Video recording continues to shrink

Video recorders continue to get cheaper and smaller. A popular packaging is to combine a USB memory stick with a tiny camera. For example, the Stunt Cam and the Sinykon 65125. For around $25, you can clip one of these little cameras in your shirt pocket and record away for hours (it sounds like the battery will die after a couple of hours, although the memory of the Stunt Cam can hold 33 hours of video).

Sinykon markets their camera as a "spy pen camera" so I want to make clear that we do NOT advocate spy recording. I'd like to wear a camera like this to capture, say, a walk around Fisherman's wharf in San Francisco. Mike Bukhin has a neat idea for warning people that he is taking pictures (he has his cell phone programmed to regularly snap pictures and upload them to a server). Mike has a pocket sewn into his hoodie with a hole for the camera, but, far from being a surreptitious, he puts a picture of a Camera on it to draw attention to what he is doing.

Nikon Coolpix P6000 digital camera supports GPS

Here is another digital camera option if you want your pictures to include the location they were taken at: the Nikon Coolpix P6000. Glancing at a few reviews, it sounds like some owners are complaining that the GPS is tough on the battery and that the camera is slow to get the GPS location fixed. However, there are a lot of positive comments about the camera overall, and geo-tagging photos may be worth paying the price in battery life.

(Previous post on a GPS camera: The Samsung ST1000)

Total Recall for Police Officers

Police in San Jose are testing head-mounted cameras. Meanwhile Vievu is making a chest-worn "video camera for cops." Evidence.com wants to be the storage system for cops:

EVIDENCE.COM™ is a full featured system designed around easy-to-use dashboards that turn geospatial multi-media evidence, such as GPS tagged video, into visual dashboards and tactical maps with full click-through to underlying video data

For soldiers and cops, video may be the first thing to start capturing. For the rest of us, it is probably the last, with things like health data, personal correspondence, and vacation photos being near the head of the list.

New GPS camera from Samsung

The Samsung ST1000 comes with GPS, and geo-tags your photos so that the file includes location information. This Christmas could see even more Total Recall devices under the tree.

Where in the world are you? With the ST1000's built-in GPS and Geo-tagging capability, you'll always know where you stand, literally, and you'll never forget where that fantastic photo was shot. From the Grand Canyon to the Great White Way and the Golden Gate Bridge, the ST1000 will pinpoint your location and put it up on your LCD for all (or just you) to see. And you can use the same geographic information to easier manage large volumes of photos on your memory card or computer hard drive.