Streaming audio and video
A good start for trying different options is to use vlc (http://www.videolan.org) Its file->transmit menu command opens a wizard with which you can play.
Another good one is gstreamer, (http://www.gstreamer.net), the gst-launch program in particular, which allows you to build pipelines from the command line.
I've been trying for a while but struggling.  I have two projects:

Stream audio to server for distribution over the web
Stream audio and video from a webcam to a server for distribution over the web.

I have thus far tried ffmpeg and ffserver, PulseAudio, mjpegstreamer (I got this working but no audio) and IceCast all with little luck.  While I'm sure this is likely my fault, I was wondering if there are any more option?
I've spent a while experimenting with Linux options and was also wondering if there were options with Python having recently played with OpenCV.
If anyone can suggest more options to look into Python or Linux based it would be much appreciated or point me at some good tutorials or explainations of what I've already used it would be much appreciated.