So, after months of lusting, I got hold of a Flip Video a few months ago via eBay (they’re still not officially available in the UK. I loved it..and then handed it on to the gang at the GetSurrey.co.uk who I know will have put it to good use.

And then, I realised I needed a mini-cam for our trip to Dorset and I read about the Creative Vado. What could I do other than find one on eBay…and off I go.

If you have been living in the gadget equivalent of the middle ages and both of these have passed you by - I think these are rather like video notebooks. Brilliant at recording exactly what’s going on around you - rather than creators of high quality video. And cheap too. Frankly, it now costs less to buy one of these than fill up my car with diesel.

OK - I’m a rubbish reviewer, but here we go.

Form factor

The flip has a great, chunky Fisher Price-like feel to it. Like much cheap tech (including the Asus EEE I’m writing this on) the line between tool and toy is getting increasingly blurred. It feels great in the hand, but it’s a bit bulky in the pocket. All the buttons are also reassuringly clunky.

To be honest, it reminded me of nothing so much as my old Rio Diamond MP3 player, and I suspect will hold a similar position in the evolutionary process of this particular product category.

The problem with the Flip though is its bulk - it’s just a bit too big to be comfortable in the pocket - and the fact that the screen on the back looks disproportionately small.

The Vado gives more than a nod to the iPod aesthetically and is by far the sleeker of the pair. If anything, it almost feels too light.

However, it suffers from a silly name, a sticky-out USB grip (which ruins the line, but helps usability) and an on-off button that is just a little too fiddly for a fat-fingered oldie like myself.

That said - it can slip in a pocket unnoticed, it weighs next to nothing. Also - the inbuilt USB connector is flexible, while the one on the Flip is rigid. This gives the Vado a huge advantage, it’s just that bit easier to plug in.

My one big fear with the Vado is that it’s so portable - I’m worried about the lens and the screen getting scratched if its in my pocket (which is where is should be, I think..). The flip comes with a simple cloth case, and it would have been good to have this for the Vado as well.

Getting going

The Flip wins here. Pop in a couple of AAs and you are away - it’s effortless.

The Vado is a little more fiddly, you have to put a rechargable battery in, which is better in the long run (recharging is done by plugging into your USB port), but getting the back off is again, not for the fat-fingered. Initially I put the battery in the wrong way - and it actually seemed to charge up ok, but then didn’t start. I was about to start sending angry e-mails when I went back to check and realised my mistake.

Again - once that little error was sorted, then it’s very similar to the Flip - get it on, press the big button and you’re off. But, frankly, by then it was just relief that it wasn’t a dud, whereas with the Flip it was excitement all the way.

Spec

You get an extra gig for your money with the Vado. But, to be honest, if you’re really shooting an hour of video, you probably want a slightly more robust camera anyway. The best benefit is actually the larger screen.

In terms of video quality - they seem very similar. I think I noticed that the Vado was a a little slower at adjusting exposure if you swing the camera between inside and outside.

Either way the Vado probably nudges ahead here.


Connectivity and software

So, the big sell on these is that they’re designed just to plug into your laptop and whoosh, before you know it, the videos are on Youtube.

Actually, I’m not that keen on putting pics of my children up on Youtube…and anyway, I think I prefer the comparative calm of Flickr..so that’s not that important to me. Also, I’m a Mac user, which slightly changes things.

Both have their software on the player, but the Vado doesnt include software for the Mac. Strangely, this turned out to be a blessing, because it works perfectly with iPhoto - which is in fact, exactly where I want my videos to be.

On the other hand, I found using the Flip’s software a little unnecessary. Also, for some reason it didn’t sync automatically with iPhoto, so I was having to import manually which was a bit fiddly.

That said, the Flip software for the Mac seemed fine and yes all the exporting worked pretty effortlessly, and it covers quite a few sites as well as YouTube. It’s just that I’m trying to keep the number of different bits of software I use to a a minimum these days.

The other thing to stress is that if youre a mac user, for both you need to download the free Perian plug-in for Quick Time if you want to actually see and hear your video. This is dead easy to do - but a bit of a pain, in both cases that you have to find it out for yourself. And yes, you should make a donation to them.

