Linked by David Adams on Wed 21st Jan 2004 22:52 UTC
If all goes well, this summer I'll be building a new house. I've owned a few houses before, some of them built in the 1920s and 30s, and full of all the charm and quirks of an old house, and a couple that were pretty new, with the lack of craftsmanship and imagination that's typical in most new construction in the USA today. But this time I'm building a custom home, just to my specifications, so I can have whatever features I want, limited only by my imagination (and budget). I'd like to integrate some home automation features into the house, and include wiring for future expansion. 
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yeah, back in the day - my dad added on and did coax throughout the whole house (this was back when coax was still being used in some networking) - anyway, i'd strongly suggest going with the cat6, phone, and power to every room, heck - you might as well add a cable line of some sort - antennae, satellite, or regular cable.
and i had to run my own networking cables for the small lan i've got put together. wireless? - the security is there for the most part. if they're going to take the time to hack your encrypted signal that is mac address dependent - then chances are that they're going to plant a rogue machine on your lan when you're not looking.
as far as the wireless route goes - let's be realistic - having a completely wired house is a dream come true. but, if you could add wireless on top of that? - WOW! - yes, i would personally suggest adding the wireless option - just for the sole convenience of being able to sit in the jacuzzi and surf the web ;-)
as far as the webcams (for the guy's son who did) go - creative yes - but gravely misdirected creativity. you might want to look into finding other techno projects to get your son into - such as a full-in house security system. granted many people might look at you and ask why you were running a packet sniffer (but, who doesn't check out their own networks?)
right now, i've got a simple auto-duplexing 10/100 Mbps switch, a wireless internet service provider (beaming me from 5 miles away with high speeds), and about 7 or 8 live nodes all the time - internet server/firewall, kids machine, video editing machine, my machine, my xbox, and my dad's office - plus the occassional nightly fix it project.
after running the correct wires a second time around - i would seriuosly suggest that you run and terminate properly everything you can think of. i've got a house full of coax that's never been terminated
just one question for the webcam guy - what sort of tech specs was your kid running? - multiple webcams? you said website - did he have live feeds online? - if so, please explain - i've toyed around a bit but haven't found the best software yet.