I put a 1998 webcam on my website

There's something funny about opening a modern laptop camera and making the picture worse on purpose.

I added a Camera app to danoh.com. It opens in a little desktop window, asks for camera access, and turns the feed into something that looks like it came from an old family computer.

The default is 160 × 120 pixels with sixteen system colours and dithering: the patterns of dots that make a small palette look like it has more shades than it actually does. You can still recognise yourself. There's just considerably less information to work with.

There are five effects to switch between: 16 colours, 1-bit, Phosphor, Pixelate, and Glass. Glass is the modern one. The others lean into different ways of breaking the picture down.

The part I like most comes after you take a photo.

Press Snap and the feed becomes a picture you can keep. Save it to My Pictures, open Explorer, and there it is. A small interaction, but it gives the desktop somewhere to go. The windows start to feel connected.

The camera asks permission before turning on. Processing happens in your browser, with no camera images uploaded to a server.

I like websites that give you something to do. Something small enough to try without instructions, and a little odd enough to remember.

This one lets you take a worse photo of yourself.

Open the desktop and try Camera →