I’m no authority on webcams but Skyline webcams seem a bit more than a cut above. They’re almost thrilling. Clear, fluid, real-time video of schlumpy, sandal-wearing tourists walking around and snapping photos and throwing slices of half-eaten pizza in garbage cans. Dusk has been falling for the last hour or so (it’s now 8:35 pm over there) with the street lights glowing brighter and brighter. Mostly Central and Eastern Europe (no cams in the British Isles, France, Germany, Switzerland or Russia, not to mention Asia, Australia, South America or the U.S.) with a special focus on Italy. Webcam technology is obviously leaps and bounds beyond where it was 10 or even 5 years ago. Sklyine’s cameras are only planted in the usual tourist spots and the Italian Skyline guys are using the wrong lenses, resulting in a horizontal taffy-pull effect. Here’s (a) the town square in Perugia, (b) Rome’s Piazza Navona and (c) Trevi fountain.

Here’s an explanation of Skyline’s apparent technological superiority: “Most of today’s webcam installations deliver poor quality images with a refresh rate of one frame every minutes or more. How could a visitor (potential customer), accustomed to the YouTube quality, be captured by a static picture of poor quality? If compared with the traditional scenic webcams, Skyline achieves a level never seen before with breathtaking images in real time and the capacity to serve thousands of simultaneous connections. Skyline color schema [technology] uses an HD cam with a special optical group that reproduces of the parameters characteristic of the human eye in terms of sensitivity and frequency response [and therefore] offers more suggestive images; clearness and chromatic fidelity will be extraordinary due to the high quality of the sensor and the direct application of DSP (Digital Signal Processor). Furthermore our cams have a particular control unity that adjusts to the best image settings; thanks to thermal stabilizers the electric stability is highly guaranteed, our cams can work in ambient temperature up to -30°C and humidity levels higher than 95%. But it doesn’t end here…the control unity is equipped with a software able to operate in case of connection speed insufficiency by compressing the images with an innovative and dynamic algorithm perfect for the network performance.”

How much of this is bullshit? Some of it, I’m sure, but my eyes don’t lie. These are the best-looking webcam videos I’ve ever seen in my life.