An idea about a webcam....

[Jason Brower <encompass gmail com>]

Greetings everyone!

I have been wondering how webcam support in gnome has been progressing
and to my knowledge haven't seen any integrate into gnome ideas that
have stuck...
We have things that take pictures.
We have things that run under different protocols.  Ekiga is a great
example.
But what about something in a much simpler sense.  So many people want
to use there cams on the Internet and need a simple more all-in-one
solution.
To get to the point you can skip this....
---
My progress of the year...
I have used Linux as my only OS since 2000 and haven't looked back.
What I found as the greatest challenge is providing a way for me to show
my web-cam with others on the Internet.  For example I have Gaim with 4
or 5 accounts and my Dad asks if he can see me and my wife.  Can't in
Gaim. (And I don't want it to.)
Or I may have more than one person wanting to see the cam at once.  On
different technology.
This led me to make my first web-cam server running in Apache.  I liked
it.  But couldn't get frames past 1 a second.  I wanted something
faster.
---
This led me to camserv.  This little known program uses v4l feeds and
shows them as moving jpegs.  Very nice.  I get very good frame rates.
And best of all I can use it with any browser. Except for IE for some
obviously but not-so-obvious reasons. :)
I have created a very simple front end in about 10 minutes that starts
and stops the webcam with the click of a button. PyGTK just to tell you.
But I have the following hurdles.

*I want it to have better security.  Perhaps a user and password script.
*I needs to be compatible with IE.  My father for example is very
stubborn and won't try Firefox because he hated Netscape.
*Need to get threw firewalls and routers.
*And most of all I want it to become part of the integrated gnome
workings.  So that a user of gnome can finally use there webcam with
anyone anywhere as long as they have a browser.

Would anyone be willing to help me out?
And any pointers on the subject would be greatly loved!
Jason Brower