The company I work for (Cisco), just announced the intent to acquire Pure Digital – makers of the Flip, for a whopping $590m. The CEO of Pure Digital, Jonathan Kaplan, was in Seattle and spoke at our company meeting yesterday.
The flip is a very cool product. I'm not sure my backpacking trips are ever entertaining enough to want to shoot video – but I'm sure some readers might find the idea interesting.
If you haven't heard of it before (living under a rock?) then it's a tiny Digital Video Camera – about 4 x 2 and weighs a ridiculous 3.3 oz. It has built-in storage, but it's elegance it truly in it's simplicity.
Jonathan was a humble yet inspiring guy – his tenacity on simplicity really shows in the Flip. I've wrestled with camcorders, codecs, video problems, fire-wire connections and all sorts of mess in the past. The flip – is insanely easy – you just flip a switch on the side and up pops a USB connector. Plug it into your PC, some simple software runs automatically and hey presto – your video is on YouTube or off to your friends and family via a link in email.
It is truly in the league of an Apple product – something all consumer companies aspire to – but very few can ever achieve.
More info at www.theflip.com.
Darren over at Whitespider uses one to shoot his videos. I’m half tempted to get one myself now that he’s moved to the other end of the country.
I have one of these and it really is pretty cool: easy to use, easy to download stuff, long battery life. One tech con is that when recording with the zoom all the way out, everything is slightly out of focus. The biggest problem I have with this thing isn’t the thing; it’s that my life is simply too boring to record and edit. Seriously. Then again, that’s why I don’t Tweet.
New kid on the block, the Apple Nano, weighing in at 1.28oz. Bigger screen, same video resolution, 4+ times the capacity, and still a build-in battery.