As you all know we’ve been working hard on relaunching both the waterhole cameras located at Pete’s Pond and Gowrie dam and are nearing the end of this effort.

With an unfortunate, last-minute power supply problem delaying the launch of Djuma’s Gowrie cam until next week, Mashatu’s Pete’s Pond cam grabbed the lead and will be the first to cross the finish line. It will come back on-line this Saturday, at 0600 CAT, in time to catch the first light of a new day at the Pond. We hope you’ll all be there to share this long anticipated and wonderful moment with us.

While the sight of the Pond has not changed, and will be familiar to many of you, some other things will be different. Most noticable will be the absence of a local camera operator, or’zoomie’. All control will therefore be done over the Internet by a group of remote ‘zoomies’. More details on that have been posted in a separate blog earlier today.

The second one is that the distribution technology used will be Flash-based and thus different from before. I know this concerns some of you, but I firmly believe that, given a fair chance, you will come to see it is a change for the better.

Furthermore there are some exciting new features. The broadcast from Pete’s Pond will be recorded and archived 24/7 which will make it easy to go back to sightings you might have missed. Also, in addition to crm-api-integ-220516.mystagingwebsite.com and mashatu.com, you will be able to watch it on Ustream and Justin.TV (with YouTube and some others to follow soon), as well as through the WildEarth application on the Roku set top box or on your iPad. We think this wider access will help create an even larger community of ‘Pondies’, all enjoying this fascinating glimpse into what’s happening on Mashatu Game Reserve.

We hope to see you all at the Pond this Saturday at 0600 CAT!

Peter