Comment Fishcam (Score 3, Informative) 218
The original Netscape fishcam http://www.fishcam.com/ has gone through several iterations of cameras. It started on a SGI indy with a camera that came with the computer. It then moved to a portable video camera that was fairly old at the time, but had an analog RCA output and was encoded by the SGI.
Now it runs on a Stardot NetCam SC5IR The Startdot camera is an embedded linux computer with a 5 MP video camera and high quality interchangeable lenses. The fact that it is a linux machine means you can do lots of creative things, like run a small web server, FTP, NFS, CIFS, scripts, etc.
The most important aspect about a camera in my mind is its reliability. I don't want to reset the thing ever if possible. The Stardot has been running for more than a year uninterrupted.
The big problem with Stardot cameras is the price. My SC5IR is over $1000 with all the accessories. A cheaper alternative is to set up a video server and use cheap security cameras with CGA resolution. You can get security cameras for $100 each and a cheap video card for ~$200.