It is simpler than ever shoot high-definition (HD) video. This can be accomplished using traditional  camcorders, and also with cameras that designed to take still photos. Cameras that range from high-end “digital SLRs” to cameras that slip into your shirt pocket.

Here are 6 recommendations in all three categories from least to most expensive. All 6 of these record HD video and have “HDMI” output connections that let you view your video on an HD display.

Kodak Zi8 -  about $180

Full HD in your pocket for under $200

Kodak delivers this bargain by asking you to supply the memory card it needs to store footage.  8-gigabyte cards can be bought (enough for two hours of HD video) for less than $50, which means you could still come out ahead with this model over the other inexpensive HD cameras from Flip or Creative.

The Zi8 performed well, although its focus is fixed and it doesn’t have good depth-of-field for close-ups. It’s a little bigger than rival units, but still is comfortable to take on the go.

Creative VADO – about $230

The Creative VADO also fits in your pocket, but keeping it there is a waste. It’s just too much fun The VADO has 8 gigabytes of built-in memory and has a quality lens that performed well in low light. It comes with polished, easy-to-use software that allows for quick uploading of your video to YouTube and a few other hosting services.

It has a  recessed control button that was fairly intuitive to use. The footage it produced was near great. Jitter-free pans from left to right and good sound quality can be had from this camera.  It also comes with a proper rugged case to protect against accidental drops and bumps. The VADO is the best shoot-and-share out there.

Flip MinoHD  about $230

Flip has pretty much dominated its category with its easy-to-use video cameras. What sets them apart is their FlipShare software that is all about social networking. It allows for pain-free uploading to Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.

The latest model has backlit buttons that are flush with the shiny controls surface. This is awesomel in low light because you can’t really feel the buttons — although in low light the MinoHD’s video quality wasn’t  all that great.

There was difficulty in keeping a steady grip on the Flip on a warm day. Its sleek design is nice to look at, but it would be nice if it had few ridges or rubberized edges to hold on to. Buy it for the sleek software, but not because you think it will out-shoot others in this category.

Nikon S70  about $350

It’s compact and slickly designed. The LCD display on the back spans the width of the camera and gives you touch-screen access to the menus and settings. There’s really only one way to hold this camera while shooting video and that is with two fingers on the right edge of the camera and the pinky extended for high tea. Otherwise you will be likely to obscure the lens or trip the shutter button.

The image quality is passable for the price. It’s not the best performer in low light, but the colors held true in transitions from indoors to outside. It also stabilizes the image well while recording. That’s a big plus when trying to avoid that nausea-inducing shakiness that can render even HD footage unviewable. Once you find a comfortable way to hold the Nikon S70, there’s a lot of performance for the dollar.

Canon Vixia HF S11  about $1,400

This is a traditional style of video camera. There’s not a button, dial or contour out of place. It has a useful “hot-shoe” connection for external lights, microphones and other accessories. It zooms smoothly, with “image stabilization” that keeps you in focus. Its menu screens are so easy you can leave the manual in the box. For my money, this is the gold standard for the category.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1  – About $1,500 with 14mm-140mm lens

Among digital SLRs tested, this was the strongest, most versatile performer. The Panasonic Lumix GH1, a 12.1 megapixel camera, delivered true hues and sharp images. It uses a design known as “Micro Four Thirds” in which the lens mount is positioned closer to the image sensor, without a flip-up mirror box in between. The result in this case is crisp HD video.

The GH1 has a flip-out LCD panel, which is easier for shooting video than fixed LCD panels, which can force you to strain or tilt your head as you shoot. From daylight scenes in a sun-drenched park to the glow of the fading evening light, the GH1 handled contrasts nicely. It has stereo sound and is a joy to use.

The new solar-powered product by Solis Energy can run small 12 volt “non-critical” electronics in remote locations or anywhere grid power isn’t available. All that’s required is an electronic device with a car power adaptor (cigarette lighter interface) and the sun.

“It’s exactly the kind of product I’ve been in search of for years,” said Thyhsen, owner of Fast Duck Motors, a marine supply and boat retailer. “When the hunting is good, the last thing you want to do is leave the field. This product extends your hunting time and is adaptable to just about any situation.”

