One of the hottest, non-Apple pieces of portable electronics of the year is the Flip camcorder.
The latest model is the Mino, the just-released version of the handheld movie maker. Selling for $180, the Mino has had a million sales in just the past year and boasts statistics like already owning around 15 percent of the camcorder market and routinely holding a couple of spots on Amazon.com's top 20 best selling consumer electronics list.
It seems to have filled the perfect void for members of the YouTube generation looking for an inexpensive, simple, and small solution for grabbing their memories then easily throwing them online.
"It's not just about capturing memories, but it's also about sharing memories," said Jonathan Kaplan of Pure Digital. "And it's not just about capturing that creative story you want to tell, it's about sharing that story with the world. So what we've tried to do in order to make video fun is not just make it simple and easy to capture video, but by flipping out the USB and connecting into your computer, all the software resides on the video camcorder to upload your videos to MySpace, to upload them to YouTube, to burn a DVD and to edit your videos."
The Mino holds one hour of video, but what makes it different from predecessors is that it's almost half the size, has touch-sensitive buttons, a re-chargeable battery, and, developers say, offers better sound quality.
One of the hottest, non-Apple pieces of portable electronics of the year is the Flip camcorder. Adam Balkin has more.
And though capture quality is getting better, this product is clearly for quick and easy shooting and sharing. This is not necessarily the device you want to grab for your child's dance recital or solo in the school play.
"Traditionally camcorders had real lenses, they also have big optical zooms, you can really zoom in on things," explained David Carnoy of CNET.com. "These cameras only have digital zoom. They're really not designed for shooting things far away; you've got to keep it close. It's really not designed for large television views, it's designed for more computer viewing, smaller TVs. It's really more of an instant-gratification thing."
Since instant gratification is obviously a big seller, Flip's success is spawning competition, starting with Vado from Creative. Flip's developers insist though they welcome help reviving what, until recently, has been a very stagnant market for camcorders.