webcam... linux

Video for linux (v4l)
Most USB webcams have drivers for linux that provide a video for linux interface.
http://www.exploits.org/v4l/
Probably using video4linux would be the simplest solution for capturing video on linux systems.
Example of driver implementation: http://webcam.sourceforge.net/

There is also a Video for linux 2 implementation:
http://www.thedirks.org/v4l2/
and they have an API for capturing video:
http://www.thedirks.org/v4l2/v4l2cap.htm

usb stack implementation for linux
http://www.linux-usb.org/


Video4Linux based Plugin for Apache:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/modvideo/

Linux webcam howto