from the hip

A new, little cool gadget is quietly conquering the US. A camcorder. Not produced by any of the big name manufacturers. Not a brand name at all, actually. And not conquering the market by means of huge marketing campaigns. In a year, it’s captured 13% of the US market. And it’s a bestseller on amazon.com.

Actually it is less advanced, rather than more advanced than its competitors. That’s not all that common as far as electronic gadgets are concerned, in our day and age.

It’s a sweet little story actually. This little device, the Flip and its successor, the Flip Ultra, produced by Pure Digital, is winning in the marketplace in the old-fashioned way: It’s very easy to use – anybody can use it and have fun – and it’s real cheap.

You want to know more? From New York Times:

Now, understanding the appeal of this machine will require you not just to open your mind, but to practically empty it. Because on paper, the Flip looks like a cheesy toy that no self-respecting geek would fool with, let alone a technology columnist.

The screen is tiny (1.5 inches) and doesn’t swing out for self-portraits. You can’t snap still photos. There are no tapes or discs, so you must offload the videos to a computer when the memory is full (30 or 60 minutes of footage, depending on whether you buy the $150 or $180 model). There are no menus, no settings, no video light, no optical viewfinder, no special effects, no headphone jack, no high definition, no lens cap, no memory card. And there’s no optical zoom — only a 2X digital zoom that blows up and degrades the picture. Ouch.

Instead, the Flip has been reduced to the purest essence of video capture. You turn it on, and it’s ready to start filming in two seconds. You press the red button once to record (press hard — it’s a little balky) and once to stop. You press Play to review the video, and the Trash button to delete a clip.

There it is: the entire user’s manual.

It is point and shoot. It’s simplicity incarnated! It is “less is more”.

The video and audio quality is surprisingly good — not as sharp as a tape camcorder or even digital still cameras, but far superior to cellphone video. It has TV resolution (640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second), with softer images than you’d get with a real camcorder.

The shocker is the Flip’s low-light abilities, which trump even $1,000 camcorders. Not only is the video grain-free, but recorded dim scenes actually look brighter than they looked to your naked eye.

Once you’ve shot a few scenes, you slide a button and — sproing! — a U.S.B. jack pops out at 90 degrees to the camera body. This, too, is part of the Zen of Flip. You’re spared the hassle of storing, tracking and finding a U.S.B. cable.

…. “Look what my first grader did with it all by herself,” one guy told me. “We’re using them in schools to teach narrative structure,” said a teacher at a conference. “I bought two of ‘em: one for my 80-year-old grandmother,” said a neighbor, “and one for my 5-year-old.”

Pretty neat, is what I think! No cables, no fuss, ok pictures without 200 pages and manuals and advanced computer programs. And real, real cheat. What do you think?