for traffic in a single day!  I had expected a spike in traffic, but this blew me away.  As always, AshevilleLiveCam.com thanks you all for your support.  We had visitors from 57 different countries, from Canada, Germany and the UK to Australia and New Zealand.

I would have liked to have made some updates to the site over the weekend, with pics and such, but unfortunately yours truly was one of the 67,000 or so without power and completely snowed in.  It was a crazy weekend, and I still count myself as part of that ever-dwindling number, as I still have no power.  Hopefully it will be restored today and I and my dogs can move back in to my own home-sweet-home.

Above is a pic from my place, and some more are below.

Above: My car.

Above: first time I’ve ever used this fireplace, for now my only source of heat.

Above: fun in the snow