The Power HotSpot™ can go anywhere grid power is unavailable. “There are literally hundreds of products that can be powered with this product,” said Solis Energy Founder and CEO Robert Reynolds.

At work, the Power HotSpot™ can recharge tools, notebooks and cell phones, or provide power to inverters for AC power. At home, it can power a shed or gazebo light, an aerator or fountain. And for recreation, the Power HotSpot™ brings convenience to the campsite, from re-charging lights to continuous play for radios and iPods to running boat aerators and re-recharging batteries on a dock.

“Solis Energy has provided our corporate clients with rugged and reliable solar power solutions since 2005, and that gave us the expertise to develop a product for consumer use,” said Reynolds.

The Power HotSpot™ features a rugged design that can handle extreme temperatures. It is easy to install on a wall, dock, truck tool box, tree or post with sturdy mounting feet and brackets. The Power HotSpot™ also appeals to the eco-conscious.

The Power HotSpot™ retails for $375. For more information http://www.SolisEnergy.com or 407-339-6786.

First introduced in early June, the Omnia II will take over for its predecessor, the Samsung Omnia, and brings a number of enhancements and new features, such as a 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED touch screen and Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional Edition.

The Omnia II will sport Samsung’s TouchWiz interface, allowing you to customize the home screen with various widgets and shortcuts and includes a similar 3D cube interface like the Samsung Behold II. In addition, Samsung has included a virtual QWERTY keyboard with Swype technology, which allows you to input text with a continuous swiping motion onscreen. (Check out a video demo here.)

Other goodies of the Samsung Omnia II include a 5-megapixel camera, support for DivX and Xvid movie files, 8GB of internal memory (expandable up to 16GB), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Opera 9.5.

Aiming to expand beyond movies and baseball, set-top box maker Roku is adding 10 new content channels ranging from social networking to music and podcasts.

Roku, which makes a small, wireless device that can stream content from the Web direct to any TV screen, is expanding from 3 channels to 13, as expected. Channels for Blip.tv, Facebook Photos, Flickr, FrameChannel, Mediafly, MobileTribe, Motionbox, Pandora, Revision3, and TWiT will join the current lineup of Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, and, more recently, MLB.TV. All of them will be available in the newly christened Roku Channel Store.

Similar to the app stores currently popular among mobile platform providers, Roku users can choose what apps they want on their home screen of their Roku via the Channel Store. Content is sortable by “new,” “most popular,” and “top-rated.” But unlike most app stores, these are all free. Access to the Channel Store and the new content will be rolled out automatically to existing Roku box owners over the next two weeks. New customers will need to sign up for a free Roku account to be able to download and manage their chosen channels.

Roku representatives say that 13 channels in the store is just a start and that there will be a steady stream of new channels showing up between now and the Consumer Electronics Show in January. While this is a good start to compete with the growing wave of Web-connected home gadgetry (HDTVs, Xbox, PS3, Blu-ray players, TiVo, and more), the sweet spot for Roku would be a Hulu channel or even dedicated content channels from cable and broadcast networks. Until then, the main selling point of Roku over those other devices is its price: of the three models, the lowest starts at $80, significantly cheaper than a new TV or Xbox, and all but the most baseline model Blu-ray players

The Magic Jack is an extremely small USB telephone adapter that allows you to make telephone calls through a regular phone for free. This includes local and long distance calling to the US. All you have to do is pay a one time fee of around $40 to get the Magic Jack USB adapter and then your first year of service is free. After that it costs just $19.95 per year to use their VoIP telephone network. This includes the Magic Jack features of free directory assistance, free caller ID, free call waiting, and free voicemail. At that price the Magic Jack appears to be an amazing deal at around $.05 per day for all of these services. Yep, that’s just a nickel a day and a lot less than you are probably use to paying for your land line. Magic Jack technology is simple it takes your traditional landline phone call and reroutes it over the Internet through a VoIP network with the end result being that it works just like a regular phone.

Does the Magic Jack Really Work?

