Here's a tip to help you keep an eye on a large room or space while sticking to a tight budget: Combine your PC and traditional webcam with the TrackerPod from Eagletron Inc.

You've already heard of PC's and webcams, but where does TrackerPod come in? PC webcams are limited in their field of vision—they show only the area they’re pointed at. Monitoring an entire room can mean buying several cameras and placing them at various points around the room--hard on the pocketbook and complicated to use.

The TrackerPod lets you use a single camera for the same job. It’s a motorized base that swivels and turns your webcam.

The software included with TrackerCam lets you log in over the Internet from anywhere in the world to watch your camera's video. So far, so good. The special feature, though, is that you can tell it to turn the camera as you watch the video.

Look to the left, look down, center the camera on that spot there, look to the right. Cover the whole room and get back to your vacation confident that all’s well. Cool, cheap, and it works. Check it out at www.trackercam.com.

TrackerPod is a USB plug-and-play device that comes bundled with TrackerCam control software. For users who want to monitor more than one camera, the company offers a sophisticated multi-camera surveillance application called CamPanel for a reasonable price. Also available from their web site are USB extenders for positioning a webcam up to 150 feet away from a PC.