According to the BBC, an association of cheesemakers from Somerset have come up with a new and innovative marketing campaign for the die-hard cheese lovers amongst us.

The new cheddarvision webcam is set up so that customers can watch their cheese maturing over the course of a year. The feed was reportedly started on the first day of 2007, but the site had been running for several days before that, and the counter has now reached 10 days.

So, is it legitimate? Difficult to say. The West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers does seem to be a real organisation, and yes, they produce cheese. As to the webcam, that's more difficult to say. Cheese isn't the most mobile of subject matter, and it's nigh impossible to tell whether it is a current web feed or just looped footage. Or, indeed, a photograph.
(Thanks, Dave.)

UPDATE 2/4/07: It is clear now that this is a real web feed. Here is a time lapse video of months 0-3.
(Thanks, Beasjt.)

Whether or not this is a hoax, they misspelt 'milliseconds' on their counter. Maybe this is a clue as to whether it's genuine - or perhaps not. Who can tell?

Better not tell Wallace about this. Gromit's got enough on his plate as it is.

Oh did I say "plate". There's nothing as nice as a good plate of cheese.

What's next? A channel where viewers can watch paint dry?

Captain Al said:

"What's next? A channel where viewers can watch paint dry?"

"The paint drying channel" is how my sister-in-law Judy refers to the show How It's Made, which demonstrated the manufacturing process of such fascinating things like Venetian blinds.

As to the cheesecam, I think they should have done it in 3-D and handed out those red and blue glasses to people to watch it in all its fermenting glory.

Hi.

I'm afraid this is not a hoax - I actually set up the axis camera for this.

The cheese in question was - I believe - the last one to be made at the Westcombe dairy before the new year - it was made on the 23rd December (hence this is when the counter was started). The site officially launched on 01/01/2007.

You should be able to notice the lights go on most days in the morning (but not necessarily for the whole day)

There is a paint-peeling camera somewhere on the internet, but I guarantee thaqt cheddarvision.tv will be more interesting when the mold starts to grow, and when we release the time-lapse videos of the mold growing!

please keep watching...

Gez

Sorry Gez, but I don't believe you and I am 99.9% sure it IS a hoax, as the image is a photograph imho, not a webcam image. It is much too stable and noise-less to be a webcam image imho.

Did you notice how Tom moved the cheese this morning, so the label is at the side and not obscuring the view?

The object is to illustrate the mautring process, so it needs to be relativley live - however it is chesse maturing so it doesn't need to be 25 fps!

We decided not to run a live video feed to conserve bandwidth and increase reliability - so the page checks for a new photo every 30 seconds. New images are saved each hour, or evey 3-5 seconds if the motion detection notices that something is happening. honest..

Okay, that sounds reasonable indeed. So time-lapse photography rather than a video stream.

Reminds me of this site: http://www.urban75.com/Mag/breadcam.html Which has been on the web for years and is definitely a hoax.

Unless it does get moldy-- and cheddar's not supposed to have mold on it, is it?-- doesn't a year-old cheese look exactly the same as a brand-new cheese?

... which would make this more like the "paint that starts out already dry and then doesn't do anything" channel.

Westcome cheddar is matured for a year - you can see a fully matured round here:

http://www.farmhousecheesemakers.com/about_us/our_cheesemakers/default_6.html

If you look in the background of the webcam shot when the lights are on (usually mid-morning GMT), you can see some of the older cheese..

I have no trouble believing this. Strange concept, no idea who would actually want to watch it, but I don't find it exceptionally hard to believe. Lots of places have these sorts of things for all sorts of purposes... those "GhostCams" placed in random places spring to mind.

Yes, it would probably be just about as easy to set up a real webcam like that as it would be to fake one convincingly.

I suppose that he could always take requests of certain actions in order to prove that it's real, if he feels like it. Maybe put a purple marble in the foreground, or whatever.

Uh, the Telegraph has a story about banning cheese ads on the telly because cheese is now "junk food".

Can you say "hypocritical"?

If it were genuine then why not put a calendar/clock (like the ones they have in banks) IN the picture?

(Or maybe there wouldn't be so much speculation (free publicity) if they did.

Gez please ask Tom to say yes to Martin

It is his wedding after-all and it would offer a kind of proof or verification.

Thank you.

I think a clock might set off the motion detection too much, but a calendar would be a good idea! . . .

. . . taking requests though is inspired!! .. come on Gez - can we make requests?!!

Why not at 7pm each day a man walks by and bites a bit out of it?

At least seeing the cheese now we can appreciate why the Moon is said to be made of green cheese - green being unripe not the colour.

It is rather Moon colour at the moment.

Ain't edukashun wonerfull

Well unless it's a very elaborate and slightly cruel hoax it's true!

The cheese will be delivered on the day of Martin's (see post above) wedding - he phoned them to ask for it.

Thank you Gez and Tom.

It's night time in Cheese Land right now. Also did anybody else notice you can click the TV controls to get different pictures of stuff? The top one just displays "I can't see anything. Mind if I turn the brightness up?" and resets the dial. The bottom one shows different pictures.

Cool - thank you Soldant

It is now Martin's cheese and will be used rather than a wedding cake. Aaaaaahhhhhhh!

I have a question about cheese (not this cheese, just cheese in general.)

The other day I forgot to put a cheeseball back in the refridgerator. It sat out from about noon to 8:30 pm. My mom said cheese doesn't go bad if it's out for a couple of hours and she still wants me to eat it (she paid a lot of money for it, she said) but I'm not sure it's safe...

It's safe - cheese has been around a lot longer than fridges. Indeed it's a way of preserving milk.

Any mould on cheese can be cut off and the cheese is fine - unlike bread, any mould and chuck the lot.

Do what mother says, unless you have good reason to believe your mother is trying to kill you...

When the internet first began catching on, there was a website where it was nothing but a camera pointed at a busstop. That's all. Nothing but whatever showed up at the stop for 24/7. It was, I think, the first website sensation. Ain't it grand to see how far we've progressed? I understand that Atari is thinking of putting Pong back in bars.

FIRST MOULD SIGHTING!

The beginning..
http://www.cheddarvision.tv/

I think that's the face of Jesus in the upper left hand corner of the cheese. See for yourself.

:D

It's him!

If his face appears on bread is he truly risen?

Wow, watching cheese age live on the internet.

Now that's culture.



(I can't believe nobody else said it)

I guess someone curd've come up with that one - perhaps they don't rind jokes like that very runny?

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