When I travel I often wonder if I am still going to have my TV and valuables when I get back home, or will some drug crazed local have put my window in and ransacked the house. I was burgled a long time ago, those unluckily enough to have gone thought the same thing will know that it’s a though that is always with you.

A burglar alarm is a good idea, but I don’t want the police turning up on my door just because the cat jumped up onto the sofa and set it off.

My ideal Skype application would be a utility that uses the webcam and when it detects movement calls me and shows me the video so I can see if it’s just a cat or a cat burglar

Video Snarf is just what I have been looking for. Install it, point the webcam at an area you want to monitor, ie the door to your office, and if any movement is detected then it will make a Skype video call to alert you.

Video Snarf also has a BOT component so you can control it via IM.
You can use simple commands like ‘Motion On’ or ‘Motion Off’ to remotely turn on or off motion detection. But cleverly you can issue the command ‘list‘ and it will tell you how many motion events it has captured. You can then view an image of the event, useful if you have missed a call or if you just want to check the status of your office remotely.

I did find one annoying problem but thankfully it is mentioned in the documentation so hopefully will get addressed. If Video Snarf is running then some commands don’t behave as you would expect copy and paste for example. But normally Video Snarf wouldn't be running when you are at your desk. Unless of course you want to ring yourself each time you move. Once you close Video Snarf then the problem goes away so it’s easy to live with it.

Take a look at Videosnarf for yourself.