Laptop Tracking Service is Free and Open-source

Last month Stanford University (Calif.) went into damage control mode after a laptop computer, containing the personal information of some 62,000 former and current university employees, was stolen. In April, a laptop belonging to a University of Virginia employee was stolen after the employee took it off campus. The laptop contained private information for more than 7,000 staff and students, and led to at least one case of identity theft -- and more than $20,000 in fraudulent credit card charges.
Now, researchers at the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego have launched a free, open-source laptop tracking service that they hope will put an end to such thefts. Adeona (named for the Roman goddess of safe returns) is the first system for tracking the location of a lost or stolen laptop that does not rely on a proprietary, central service.
Available for Linux, Mac OSX, or Windows XP/Vista, Adeona continually monitors the current location of the laptop, recording the last used IP address and network information. This information enables law enforcement to track down the criminal, says Tadayoshi Kohno, an assistant professor at the University of Washington.
Bonus for Mac OSX users: Adeona can capture pictures of the laptop thief using the built-in iSight camera found on Macbook models