While doing research for a blog about smartphones, I came across some figures which blew the whole idea for my blog out of the water. The Symbian Operating System is not very well known here in the US, with roughly a 5 percent market share of smartphone sales. However, Symbian smartphones make up well over 50 percent of the smartphone market worldwide. RIM (think Blackberry) is in second place worldwide, and the Apple iPhone in third place with 6.5 percent. (Figures from February 2008 report by Canalys and
“Canalys, Symbian: Apple iPhone Already Leads Windows Mobile in US Market Share, Q3 2007” from Roughly Drafted online magazine) .

The Symbian OS is a proprietary operating system, designed for mobile devices. Note that it is Symbian and not Simian. Symbian is jointly owned by Nokia, Ericsson, Sony Ericsson, Panasonic, Siemens, and Samsung. (see Symbian OS article in Wikipedia).

An example of a smartphone which runs Symbian is the Nokia N95 Smartphone. The N95 is loaded with features: 5 Megapixel Camera with flash, FM Radio, MP3 Player, Video Capture and playback, voice Recorder, productivity applications and web browsing. The N95 is expensive as no US carrier has picked up the phone. However, since it is unlocked and Quad-band, it can be used on any GSM network anywhere in the world.

We’re a watched society. A few nights ago, I caught Prime Suspect 7: The Final Act on DVD, and the plot was sustained by showing the police work involved in tracking down particular cars seen by surveillance cameras planted all over London. (Of course, Jane Tennison’s team kept waving videotapes around, which was rather boggling. One would have thought the London police department would have finally discovered DVDs by the time the series was filmed in 2006.)

There’s something both creepy and cool about the mix of IP cameras you can buy and install these days. No longer do you have to sit on your porch to monitor that the neighborhood kids are stealing apples and having fruit wars in your front yard. Now you can place a digital eyeball there and sit in a back room watching it real time or simply capture it on a hard disk for later filing of criminal charges.

The most highly rated IP security camera on Pricegrabber comes from Toshiba. As its product description points out, the camera captures “live, high-resolution video that is viewable anywhere in the world through a standard web browser.” That’s right. You can be quaffing a grappa in a Milanese cyber-café while checking out what your teenagers are really up to while you’re out of town. (The grappa is bound to help their case!)

A couple of customers weigh in on the Toshiba model. According to one reviewer, the IKWB15a has a limited zoom and setting it up on your network is complicated. He or she notes that it only records JPEG images, rather than video. That means, if you set up the camera to record images on motion detect, “you could have thousands of images you have to go through.”

But Lionhearted, the second reviewer, points out the other value of an IP camera — it can be used for webcamming along with surveillance. He or she uses it at a remote mountain site (and even posts a couple of photos to show just how remote). According to Lionhearted, “We wanted a camera that had features for surveillance like motion detection, yet also had good color image quality for public benefit — AND we didn’t want to spend a fortune… After exhaustive searching we bought this camera and have no regrets.”

When I had a second home, I always wondered what was going on there when I wasn’t around. Should I ever have a second home again, I could install a few of these things, crank up my browser and look for myself.

Naturally, the moment I’ve pressed the big black Publish button on the BlogBytes blogging software, PriceGrabber.com decides to give me another answer to my question about quick, easy, cheap video capture in its latest issue of the SuperDeal newsletter. See “Webcams Have Gotten Really Cool!” and “Digital Camcorders for Those Special Business Moments.”) This time, the solution is called the Pure Digital Flip Video Ultra Camcorder.

As the newsletter states: “The Flip Video Ultra does one thing: it shoots video. And it does it well. Turn it on, and it’s ready to shoot in 2 seconds. Record. Plug it into your PC via USB, and you’re ready to share or edit your footage. It’s that simple. Maybe that’s why it’s taken 13% of the camcorder market.”

OK, so would the Flip Video fit my needs?

I need it to be low cost. The pricing ranges from about $120 and up. That works. The memory is built in, 2 gigabytes for the 60-minute device. Resolution is 640 x 480, respectable enough for my purposes. It records to the AVI and MPEG-4 video formats, which appears to be fairly standard. And it has auto-exposure, an important feature for users who haven’t attended the USC film school.

On the negative side, the digital zoom is only two times, and reviewers say the LCD screen — at 1.5 inches — is kind of dinky. For the headshot-like videos I expect we’ll produce, neither of these will be much of a barrier.

