The world's smallest HD camcorder

11/17/2008 3:58 PM EST

As you may recall from my blog Hard case for a Flip Video of a couple of weeks ago, my wife ("Gina The Gorgeous") presented me with an early Christmas present in the form of a Classic/Original Flip video (I actually ended up getting the perfect-sized case from my local cell-phone store).

Since then, I've been happily videoing everything in sight (our son, our dogs, the flowers on our back desk ... anything that moves and anything that doesn't, really) and then merrily emailing these video snippets to friends and family around the world (who could forget my classic Video of a man and his manhole cover, for example).

Furthermore, last week I blundered into the vlog (video blog) of Kirk Mastin, who used to be a photojournalist and now finds himself a photographer, film maker, and lecturer at the University of Washington. In This Vlog, Kirk compared a video shot on an expensive ($3,200) digital video recorder to an identical one shot on a Flip Video ... and you really couldn't tell the difference between them.

This completely opened my eyes to what you could do with the Flip Video (I now carry mine on my belt everywhere I go). Especially when coupled with some sophisticated video editing software (see the Note below for more details on this).

So, I was a mega-happy person until... just a little while ago as I pen these words... I received an email from the folks at Flip Video informing me that they've just released a high-definition (HD) version – the Flip Mino HD.

Give me strength! This looks FANTASTIC. Weighing in at only 3.3 ounces and costing only $229, this little beauty can record up to 60 minutes of 16:9 widescreen, HD 720p (1280 x 720) at 30 frames-per-second. My standard-definition (SD) unit gives really good results, but this HD version is STUNNINGLY GOOD (check out This Demo).

And, of course, like all "Flips", this new unit comes equipped with an inbuilt USB port allowing you to upload videos to your computer; and also the software (installed on the Flip) that allows you to email your videos to friends or to share them on YouTube and Facebook, etc.

So now I'm smitten... just imagine what I could achieve with my video editing software if it were to be coupled with crisp, sharp, high-definition video snippets ... slow down my beating heart...

Note: With regard to my mentioning the use of video editing software above... In fact, the Flip Video already comes equipped with the ability to quickly and easily create your own mini-movies. However, there are higher-end packages around if you want to compose more complex sequences with additional audio tracks and titles and classy transitions and so forth. In fact, I have such a package winging its way to me as we speak (I found an amazing piece of software costing less than $40 ... I'll be telling you more about this later when it arrives and I've had the chance to play with it).

Questions? Comments? Feel free to email me – Clive "Max" Maxfield – at max@techbites.com). And, of course, if you haven't already done so, don't forget to Sign Up for our weekly Programmable Logic DesignLine Newsletter.