The Flip Digital Camera!
One of my new favorite tech toys is the Flip digital camera made by Pure Digital. I just bought mine a few months ago and already there is a significant upgrade, the latest version records in Hi-Def. I haven’t used it yet, but chances are my current camera will be gifted to a family member this holiday season so that I can get the new one.
It comes in a bunch of colors, but if you want to customize it even further you can upload your own graphic, and they’ll put it on the camera and ship it to you!
So why all the excitement?
First, the video camera is tiny. It is smaller than any cell phone and it weighs nothing.
Second, it is brain-dead easy to use. I don’t love the menu system (for example, you have to sometimes press the trashcan button to NOT delete a photo, which is distressing) but you can’t go wrong with the BIG RED BUTTON to start and stop recording. It is so easy my three girls can use it – and use it they do! Each start/stop creates a new file, so it is simple to watch without doing a lot of editing.
Third, there is a big pop out USB plug that both charges and makes the camera look like a removable disk.
The included software is okay. It is cleverly installed on the camera itself, so you don’t really need to do an install, and there are some good basic functions, although I find that it runs pretty painfully slow on my PC. You can do things like upload your videos to YouTube if you want, and you can email them… neither is particularly satisfying for the obvious reasons. However, (and here’s the cool part) because I use Memeo Share, I can literally just plug the camera in and without doing anything, start sharing my videos.
They will get posted to the Memeo online gallery (these can be either public or private) and they are also delivered directly to friends and family. Recipients might need a special codec to make it work since Pure Digital uses one that isn’t available on every PC or Mac. They do play perfectly on the Memeo Share online gallery without downloading anything. You can check out http://share.memeo.com/dnadir/Mino+Test for a few examples of videos that came straight off my camera. They should give you an idea of the quality for both action and low-light. The second video even does a bit of zooming, although I don’t typically use zoom very much.
Have a Flip Mino or its new sibling? Leave us a comment and tell us what you do with your Mino and how your share your videos!
Dan Nadir
Vice President, Product Management
