Webcam applet

Here are two opensource projects involving the use of Webcams with Java:

JIV-Java interface for video devices:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/jiv

TimCam - A simple graphical WebCam program written in Java using the JMF:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/timcam

Good luck.

Thanks for that - but I am really not looking for something live. I imagine that dating sites use this. You could record a message and upload it for people to view whenever...

Any ideas?

You can get an idea on how to handle a webcam from the opensource projects I posted. I don't have any applet for you that does exactly what you want. I can't just tell you in a couple of lines how to create such an applet, you'll have to read some books/tutorials about all the techniques involved.
The javax.media is the main package you'll have to focus on. Google for some tutorials and info about this package. This is maybe also interesting for you: http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=570463&tstart=0 it's a sample-code for webcam capturing.
If you have a more specific question on Java and handling (still-)images, just post your code and tell what's going wrong and where.

Good luck.