Review: RCA Small Wonder, Part I

I just got a RCA "Small Wonder", which is billed as a one-button video camera. There are actually a few more buttons (Play & Delete), but the setup if pretty fool proof. The video is a test video that I took with the RCA device. The video shows one of my pets, "Buddy" who is a Coatimundi. He just woke up from a nap. It takes the best video when you have at least a foot or more of distance from the subject. A pre-teen will love this thing because it is really easy to use and when you plug it in via USB, you can just copy the files directly from the device to your desktop. It makes avi files, so on a Mac you need a plugin, but it was simple to deal with.

The video quality might not win any awards, but for simple web video, or to have something just to throw in your pocket, this works. And it is cheap. You should be able to get one from eBay for less than $100. I'm taking it with me this week-end to the Oregon Coast, I'll capture a variety of shots and post a few more with a Part II review.

I usually write about stuff that is broken or that I don't like, but so far the Small Wonder is bucking the theme of my blog.

Comments

Tony-In-Portland said…

I'll try to add an update to this after this week-end.

December 1, 2007 at 1:59 AM

Apple vs Windows Font Rendering ::: Who gets the headache?

The Apple philosophy of showing screen fonts in a way consistent with printing is opposite of the Windows way of displaying screen fonts for readability. This issue has been discussed at length in the past, but because of the recent surge in popularity of Apple laptops and desktops, I wonder if this issue will resurface as more ex-Windows users switch to the Mac and find out that the fonts might look very different to them. I am a "dual mode" user. I have a XP machine I have to use at work, and at home I have a Mac. Since I was a Windows users for a long time before I started using the Mac, my brain is "wired" to think that the Windows way of showing the fonts looks best. My XP machine is a Thinkpad X60. The Thinkpads have always had really great laptop displays that are really clear and easy to read. Because of this, I run Windows with no font smoothing. To me it looks "pixel perfect" and I can stare at the screen all day with absolutely no eye strain. W

R.I.P. "Stormy the Greyhound" 2002-2009

Stormy passed away Tuesday morning. Over the last month he was slowly deteriorating, and we finally learned he had a form of cancer that couldn't be treated. He was still "functioning", but he was no longer eating, and he didn't have much strength left. So we decided it was best to do the right thing before he experienced a lot of pain, or could no longer stand or walk. This is one of the recent pictures I took of him with my mobile phone a few weeks ago. He was sick, but his natural easy-going self still did shine through. This is how I want to remember him. I could write a book about him and Greyhound behavior, but for now, I just want to recount two days in the time he was with us. The first day we brought Stormy home, the realization of what it meant to have a Greyhound became apparent. Stormy went from the race track, to the Greyhound shelter kennel, to our home. He had never been in a house before! He didn't even understand what it meant to walk up a small s

Living with a Greyhound

We have a retired racing Greyhound. His dog name is "Stormy", his racing name was "Village Luigi". Even though many Greyhounds are now being adopted, many people still haven't seen them up close. When I have Stormy with me, I get a lot of questions about what it is like to have a Greyhound living in your house. I will attempt to answer some of those questions. Of course there will always be exceptions depending on the individual animal, but these are my experiences. First Contact: Almost all Greyhounds that people have in their private homes came from a racing program. Racing is an industry, and the dogs literally drove it. You don't see ads in the local newspaper saying "Greyhound puppies for sale". Greyhounds are pure breed animals and the breeding process is tightly controlled . The ones that people adopt are animals that have left the active racing program. You might get a dog that raced dozens of times, or you might get a dog that only raced

Cloud Computing, Life

Search This Blog