Friday 28 August 2009

Instant knowledge capture


My first video camera, bought when my son was a baby, was a miracle of engineering in its day, but its analogue tapes consigned to the recycling bin a while ago.


We all know that things are most memorable if you can capture a spontaneous moment. For knowledge capture, a photo is a good reminder, but you can't beat video for context and nuance. I've played around a bit with the video facility on my phone, but it is a real pain to set up, the controls are unusable and quality lousy. I've just ordered one of the new Flip Mino soild-state video gadgets. Incredibly, these 2GB miniscule devices have now come down in price to under £95! For only slightly more you can get 4GB HD version, though this is unnecessary for the quick video grabs I'm going to use it for. With these things the size of a box of matches, controls as simple as pressing a red button, and uploading consisting of not much more than pushing the flip-out USB into your PC, knowledge capture just got easier.

2 comments:

Nick O'Doherty said...

Hi Gary

I got one a few months ago and used it to interview Jane Perrone - blogger and Guardian Gardening Editor. You can see the quality of the output(and the inexperience of the video operator), in our blog - link below.

I also have a small flexi tripod (GorillaPod)that works well with it. It can wrap around chairs as well as stand on tables. Together they make a great knowledge capture tool.

Cormac Heron said...

Looks like Nick forgot to add the link. Here is

http://www.brightbeehive.com/blog/2009/8/28/see-jane-perrones-interview-on-youtube.html

We also filmed this using a Flip camera:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoOhzidaKz0

Amazing piece of kit.