Related link: http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2005/05/18/timelapse.html
My friend Scott Forst made a time lapse movie of a drive from LA to Monterey, and I helped him tell the story for O’Reilly Digital Media Center.
Although neither of us had experience with that sort of thing before we started, we came out with something decent because the technology did all of the work for us. Consumer electronics just get better and better.
Madison, WI to NYC with an iSight
http://www.hccp.org/mov/trip_sm.mov
Used an iSight mounted between 2 pieces of styrofoam on the car dashboard to capture a timelapse of a drive from Madison, WI to Brooklyn, NY.
It's a little tedious (9 minute running time), and I've posted the low res version, due to bandwidth constraints, but, as you point out, it is fascinating how easy it is to hack something together with everyday technology.
I used Boinx's iStopMotion for the frame capture.
Audio Lapse
Very cool! I wonder what time-laspe would sound like with audio files. —David Battino