A few weeks ago I discussed the Flip Mino, a miniature digital movie camera that quite impressed me.

Well, the bar has been raised. Kodak sent me its latest digicam, the Zi6 Pocket Video Camera. As much as I liked the Mino, I think this product is a better choice.

First, what I like about the Zi6: It’s roughly the same size as the Mino (2.5 by 4.5 by 0.9 inches) and roughly the same weight (3.8 ounces), but the physical design is better.

Where the Zi6 really ups the ante is that it takes HD video. That’s right – while it can shoot at VGA resolution, it also shoots in 720p, 16:9 format at either 30 fps (its default) or 60 fps. It also uses standard rechargeable AA NiMH batteries (the Mino’s battery is internal), has a flip-out USB connector (like the Mino), and takes SD/SDHC cards (the Mino has no expansion capability).

What I dislike: The Zi6 comes with a measly 128MB of built-in storage, which is only big enough for about 30 seconds of shooting in HD format at 60 fps.

Another thing: The Zi6 also has a really irritating startup tune. According to the product manual this can be switched off in the control menu, but in the unit I received no such menu exists (this is the kind of thing that makes me feel sorry for consumers).

Bottom line: At the same price as the Mino, $180, the Zi6 is a much better value, even though to get the same amount of storage as the Mino will cost you another $20 or so. I’ll give the Kodak Zi6 Pocket Video Camera 4.5 out of 5.

So, a few weeks ago I started working on a podcast (it’s totally unrelated to IT) and I needed to get better audio on my laptop for recording (it’s a Sony VGN T250, which is a great machine except for its crappy audio). The quick and dirty solution? A Griffin Technology iMic.

The disk-shaped iMic is a USB audio adapter that provides stereo-in and stereo-out ports outside of the PC thereby removing the noise source.

The iMic is cheap ($50), simple to use (plug it in and it just works), and it provides a way of getting pretty good sound in and out of your PC without the noise and distortion that is common with most built-in sound hardware.

The disadvantage is that the iMic really isn’t professional grade, and Griffin is cagey about committing to definitive specs (not unreasonable given the price). That said, it’s good enough for anything but classical music.

The iMic converts incoming analog audio into 24-bit digital samples at 48KHz, but PC audio subsystems that use Microsoft’s high-latency, low-resolution audio WDM (Windows Driver Model) drivers limit the input and output to 16-bit, 48KHz sampling.

If you want better audio performance out of the iMic you’ll need to use something like the excellent and free ASIO4ALL, which routes around the native WDM drivers and implements a standard called ASIO (Audio Stream Input/Output) that provides low latency and high sample resolution.

In fact, if you want to use the iMic with software such as Adobe’s excellent audio editing application Soundbooth, you’ll have to install an ASIO driver. Soundbooth won’t work with WDM drivers for output (at least that’s the situation with Soundbooth CS3 – Adobe just released CS4 and I’m waiting for a copy to test).

Anyway, when the iMic is installed (you may need to reboot to get Windows to recognize the new audio services) you get good, low-noise audio. But there’s a small problem: It appears that not all software understands the iMic USB drivers. I discovered this when I started testing an interesting Internet audio application, Radiotracker 5 Platinum, that I’ll discuss in a week or two.