Bird Watch is on at Craigslist

Which will come first — an overload of “Craigslist has gone to the birds” headlines, or an Internet traffic jam to the webcam on company founder Craig Newmark’s back porch? Right now we are giving even odds, after reading the Wired post about a research project that will let Internet viewers remotely control a bird-watching camera affixed to the back porch of Newmark’s rustic rural (for San Francisco) home.

Called the CONE (for Collaborative observatory for natural environments) Sutro Forest, the Cal-Berkeley project is the latest step in a series of nature-cams, of which there have been others before. But since this one involves the no-billions-for-me nice-guy Newmark, we’re betting the attention level will ratchet up a bit, from the mainstream media as well as from Internet time-wasters who will simply think it’s cool to control the cam on Craig’s porch.

Ostensibly there is going to be some real bird-watching going on, but we are also thinking of offering a betting line on how long it takes some geek to try to turn the camera around for a peek inside Craig’s house.

(Seagull photo by Paul Kapustka)