So, from a completely personal view here, I’m going to nudge the Vado ahead.

Summary

So - yes, I’d give it to the Vado by a nose. I suspect a slimmer Flip with a larger screen might be in the pipeline [Update: here it is, the Mino] - and might regain the crown. But, if you want a portable video notebook…can’t recommend the Vado highly enough.

So, a Zettabyte is a thousand Exabytes, which, as I’m sure you know is a thousand Petabytes; which is a thousand Terrabytes; which is a thousand Gigabytes. Which I think means a Tettabyte is a trillion gigabytes. Anyway, by 2012 according to the rather excellent white paper, Approaching the Zettabyte Era from Cisco (.pdf here), about half a Zettabyte of data will flow over the internet each year. The main driver for this, as you might suspect is Video. YouTube in 2008, for example, is responsible for more data than the whole of the internet in 2000.They are predicting three surges in video consumption. The first - internet to the PC (which we’re in the middle of); the next internet to the TV (barely begun) and finally video communications.The net result is they’re forecasting that video over the net will increase sixfold by 2012. And, while we’re chucking around hand stats nuggets as a result: the internet will be 75 times bigger in 2012 than in 2002.

Now, there’s a headline to get the pulse racing! paidContentUK picks up on an interesting part of the Lords report on media ownership, which says

News aggregator sites benefit on news gathering done by other organisations, but they do not invest in original content themselves. This is an issue of justifiable convern and we recommend that the Department for Culture Media and Sport should examine the effect of news aggregators and consider how their impact on news gathering might enhance their investment in news. 

It’s interesting they came to this conclusion after visiting Google - who pointed out that they only take a small part of the story, and that they take no ad revenue from Google News. 

Funny thing the old Asus EEE. I still have absolutely no idea of how Linux works, and I’m sure I could have mastered Mandarin in the time it’s taken me to try and install VLC Player (still not there)…however, setting up wireless broadband with a vodafone dongle was a breeze -  as near to plug-and-play as you can get

Works a treat - even on the 8.32 from Effingham Junction.

Instructions here if you’re interested.

Been bouncing all over the place for the last couple of weeks - hopefully something like normal service will resume next week, but in the meantime, 10 things keeping me busy.

1. Getting to grips with my Asus EEE.
I’m now using this when I travel, leaving my Macbook back in the office. It’s a long way from perfect (battery life..grrrr…small keys with fat fingers…grrr..) but it’s so light…will do an idiot’s guide when I have time.

2. Dropbox
Online storage that just works, they say…and you know what, they’re right. Beg to get on their beta list.

3. Evernote
OK - I’ve tried a million note apps. This one has a pretty seamless integraton between desktop, mobile and web.

4. Good new albums from Weller and Costello.
Both of them back on form - it’s like being 16 again…but a bit more mellow.

5. Word magazine putting John Martyn on the cover
At last…not the world’s prettiest cover star…but one of the more deserving.

6. Getting to grips with the Ricoh Caplio GX-100
OK, so this was the camera I went with after my faffing about. I’m still not 100% sure about it (images get very noisy very quickly)…but am sticking with it. Pic above of twin a was taken with it - sorry about the wonky skyline.

7. At last - wireless printing at home that works
Yes, it’s been a bit of gadget overload recently - I finally stopped trying to get my HP PSC1215 to try to work. It’s been sitting in the house for two years now refusing to connect to the network and stuttering whenever it tries to prints. So, I went for a Canon Pixma MP600R - working within minutes on all macs and pcs in the house. Yippeee.

8. Ning as a corporate tool
Somethign we’ve been experimenting with. Remarkable how free/ cheap web apps can help you do things that massively expensive middleware just can’t.

9. Days in the garden
I don’t care about the rain - there’s sun out there…grab it while you can.

10. Extra small moleskines
Picked some up in Hamburg airport. But, you can find them here when they’re back in stock. Bizarre state of the world - these are £3.99 for two in other words a 52 page blank notebook is the same price as a Saturday newspaper.

11. Popeye on YouTube
My latest childcare tactic.