As was mentioned Cat5 direct burial in plastic conduit out to the end of the driveway, IP cam or balun at the end. If lighting is good you can go with a color camera it will help with auto identification. A balun and 4 cams would be prefered.
(4 cams, 2 pointing each direction down the alley. 1 for car/driver/activity capture the other for license plate capture.)
Recording, this will be either through DVR hardware (analog cameras) or NVR software (IP cameras) or a "hybrid" of the two. I always reccomend hybrids so you can use cheaper analog stuff today and IP based stuff tomorrow. Definately a big selling point. When you buy DVR hardware always keep upgrades in mind, I see many who bought a 4 channel setup and want 8 cams. This means you will basically have to repurchase equipment to upgrade. The DVR/NVR software will provide for webservices and encoding of the video or transcoding it to still images.
You can PM/email me if you get serious about making this work right... the first time, inside your budget.