The Flip Video — The $100 Digital Video Camera that’s Tiny, Cheap, and Fun!

Review by Photojojo.com

Remember those shoulder-mounted VHS camcorders dad used to haul out at soccer games once a year, “for posterity”? Shrink it down to 1/20th the size, 1/10th the cost, and make it run for a couple hours on a pair of AAs, and you’d have the Flip Video.

When technology works, it’s a wonderful thing.

This critter packs a built-in flip-out USB port for downloading 640×480 MPEG4 at 30 frames-per-second (geek-speak for “pretty decent quality”) to your PC or Mac, a small LCD to review what you’ve recorded, a cable to watch videos on your TV in seconds, and a friendly user interface that requires no manual. (Really, truly!)

Cinema-quality video it is not, but surprisingly clear and bright for its size and cost, it is. We’ve been having a blast using this guy this past week!

We think the Flip Video is perfect for anyone who wants to capture video without hassle, or a rugged camera for little hands.

“Digital camera tries video sharing for dummies” Review by CNET.com

Uploading video to the Web isn’t second nature to everyone, and the makers of the new Flip Video understand that...
Much like the way easy photo-sharing applications like iPhoto, Flickr and Picasa offer simple editing controls and take some of the pain out of uploading and sharing digital photos, the video camera set to hit stores Tuesday is packaged with editing software that will upload video clips to video-sharing sites YouTube and Grouper.

The popularity of user-generated video, particularly on sites like YouTube, is well documented. But the introduction of a device that does all the work of editing and uploading could open the Web 2.0 video experience to a whole new demographic–average users.

Consumers in the Digital Age often expect instant gratification with new gadgets. With Flip Video, consumers can plug the tiny camera–which takes up as much room as a deck of cards–directly into a computer, and with little or no video editing or transcoding skills, share the video with the world on YouTube or with select people on Grouper.

“Nobody is really addressing getting that (video) up instantly between when you take a video and when it gets posted,” said Samir Bhavnani of Current Analysis.

Flip Video is a new brand from Pure Digital, a 5-year-old company whose business until last fall had been making one-time-use digital cameras and video cameras. The company’s typical customers have mainly been technophobes who still want to document “casual moments” on video for posterity–the so-called soccer mom set. A preliminary version of the Flip Video camera was released last fall, but it didn’t have the same software or hardware features as the gadget coming out this week….. Click here for rest of article