I Thought It Worked!

Nothing can raise my blood pressure faster than when something doesn’t work like it’s supposed to. Especially software that I rely on in some way. I don’t know how it became standard practice to release software that is full of bugs, but that seems to be the modus operandi of most companies these days.

Earlier this evening I was trying to edit together some video I shot this afternoon at the dog park. I spent about thirty minutes putting together my movie and then clicked the button to publish the finished product to my computer. After running for around thirty minutes the working dialogue disappeared and I assumed the movie was finished and had been saved to my hard drive. Do you think I could find it? Not on your life. So, I guess it’s back to the drawing board. Either I try it again and hope it works, or I go off in search of another program that’s more reliable to do the same thing. What do you think my chances are?

What prompted all this is the Christmas gift I got from my wife. It’s a little video camera called The Flip. It is about the size of a pack of cigarettes, runs on two AA batteries, and has a USB connector built right into the camera. There is no software to install on your computer because everything you need resides in the camera. In fact, there is processing software on the camera for both PC and Mac.

Rosie O’Donnell is probably most responsible for getting the word out on this camera. She even uses one for her daily video blog. It has a lot going for it, being inexpensive, easy to use and pretty much self contained. Rosie is not one of my favorite people, but she sure picked a winner here. I’m including a little sample video clip. I’m not the best videographer in the world, but I’m having fun with it. I think that’s probably the whole point.

My wife said that Amazon.com had the best prices for the Flip. It comes in both a standard version and an Ultra version. I looked at a comparison chart, and about the biggest difference is that the Ultra has the hardware to attach a small tripod and the standard version doesn’t.

I also want to take a little space here to wish you all a very Happy New Year. My wish for all of you is that the new year will be full of nothing but happy moments and profitable experiences.