'Interactive' Christmas lights webcam hoax pulls 4.3 million hits

[Neil Schneider]

This story is so much fun! How a techy pulled a fast-one on the
Internet for fun and Christmas cheer! I recommend the first URL, it's
his personal site and explains technically how he pulled off the hoax.

[See http://www.komar.org/xmas/hoax/ for Alek Komarnitsky's complete
explanation of how he fooled Internet fans, media and TV viewers into
believing he had a 17,000-light display on the front of his house that
they could not only see on the Web but could turn on and off from
their own computers. --JS]

<http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB110417399327110132,00.html>
High-Tech Holiday Light Display Draws Everyone But the Skeptics

By CHARLES FORELLE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 27, 2004 4:23 p.m.

[Excerpts]

Flying in TV station KMGH's "Air Tracker 7" helicopter earlier this
month, Alek Komarnitsky told the Denver ABC affiliate's audience about
the 17,000 Christmas lights flashing a thousand feet below on his
Colorado home.

"You can go to my Web site and not only view the lights via Web cam
but actually turn them on and off," said Mr. Komarnitsky, who lives
northwest of Denver in Lafayette. "Which is exactly what we're seeing
right now."

The lights on his house are real enough. So is Mr. Komarnitsky's Web
site, www.komar.org, which has seen 4.3 million hits this month as
word of its supposed features was spread like a virus by news media
and the Internet.

But Mr. Komarnitsky now acknowledges there is no Web cam taking live
pictures of the house. And, he adds, visitors to the site have no
ability to switch the lights on and off. To fool KMGH into thinking it
was broadcasting Web surfers switching the lights on and off, Mr.
Komarnitsky says his wife was inside the house, working a remote control.

"It's fake," says Mr. Komarnitsky. He says he decided to fess up
because the whole thing "had gotten too big," and he didn't want to
mislead anyone any longer.

--Nancy D. Holt contributed to this article

Write to Charles Forelle at charles.forelle at wsj.com

-- 
Neil Schneider                              pacneil_at_linuxgeek_dot_net
                                           http://www.paccomp.com
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"All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies."
                 -- Dr. John Arbuthnot (1667-1735)