J. R. Ransom

About Donations
August 10, 2007: You might have noticed the little donation button on these pages. The reason that I'm put that up there is that I'd like to keep our mountain cam in place for a long time. In order to do that, my company will need to invest more money into it in several ways.

Most important is the use of the roof-top space at El Torreon Hacienda. The El Torreon Hacienda, LLC may sell the property soon. Our company Taos Music & Art, Inc. (TMA) will most likely continue to pay for a phone line and DSL there to keep this going. Also, I'd like to firm up a deal with a qualified techie in town who can get to the cam if I am traveling.

The taoswebcam.com site makes a little money from the google ads, but to make this webcam available in the future we'd sure appreciate some help in supporting taoswebcam.com's Taos Mountain Webcam at El Torreon Hacienda. If you like the webcam so much that you want to donate, thanks. Donations are much appreciated, because we'd like to keep the online cam, with this exceptional view, alive for people everywhere who love the mountain.

I'd like to keep the cam in place no matter what happens and maybe even up grade it to hi-definition, if possible, which might allow us to provide a second live cam by putting this current cam somewhere else. We'd also like to work out something with the new owner of El Torreon Hacienda to keep the main attraction of taoswebcam.com clicking away.

About the webcam
On September 26, 2003, I set up this webcam on the roof of the Historic El Torreon Hacienda in El Prado, NM just north of the Town of Taos, New Mexico USA. Favian Trujillo climbed up on the roof with me and attached the mounting for the camera's all-weather case. My grandson, Leo Bachand, helped me tweak the camera the night before we left for India. The next time I saw the online image from this cam was in Vrindavan India as we watched the sun rise in Taos before going to dinner. Since then tens of thousands of visitors have come to see Taos Mountain online on taoswebcam.com.

The constantly refreshed photograph of Sacred Taos Mountain on taoswebcam.com is a service of taosmultimedia.com, and our company, Taos Music & Art, Inc.. Network services to run this WebCam are provided by Tony Whitecrow's Deerskin Art and Western Collectibles at El Torreon Hacienda, El Prado, NM.

Putting up this perfectly positioned webcam just seemed like such a great idea at the time. It has proven to be so. This webcam photo of Taos Mountain is a very popular online attraction. I've been told that many people use this webcam image as desktop pictures and screensavers.

From September 2003 Through July 2006, taoswebcam.com has received a total of 32,205 viewers for 75,791 Visits delivering 143,898 pages and 9.937, 231 hits. By Early September 2006 the Taos Mountain webcam photo had racked up over 10 Million hits.

We were very happy to be told that when our Taos Reserve Soldiers were stationed in Iraq, these webcam photos were a precious up to the minute link to Taos and the folks back home.

WebCam on Roof

taoswebcam.com uses a Stardot camera, which is actually a Linux computer with a lens and CCD.The camera runs a web server internally and sends a new photograph to the taoswebcam.com Web site every 15 seconds. Each new photo overwrites the previous photo. That's about 3500 new Taos Mountain photographs posted to the Web every day.

When it rains or snows the glass on the front of the webcam housing get rain-drops on it. Later they sometimes dry as spots. Getting to this webcam requires that somebody (mostly me) climb an extension ladder to the roof with some Windex and a paper towel. So..., sometimes you'll a slightly "dirty" image of sacred Taos Mountain. This can't be helped.

In September 2004, we had enough wind that a roof was blown off of the porch in front of Taos MultiMedia Studio. When the porch roof blew off it flew over the main roof and landed in the apple orchard on the northwest side of the building. On the way the pro-panel sliced the wire for the webcam. Frank V. came up to TMMS and spliced it back together. Then in the summer of 2006 we lost the memory module and the webcam had to go to California for repair. Now the webcam is back again.

Thanks for visiting taoswebcam.com
J. R. Ransom
President - Taos Music & Art, Inc.

About Your Use of These Images: This webcam offers a unique perspective of Sacred Taos Mountain. These images are posted for your enjoyment. TMA gives these images to you for your personal non-commercial use. That means that you can use these images for your screensaver or email a favorite capture to a friend. You can print these images for personal non-commercial use. If, for example, you want to print a series of photo placemats to be sold commerically, you would have to license the images from TMA. You may use one of the images on your web site if you provide a link to taoswebcam.com. You may alter the image for your personal non-commercial use, but not for artist reproductions for sale at art gallery shows or as commercial prints and such. For complete information about extended use of these particular images, please contact, Taos Music & Art, Inc.

You can see these live images of Sacred Taos Mountain on EarthBrowser. The Earth is Alive EarthBrowser is a three dimensional model of the earth with constantly updating live information. Exploring the earth is fun and easy with a point and click interface that lets you rotate and zoom to any desired location. EarthBrowser's dynamic nature makes it an information resource that is always useful and fascinating. Live Weather Monitor weather in over 17,000 locations worldwide with EarthBrowser's live weather updates. Full seven day forecasts and hourly weather conditions updates let you know the weather without waiting for the local television forecast. Animated clouds let you see cloud fronts, hurricanes and weather systems as they move across the globe. Learn as You Explore Watch the night shadow travel across the globe showing the seasons. View country and states, tectonic plate boundaries and local time zones. Live earthquakes and volcanoes have links to in-depth information on each particular quake. Click on any country flag to go to a website with detailed information. Customizable EarthBrowser enables you to set which cities display weather and even add your own cities to automatically get the closest weather report. View hundreds of live webcams across the globe and add your own webcam or vacation picture links right on the globe. EarthBrowser