"FLIP"ing out with a new gadget

...and on the eighth day, he created gadgets to keep humans busy and amused. Well, you get the idea.

I have to confess, my wife and I have a thing for new, cool technology gadgets. So it should not be a surprise to you that we have iPhones, iPods, digital cameras, Nintendo DSs and even a PSP around the house. Of course, most of these purchases were made before I lost my job, so while we aren't buying anything new, we haven't stopped using what we have or admiring the latest and "gee-whiz" stuff that is coming out.

Fortunately for me, my sister-in-law and her husband deemed my most recent birthday (an unfortunately high number now) an appropriate excuse to get me a cool, simple camcorder called the Flip minoHD. It's about the size of an iPod Nano only thicker and you just point and click to capture video segments. It has minimal zoom capability, but the quality of the movies is very high. And with the built-in flash memory you can capture up to 60 minutes on a single charge. But the simplest thing about it how easily you can download the videos to your computer and/or Internet video posting site of choice. Took me all of 5 minutes to figure out so you should be just fine.

Check out theflip.com for more info on this cool camcorder. I know you can get the special package I received from about $190 at Costco, but you can also personalize it on the website which looks fun.

So far, I've used it to record my son and his friends hitting baseballs at the Little League hit-a-thon and to capture the silly antics of our dogs Lucky and Ruby on recent walks. It was even simple to combine the disparate, short clips into one longer movie file using the FlipShare software. Of course you can also use any of the video editing software programs you like (we prefer iMovie) since the movies generated by the minoHD are standard .mp4 files.

Rating: 3 Pure Beeswax cobs (out of 4)


And I really like that this new gadget will give great, new way to capture content that I can use in future postings. As a tease of the goodness to come, here are some snapshots taken from my early recording sessions, and a clip of Ruby splashing around in the Bahia lagoon.

Lucky smiling while encouraging me to throw the tennis ball

Our friend Connor crushes one!

The dogs in a rare moment of relative stillness

I love the sound of Ruby splashing in the lagoon.

Cheers! - Jason