Goofy look at the Flip video

I mentioned earlier that we bought a bushel of Flip videos for our intro news writing classes. Anyhow, NYT’s David Pogue posted a video about the Flip yesterday. The part I was most interested in was the clip comparing the quality of the video once online with a prosumer type video cam.

James Martin, a PC World columnist, compares  the Flip with a slightly more expensive Sony on his website, and shows quality differences once both are posted to YouTube. Martin says YouTube greatly degrades the quality. I wonder if other sites do better (Blip?) And yes, the Flip turns the sun into a black dot. I found that out when I videoed a hike in the Verdugo Hills.

Only 95 more years to go

Marking the fifth anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, Dave McGuire at Radio Netherlands gave me a call yesterday and we chatted about the Gulf War as an Internet war. Folks ranging from Iraqi citizens to soldiers are blogging about the conflict; various military personnel and their families are posting video to YouTube and photos to Flickr. All of which means the amount of information and the range of voices has increased in ways that a few years ago would have been unimaginable. But what difference has this made? You can listen to the interview here.