A tiny video camera for a remarkably low price and a book on a novel software testing technique called “fuzzing.”
Perhaps I’m just getting older, but I find I need to keep notes about everything. I used to effortlessly remember anything that mattered, but alas those days are gone and now I find it tricky remembering what day it is and what I had for breakfast.
So when I was sent a really cool gadget, a tiny, solid-state video camera called the Flip Mino, I realized I had a solution to my dwindling memory.
At roughly 4 by 2 inches and only about three-quarter inch thick, the 3.3-ounce Mino is, as its name suggests, really tiny. Because the Mino is so sleek it is easy to just drop in your pocket and carry it everywhere as a sort of super note taker.
The Mino stores up to one hour of video and remarkably good audio on its internal 2GB flash drive. Videos are in 640-by-480-pixel MPEG-4 AVI format at 30 frames per second, and it can operate at light levels as low as 2.0V/lux-sec with automatic low-light detection.
One of the things that makes the Mino really cool — and for that matter unusual — in the annals of gadgetry, is it almost doesn’t need any cables (the only cable you need and that is included is for playing videos on external displays).
To download video content or recharge the Mino you simply slide a button on the side of the device and out pops a built-in USB connector. You then plug the Mino into a PC USB socket to charge it and, because the Mino looks to your machine like any other USB mass storage device, you can grab the video files from it with any tools you like.
The Mino comes with software on its internal storage and includes viewing and editing applications for both OS X and Windows. You can delete the software from the device to increase your recording time, but the beauty of leaving it on the Mino is you can then use any PC to view and edit your videos (the battery is good enough to record at least double the camera’s one-hour record time, which allows for editing, erasing and re-recording). The software also supports sharing videos by e-mail and online services such as AOL Video, YouTube and MySpace.
As I noted, the video quality is very good, but while the lens is pretty fast (f/2.4 so low-light shots are good) the fixed focus lens (1m to infinity) doesn’t provide a wide enough field of view, particularly for interiors.
My big complaint about the Mino is the fixed internal storage – you don’t want to have to run to a PC if you’re out and about and have filled up the device. If the Mino could use removable storage cards I’d love to try it with the Eye-Fi card I reviewed a few weeks ago, which wirelessly and automatically transfers stored content to online services.
But here’s the thing: You get the Mino with all of these features for just $180, which is an amazing value. I’ll give the Flip Mino 4 out of 5. That’s if I remember.
The other thing I do remember that I wanted to mention this week is a terrific book: Fuzzing for Software Testing and Quality Assurance, by Takanen, DeMott, and Miller. Fuzzing is a software testing technique that involves injecting faulty data in an attempt to find ways that a given application can fail.
The idea is that software that has bugs and is therefore possibly vulnerable to hacking will behave unpredictably to unexpected inputs. This book discusses the whole concept of software testing and then explains how fuzzing fits in, and what tools and techniques are available for developers and QA engineers to apply the technique. In the age of Web applications, fuzzing takes on extra importance in hardening business processes. Fascinating and quite readable. 4½ out of 5.
