In case you were wondering what Logitech's mice do at night: they eat your snacks. No, I'm not talking about the fancy electronic ones that come in different colors and flavors, I'm talking about the ones that came to like the madeleines I'm keeping at the office for hungry moments.

Maybe I should put up a webcam or a mouse trap, just to be sure that they're not actually of the same species ...

There's nothing to test a new development environment like hacking up a little application that has been long overdue. Like a decent Windows webcam application using Visual Studio 2005. It turns out that the latter one seriously rocks, which gives the former one a chance to do the same in the near future. :-)

It took me only a little more than a day to write up the following small application:

It still lacks a few interesting features that will probably take a little more time to implement but so far I'm really happy with the efficiency that Visual Studio, C#, and DirectShow allow for. It took me several weeks to write something slightly similar on Linux and it doesn't look half as good. We'll see how it goes from here--updates and betas will be posted.

By the way, why another webcam application? Well, so far I haven't found a single one that I even remotely like. They're either written in Java which usually results in them being sluggish or not working at all, or they cost money. Not that I wouldn't pay for software--I'm not a poor student anymore ;-)--but most of them simply don't deserve a single cent. So, if you know any good non-Java, non-commercial webcam application for Windows, don't hesitate to let me know. I'll be happy to steal its features. ;-)

PS: I'm also looking for a good name for the app!