welcome to spiceland.

Woot.com has our tiny, handheld video camera for sale today for $79. Target.com lists these for $149. Most of the videos on our site come from this little camera, and it is so easy to use that even Tru can do it. There is no charger or special battery. It just takes two AAs. You can record up to 60 minutes of video. Plug it into your comptuer’s USB port, and just drag and drop the videos onto your desktop. They’re all ready for uploading to Youtube and most other video sharing sites. This camera is perfect for those just wanting a simple point-and-shoot video camera that fits into your pocket. We have two already.

Check out this video for Rovio, a wireless robot that lets you remotely explore and interact somewhere else. I stumbled on one of these at the Mall this weekend.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1847264/meet_rovio_demo_full/

I’ve been waiting for this same type of product from iRobot, the makers of the fantastic vacuum cleaning robot Roomba, for quite a while. It looks like these folks beat them to the punch and it looks great. I’d love to be able to log in from work or while away to check on the kids.

Good: super awsome way to interact remotely

Bad: $250

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This is day 0 with our new Robomow, the robotic lawn mower. This video shows me unpacking it and then an overview from the DVD that came with it. We’ve run the permiter wire and Robomow is now charging. Tomorrow I’ll post a video of it mowing the yard.

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Would anyone like a brand new *super* small (9″ x 8″ x 2.5″) cute PC for $230? At this size it would fit just about anywhere. Need a PC for the kitchen? How about next to the TV in the entertainment center? I’ve priced out one of these PC’s and I want to build it and play with it. If any of you family or friends want one, I’ll order the parts and built it for you in exhcnage for getting to play with it.

Intel MB, 1.3Ghz, 512MB ram, 60GB HD, video, usb

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Sorry for the blog spam, but you all need to run out and get one of these video cameras quick! Anytime you see a “square” 4×3 video on our website it was probably shot with this video camera. For a few more days you can get one for $69. Target sells them normally for $129. They are on sale on the Target website only for $89. There is also a $20 mail in rebate on top of that. Thats $60 less than the normal price.

$89 at Target.com

$20 mail-in rebate

Everyone, please get one. Erin and I will help you share the vids from it online. Its super easy to use and transfer to the computer. No software, no tapes, no mess. It records everything digitally and has a built in USB plug that you just plug directly into your comptuer. You don’t even need a cable! You can already judge the quality of the video yourself since many of the videos you’ve seen from us were from this camera.

Video: $100-130 Pure Digital Camcorder

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I just got this all digital camcorder. It is about $100-130 from Target. Its made by Pure Digital. It records directly to small MPEG4 .avi files. They are the perfect size for emailing around or posting to YouTube. The quality is really good, considering.

I uploaded it to YouTube, Grouper.com, and revver.com. revver.com was by far the best quality. For now, I recommend using them to folks wanting to share video.

What do you think?

Tru loves all of her gifts and has been playing with them all day

One of the gifts that she got for her birthday is a Berchet baby keyboard. Basically, it fits over your normal keyboard and presents the baby with just a few buttons. It comes with some software that is pretty much just nicely done flash animation that leads them through hitting the buttons to see different things happen on the screen.

Tru is at the younger side of being able to use it. When we first fired it up she played with it for 30 minutes completely involved. When we tried to capture it on video she was a bit tired and Seiko was playing in the background and it distracted her. Nonetheless, here is a video.

Tru Playing on the Computer

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I know you are all very concerned about what to get me for my birthday. Well, I normally wouldn’t do this except that I want to ease your minds For anyone wondering what I might want I’ll share a few things with you. Just as a warning, none of it is cheap!

A case for a TV computer ($44) would be nice. That case would go great with a wireless keyboard ($32). There is also fictional geek book that I want to read ($33). That book would go great with the other fictional geek book that goes along with it ($33). For anyone who really wants to please me, an AGP nvidia 6600GT video card ($160) would surely do the trick getting Unreal 2004 to play at 1280×1024!

For anyone who wants to let me scratch something off of my dream list, I have some ideas for you also! I’ve been wanting a specific new digital camera for a few years now. Of course, a 50mm fixed lens ($75) would take great portraits of Tru. For anything else, a 100-300mm ($280) would be very sweet. Even if I didn’t get a camera, if I were to get a lens then Erin would have to let me save up for one! No dream list would be perfect without a new NSX ($92,000).

Michael