Webcams give absent owners an extra eye

August, 2008

Helena Peterson's favorite show these days depicts shadows flickering on artwork and furniture in a deserted dining room. It's not an avant-garde production but a webcam view of the vacation house that Peterson bought last year in Southport, N.C. Using a computer at her primary home in Ellsworth, Maine, she monitors the house in the tiny fishing town via an Internet connection. Though there's little to see, she said she finds it mesmerizing - and a way to spend time, at least virtually, in her second home while stuck at her first one.