[kictanet] Flipping over Flip

[Brian Munyao Longwe]

Flipping over Flip

http://mashilingi.blogspot.com/2008/07/flipping-over-flip.html

Yesterday I came across the most amazing piece of technology that I  
have seen in recent days.

Gregg Zachary was just back in Nairobi enroute to his home in the USA  
and I managed to catch him for a couple of hours of talk. During this  
he showed me some videos he had taken in Zambia and Uganda and said  
that he had used his "Flip camera". I was like, "what? Flip?" and he  
said "I'll show you."

When I saw the device I almost fell over. Barely the size of a  
cigarette pack, this modern day wonder allows the recording of up to  
1 hour of video, stores in in .avi format (YouTube Ready!) on an  
internal solid state (Flash) disk and uses simple, everyday AA  
batteries. Wow! The most amazing part of all was the price. Gregg  
bought his off-the-shelf in the USA before coming out on this trip  
for $125 (Kshs. 8,000).

This amazing little piece of technology has a built-in USB-flash  
dongle, which allows you to hook it up to your computer - and the  
software for transferring, editing and managing video is right on the  
stick! Wacha nikuambie!!!! I believe that this gadget and others like  
it is probably going to have a similar impact on the videocam  
industry as cellphones had in the telecoms industry.

According to Business Week and the New York Times Pure Digital, the  
startup company behind the Flip cam was able to achieve 20% market  
share in the US videocam industry within less than 1 year.

My head has been spinning with ideas on how this kind of device can  
contribute towards the development of local, African content.

Boy o boy am I excited. I want to try and put several of these into  
the hands of people all over Kenya and see what happens....

[Brian blogs at http://mashilingi.blogspot.com and http:// 
zinjlog.blogspot.com]
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