Currently millions and millions of individuals have and use Magic Jack and there has to be a reason for that. The reason is simply because the Magic Jack USB phone does indeed work and very well in most cases. If it didn’t work or worked horribly there would not be millions of subscribers to its service. This however does not mean that the service is flawless. Throughout the Internet there have been many people that have endorsed the Magic Jack as an excellent product and also many people that have complained about it. In order to figure out how well it really works you have to sort through all of the reviews where people are just being idiots and all of the reviews where people are merely promoting the product through some type of affiliate program. Our own assessment of the Magic Jack led us to conclude that it is indeed a high quality product but that there are some problem situations. This alone doesn’t mean that the Magic Jack doesn’t work but rather that sometimes it is hard to get setup properly or simply doesn’t work well with everybody’s Internet connection. In cases such as this problems can almost always be solved by contacting customer service.

Does Magic Jack Have Good Customer Service To Help Resolve My Problems?

Most people have claimed that the issue with Magic Jack lie with their customer service, but we disagree with this. There have been a good number of complaints with magicJack customer service but when we contacted them and acted like a customer with a problem we got great customer service and they answered all of our questions quite well. We did get some scripted answers but we were impressed and felt it was quite a bit better than the average chat customer service. The chat only customer service seems to aggravate people from the get go and screams scam, even though it is no scam at all.

Internet reports have shown that it is often pretty difficult to get the RMA number and address that is needed for a return. We however have found these reports to be false and have seen that it is pretty easy to return the item. Just be ready to try some troubleshooting to see if you can get it to work first, they will obviously want to try to keep your business and get the product to work for you before settling on a return. If you still want to return the Magic Jack you just have to adamant about the fact that it is not working for you and that you need a return. It is also important to note that Magic Jack has an A- rating with the Better Business Bureau and that all complaints with them have been resolved.

Bottom Line…

I have  owned  a Magic Jack  for over a year and I have no complaints. I’ve cut off my land-line and have been saving a lot of money. The only down-side I see is that you have to leave your computer on at all times. This is fine with me since I leave mine on 24×7 anyway.

Litl Webbook

 touch and socialize. It has no hard drive, files or applications of its own, but instead runs on the “cloud,” using web-based applications like webmail, Google, Flickr and Facebook. ”

There’s still little to share in terms of specs or pricing but what is for certain is it’s a browser centric design (much like the Crunchpad), the screen can flip both ways (as seen below), it only has 1 GB of RAM, 2 gigs of flash storage all in a 3 pound package. It also has WiFi, and USB ports, as well as HDMI out. And if reports are true, the device is being developed in some custom version of Linux.

In any case this little gizmo looks promising.

The Intel Reader comes equipped with a camera and is capable of automatic translation of printed text into digital form, which can then be read on screen or spoken aloud. The device can be used to archive printed texts and also useful for the blind or poor-sighted to read without needing to use Braille.

The system has a basic display for navigating and reading text and it’s based on Intel Atom. It can read DAISY-formatted books, MP3 and WAV files and even those that haven’t been created by the Reader itself. It’s equipped with full and mini USB ports for easy transfer of contents to computers.

The Intel printed-text to speech converter will be available in next few weeks through retailers and will run you $1,500 each.

Bud light speaker box

The Bud Light Speaker Box can be found in specially marked Bud Light 24 packs. The idea is that you hook up your MP3 player to the case of beer and then crank up the music. The only downside is that you’ll have to drink the Bud Light, but a small price to pay for having beer and music in one covenant package.

Here’s the rest of what Bud Light is offering.

I know that some animal rights group will groan about the Tailgate Companion. But it’s a way to get your best friend involved in the tailgating festivities. The Tailgate Companion just straps onto your dog’s back and is able to hold condiments, tongs and, most importantly, your beer which your dog can bring to you.

Much better than slippers right? Now before some hippie cries foul, I should mention that the Bud Light site links you up to Petfinder, after you put in your zip, so you can adopt a local dog that needs a home. A win-win if you ask me.

There’s also some junk, like the Natural Fake Grass Can Coozie, which I can live without, and the Foozie, which is kinda cool. The Foozie, at first, seems like your average foam finger, but it has a spot to put your beer in, which will make your foam fingered acquentices just a little envious.

Finally, there’s the Condiment Gun. It looks like a caulk gun, except this bad boy holds ketchup, mustard and relish so you can easily add your condiments to hot dogs, burgers, etc. The downside is that they’re only making one of them and you have to bid on it starting on November 23.