by Melanie Denyer

Created on: February 23, 2008   Last Updated: August 01, 2011

When, a couple of years back, a friend bought a new PC that came bundled with a webcam, she tossed the box aside dismissively, saying she wasn't that kind of girl and that I was welcome to use it if I had anything I could do with it. And, believe me, there is plenty you can do with a webcam.

One of the first publicly recorded uses of a webcam was at Cambridge University in the early nineties, where people working in the Computer Science Department set up a camera to watch a filter coffee pot in the Trojan Room, in order to prevent people making wasted journeys round the building in search of a cup of coffee, when none was left in the pot, especially since the flow rate for a new pot of coffee was particularly slow.

These days, webcams have many more uses than the simple monitoring of a coffee pot, though I'm by no means ruling it out if that works for you. From monitoring to security via communications and accessibility, webcams have the potential to revolutionise parts of our lives. Here's how.

• Monitoring

There's long been discussion of 'nanny cams', or webcams implanted into soft toys and left around the home to keep an eye on the person caring for your child when you're out. With a few clicks you can see what's happening in your home and generally reassure yourself that your child is in safe hands. But it's not just nanny cams: for a first-time parent, the ability to check on their newborn without waking them can be an absolute godsend. And you never tire of watching your baby sleep!

Naturally enough, people also use webcams to monitor other things. For some people, it's being able to keep an eye on their pets, others like to train a webcam on a favourite plant in order to see how it's progressing, while another friend of mine, who has a particular problem with a neighbour's pet, has a camera pointing at her front lawn in order to gather sufficient evidence to get tackle the owner. Yet another friend, who has a small shop, keeps a webcam in the store room so she can check stock levels from her office at home and order new stock as required.

• Security

From monitoring with a live feed, it's not a great leap to storing the images on a hard disk and setting up a simple security camera - or cameras plural. They can be used for something as basic as monitoring the emergency cash jar to strategic positioning throughout the home to capture images of any burglars, or indeed placing them carefully outside to pick up images of anyone snooping

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