Flip Video - the revolution will be in high-definition

So I bought the Flip.

If you haven’t heard of the Flip, check it out - it’s a very simple, high definition video camera about the size of a cell phone. The best part, and why I thinks it’s a game-changer, is that you can buy one for about $200, making the Flip the cheapest, high quality video camera on the market.

But this isn’t a product review for the Flip. Instead I want to share my thoughts on what I think the Flip means to the internet and our day-to-day lives.

According to Flip-makers, Pure Digital Technologies, their product currently accounts for over 13% of all U.S. camcorder sales. That’s over 1 million of these tiny cameras being carried around in people’s back pockets in the US alone (they’ve recently been launched in the UK and Canada). And that, in turn, means a lot more opportunities for people to capture all that is weird, funny and disturbing in this world - in other words, a lot more video of what we (sadly) consider news. This is very cool and for the internet I think it means a heck of a lot more interesting video being uploaded everyday.

So what does this accelerated proliferation in video uploads mean to the way we live?

To illustrate my point, consider the multitude of police beating videos online or the famous video footage of the man tasered by police at an airport who later died. How many more instances of such things will be caught on tape now that people can carry the Flip with them wherever they go, 24/7?

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My Top Ten Tweeters not on Twitter

(Photo credit: Lost Art of Blogging)

While I think all the people on Twitter that I follow are awesome, here’s the ten people that I think would be the coolest tweeters (with the help of my twitter friend @uncleweed):

1 to 5 are literary giants. Who else is more capable of saying amazing and profound things in 140 characters or less?

1. Haruki Murakami, Japanese writer of multiple international bestsellers, including Kafka on the Beach and the Wind Up Bird Chronicles.

2. Salman Rushdie, needs no introduction.

3. Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipau ( V. S. Naipaul), the 2001 Nobel Laureate for Literature.

4. Douglas Coupland, famous author and chronicler of Canadian culture.

5. Stephen King, think about it, those would some seriously messed up tweets!

The next five don’t really fit any single category.

6. Robert S. Mueller, the head of the FBI, tweeting about undercover spy-ops (yes, I know they wouldn’t be very undercover if he was tweeting them).

7. Robin Williams, just tweeting spontaneous random funny things all day.

8. Neil Patrick Harris, but only if his life is exactly how it was in Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.

9. J.J. Abrams, maybe the Executive Producer of Lost would slip up an tweet the ending!

And last but not least:

10. Martha Stewart, just dropping tips on how to clean the hot sauce stain out of my t-shirt and a new recipe for pistachio crusted white fish.

So those are mine (and @uncleweed’s), who would you suggest? Either leave a comment or tweet at @kgrandia.

Funny online videos I found tonight

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Turbaconducken: the ulitmate Thanksgiving feast

Honestly, is there a better Thanksgiving dinner than a chicken stuffed in duck stuffed in a turkey, all wrapped in bacon.

It’s the Thanksgiving dinner that will keep on giving.

5 More Very Funny Videos

Why do I post so many viral and funny videos on The Meaning of Web? Simple. Because I truly believe that video is king online and there’s nothing better than sitting around watching funny videos.

So here’s another five I found tonight. Enjoy!

Okay, you just have to watch the first one - funniest 21 seconds ever

Call Borat there’s a Goat Yelling Like a Man!

Honestly people - did you seriously not see this when you designed the thing?

History of the Predictive Text Swearing

One of my all time favorites: How to shower: women vs men

Slack at work Thursday funny videos online

Time for a 5 minute brain break, here’s three seriously funny online videos (no cats, I promise) I stumbled across today - if the vids load slow (I’m skimping on broadband this month), just click the title to go to the original. Enjoy!

Showoff Gets Knocked Out

Hans Solo - the original intergalactic bad-boy:

The world just got a whole lot safer:

Funny Mobile Commercial - The funniest bloopers are right here

13 Good Reasons to Dump Your iPhone for BlackBerry Bold

Easy now. Before my Apple Cult membership is revoked, I love Mac. I do. I love Mac. I like the iPhone, for what it is, which is a tiny little Mac. Mac lovers like me were sold on the idea of a tiny Mac in our pocket that could do those three things.

Remember those three things?

“Well today, we’re introducing THREE revolutionary new products. The first one is a widescreen ipod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary new mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough internet communications device.”

- Steve Jobs, MacWorld Keynote, 2007.

