All very passe, I know, but if you're feeling bored, check out my webcam now beaming out images from my street around the clock.
Yes I bought an insanely cheap digital camera to use for videoconferencing and have got it working. Not without some trouble though: seems the UHCI USB chipset by Via isn't very good. Absolute shite, in fact. In case you're wondering, I had to hack up usb-uhci.c as proposed in this message.
Anyway, enjoy the webcam. Will post details of how to videoconference to me as soon as I work out the video loopback driver.