http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Productivity-Sauce-Dmitri-s-open-source-blend-of-productive-computing/Track-Your-Missing-Notebook-with-PomboTo recover a lost or stolen notebook, you need all the help you can get -- and this is where Pombo can come in rather handy. The key component of the Pombo solution is a tiny Python script that runs on your notebook. The script runs quietly in the background and collects tracking information such as the IP address and information about all network interfaces as well as information about nearby wireless access points. In addition to that, the script can take a screenshot using the scrot tool and capture a snapshot with the notebook's webcam using the streamer utility. The script then packs, encrypts, and uploads the tracking information to a destination server.
I'm a big python fan these days, since I use it every day at work... think I'm going to be giving this script a go at the weekend.