These days, any proud parent with $30 or so can get a webcam for the home computer and use it to share live video of Junior with Grandma and Grandpa over the Internet. Keeping an eye on a distant loved one seems an obvious use for the relatively new technology. In fact, that's just what the researchers who built the first webcam had in mind. Only in their case, the object of affection wasn't an adorable kid-it was a University of Cambridge coffeepot.

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