A company by the name of Axis Communications makes network cameras. They’re pretty slick devices; as true standalone IP devices, they require only an Ethernet cable to transmit images. Neat.

Many Axis cameras have their realtime images served up on the Web, using Common Gateway Interface technology. But so what? Who cares? Well, only geeks, really, but a fun fact is that Axis camera URLs reliably contain the string /axis-cgi/ or inurl:"view/index.shtml". A quick Google search can turn up hundreds. Here’s one from some street corner in the Czech Republic. Here’s another from an Estonian waterfront.

I found out that this topic got Slashdotted last January, but only just stumbled upon it, and thought it was an amusing way to kill some time: watching people going about their business thousands of miles away, for no particular reason at all. This must be what it’s like to work for the NSA.