The view from above

You might be familiar with the Park@201 building downtown. It’s the new building on the ped mall with the glass exterior. Take a look at the top of building, the southwest and northwest corners in particular, and you will notice two protrusions. No, they are not gargoyles. They are video cameras that provide a giant’s-eye view of Iowa City courtesy of MetaCommunications. Here’s the website: http://www.metacommunications.com/webcam.

One camera is pointing north and the other is pointing south. The neat thing is that you can control the cameras. On the lower right part of the camera view, you will see this: 

Clicking on the icon to which the green arrow is pointing will give you a fullscreen view. The icon to the right of that will let you control the camera. From there you can choose the camera’s orientation and you can zoom in or out.

Here are views from both cameras:

My favorite view is Ped Mall South. What’s yours?