Jldcpa from CA reports that filming in dim light is “very bad, so now we use this camera for mainly outdoors and nearby shooting.” That could be a problem.

cfranklinremax from NV likes the fact that the camera runs on two AA batteries, because it means they can be replaced from practically anywhere. So rechargeable batteries are a necessity for this user.

Cabin21 from NY considers the audio quality “decent” and the data easy to transfer. As Cabin says, “It cannot make me a great motion picture shooter, but it’s good for a starter like me.”

It’s probably worth adding the Flip Video to our evaluators list. I’ll let you know how the testing goes when we have some experience under our belts. OK, gang, that’s a wrap!

Last time, I looked at inexpensive camcorder solutions that one of my clients could supply to people who contribute regularly to a website that aspires to become a waystation for vodcasts about a particular topic. This time I’m going to look at some webcam solutions. Typically, these are used to add video to real-time chat or Skype sessions. But why not apply the same technology to capturing quickie videos?

Here the low-cost options are more plentiful. Filtering by price (under $200) on PriceGrabber.com leads to 128 matches. So this time I’ll add a minimum price as well and eliminate any models under $25. Then, I’ll only consider those that have a rating on the site, even if it’s only a single review. Whoa! Too many choices!

If I only look at those two models with the highest rating — five stars — I’m left with two models:

Intel Pro PC Camera
Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 Webcam

They’re comparably priced — between $70 and $140. But one, the Logitech, has 14 reviews. The Intel device has only a single review.

I think I’ll drill down on the Logitech one.

This webcam is designed for use with your notebook. It has auto-focus, something called RightLight 2 technology to ensure “great looking images, even in poor lighting,” and RightSound technology for echo-cancellation and noise reduction. It even lets you personalize the video filters, avatars and face accessories. (This business crowd could have some fun with that!) Additionally, says the company description, “an ultra-wide field of view and automatic face tracking always keeps you right in the middle of the action.” The QuickCam Pro comes with a desktop stand to bring the webcam up to eye level and a travel case to protect the camera when it’s not being used.

According to reviewer dongly, the video is captured to WMV, an excellent format for our purposes.

The question I’m left with, however, is how much to rely on the processor power of the computer being used with the webcam to deliver video that doesn’t drag, stutter or drop frames. The use of a separate digital camcorder would eliminate that concern completely.

None of the many reviewers addresses that particular problem. I think it’s time for some field testing…

More on this topic later.

I have a client who wants to become the YouTube of his industry, which I think is a fine idea. The question is how to get people who are accustomed to submitting whitepapers and articles in their various areas of expertise to submit vodcasts instead. One idea we’re considering is buying a bunch of low-cost camcorders or webcams that record directly to a digital format and place those in the hands of frequent contributors. Then we simply need to persuade them to video their thinking instead of writing it.

So in an effort to come up with some recommendations, I’ve just done a search on PriceGrabber for “camcorder” under $200 and recording to digital media. I get 34 matches. If I stick with vendors I recognize, the list gets a bit smaller. Then if I do a comparison by reviewer ranking, I get three models:

RCA EZ201 Digital Hard Drive Camcorder
Panasonic SDRS10P1 SD Card Camcorder
Sanyo CG6 Digital Camcorder

Here are my notes from doing a comparison check:

Two, the RCA and Sanyo, can capture at a resolution of VGA quality — 640-x480. The Panasonic is limited to 320×240. Not exactly a resolution to bowl anybody over.

The Panasonic and Sanyo models offer an optical zoom feature. All three offer digital zoom, but that’s always less preferable.

The RCA captures in AVI format, the Panasonic in MPEG-2, and the Sanyo in MPEG-4. Newer — as in MPEG-4 — is almost always better in these matters.

The built-in memory is heftiest with the Panasonic — two gigabytes. The Panasonic and Sanyo also offer the longest warranty, a year vs. 90 days for the RCA model. Also, those same models come with rechargeable batteries and a recharger.

Hmm. The customer reviews are all uniformly positive, though the RCA has more of them — four vs. one for Panasonic and Sanyo. Easy to carry, easy to use, easy to transfer the files onto the PC and inexpensive.

Nothing emerges as a final choice here. In my next entry, I’m going to look at webcam eyeballs to see if there’s a clear winner there.