You could sort of do it with messenger, however I was thinking you can't set up a messenger server [you can! But I don't know how] and in order to get the webcam feed, it would be the pc with camera attached that needs to send you an invitation to view webcam. I can't, off the top of my head, think of a way to get around this, but I thought some of the more phone-oriented software might allow automatic answering of video calls, no need to have an invitation sent each time.
Messenger will keep the video feed off the public internet, unless you start adding outside people to the account that the camera is connected to. The video may be sent unencrypted to the msn server and back to you, but I doubt MS, the government or your ISP are interested in the security feed of your friend
so you're probably ok there.
I'm sure there is plenty of free software to send a video feed over one or more direct links, but I can't think of any names. GNU/Hurd users can set up a camera like that to act like it's local to the viewing computer, and I'm sure you could do the same sort of thing with sockets on any other OS [though that means five to twenty minutes coding and testing- more than I'd bother doing]. Using broadcast streaming software means you've got to cut access to the camera from the outside world somehow, and you said you've got more than one internet connection, so I'd figure it might be tricky.
Still, have you tried googling for free video streaming software?
[makes me think of
this]
was put impeccably into words at DebianDay for me last Saturday, by Knut Yrvin of Trolltech - adults try something once, fail, and then are like "ffs this doesn't work". Children try, fail, and then try again, and succeed - maybe on the second, or even fifth retry. But the thing is that they keep at it and overcome the problems in the end.
-andrewdodd13