I actually waited until the second gen iPhone came out before buying in. I was concerned about the lack of 3G given the amount of data the iPhone was capable of downloading. So I bought mine in August and used it for three months. Having used BlackBerry, Treo, an assortment of different handsets as well as iPhone, it is clear to me that iPhone does not compete with Blackberry on two of the three functions.

So, without further ado, here’s the top 13 reasons I now carry a BlackBerry Bold instead of an iPhone:

1. Battery life - the Bold kills the iPhone on battery life. Under heavy use, say a business travel day with no laptop access, I have repeatedly burned through a full charge on my iPhone by early afternoon. This includes phone, e-mail and web usage, but typically not iPod usage. My Bold gets through a full day of similar activity with a half charge left at end of day. No comparison.

2. Battery life part deux - the Bold is not afflicted by “sudden drain” syndrome, something that has happened a few times on my iPhone. On occasion I have put a near full charge iPhone in my pocket and taken it out after a short period of time to find it down to the red for no apparent reason. Yes, I have applied all the iPhone updates that were released.

3. User Interface - my three year old can drive my iPhone. Should my 3 year old be able to drive my business device? Is that a good measure? I don’t think so. I tire of tapping through endless screens to get to the one I want when looking at e-mail, for example - I have five email accounts. I like the Bold’s contextual menus. Everything I might want to do on a screen has been put only a click or two away. It really works well, once you’ve learned it. Oh, and cut and paste…and keyboard shortcuts. Pretty rows of icons that jiggle on demand are fun to look at, but once you dive in it can be an uneven and frustrating experience.

4. E-mail - the e-mail just works better on the Bold. BlackBerry just knows how to do mobile e-mail. It works great. iPhone is slow to load e-mail, in my experience. Writing e-mail is wildly different as well. I became very frustrated with the iPhone’s keyboard. It was slow to respond, would often lock-up for seconds or more as I typed faster. On occasion it would simply lock-up completely, necessitating a restart - not acceptable for time-sensitive communications.

5. Stability - My Blackberry Bold does not crash. iPone apps crashed regularly. In particular, Safari crashed most frequently, followed by several third party apps I installed. As mentioned above, Mail would lock-up.

6. Appearance - iPhone looks nice out of the box, but as soon as you handle it it has finger prints and smudges. After a busy day with lunch meetings and such it could wind up looking pretty bad and take some effort to clean up. Impressions matter. The Blackberry Bold finish is not subject to this kind of smudging, except the screen area, and that cleans up with a single wipe.

7. Speed - My Blackberry Bold is generally faster than my iPhone. This is based largely on perception, but I’m referring to scrolling through screens, launching apps, viewing e-mail and most importantly, rendering web pages. I have also noticed the BlackBerry browser will pull the mobile interface by default for many sites, which I like, since I’m mainly interested in the data. This makes the experience faster yet.

8. The Keyboard - I prefer the physical keyboard to the virtual one. This is personal preference, I think, but for reasons I’ve mentioned above, I think it is also more reliable.

9. Multimedia content - I use a media monitoring service and need to view TV clips and listen to radio clips. These clips are provided in .3gp. Unlike the iPhone, the Blackberry Bold brings them up immediately in the BB media player.

10. Voice activation - Blackberry Bold has great voice activation out of the box. iPhone? No, which is surprising from a company that pioneered this technology.

11. Clicks are easier than gestures - The iPhone flicks, pinches and sweeps are neat, but clicking my spacebar once to scroll a page is actually more precise and easier in general. Clicking once to zoom page content is faster and simpler than the two finger, two handed equivalent on iPhone. With my Bold, I can stir my martini and navigate the web at the same time. The trackball wins. I think the touchscreen is a good way to get more screen real estate, but it is not necessarily an improvement in UI.

12. Storage - on my Blackberry Bold I can swap multiple 8GB microSD cards whereas I can have only one internal flash memory on iPhone.

13. Video - I like to post pictures and video remotely. I can’t do that with iPhone because it doesn’t record video. The Bold does.

Sorry Mr. Jobs, please don’t revoke my Mac Club Card, but the iPod touch with a mediocre phone = an iPhone that just isn’t eve close to the functionality of the Blackberry Bold. If you want a business communications handset with excellent multimedia internet capability, GPS, WiFi and a 2MP video camera, get a BlackBerry Bold.

If you want the latest tech toy for cool kids, you’ll hit the mark with the iPhone, but please heed my warning that you may find yourself gazing longingly across the room happy go-lucky Blackberry user sitting up at the bar.