Good Morning Internet

It’s snow­ing in Bal­ti­more! Over the next 24 hours, we’re expect­ing two to six inches of snow and sleet. Yes, I under­stand that, in the grand scheme of things, that’s not a tremen­dous amount of snow and ice. In fact, I imag­ine some of my friends up north are laugh­ing right now, rolling their eyes, or a com­bi­na­tion of the two.

But that won’t stop the Baltimore/Washington DC area from hav­ing a full-on mega freak-out. This is the first real accu­mu­la­tion we’ve had in the area this sea­son, and I think every school sys­tem in the area is closed for the day.

But that might not be with­out rea­son. Not all of the streets have been treated for snow and ice yet, and I found myself slip­ping along stretches of side­walk on my way to work this morn­ing. And if it’s slip­pery in down­town Bal­ti­more, I imag­ine it’s nas­tier out in the sub­urbs and rural areas.

The snow is sup­posed to tran­si­tion into sleet and freez­ing rain just in time for rush hour tonight, so that will make things a lit­tle extra treach­er­ous for walk­ers and dri­vers alike. But for now, I have a cup of cof­fee and a great view out my win­dow of snow slowly cov­er­ing the city.

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Here it is! I took my Kodak Zi6 with me all over DC on Tues­day and took as much crowd video as I could. Get­ting into Wash­ing­ton via Metro was sur­pris­ingly easy. Get­ting out of the National Mall after Pres­i­dent Obama’s inau­gural address was more dif­fi­cult. Roads were closed in prepa­ra­tion for the parade, and there was the added dif­fi­culty of a few mil­lion peo­ple all try­ing to head for the same one or two Metro sta­tions in the area that were open.

Much like Bal­ti­more, every­body in Wash­ing­ton was ener­gized. You could feel it the moment you stepped on the train. Peo­ple love Obama. And, as you see in the video, they’re not shy about vocal­iz­ing their opin­ions of Pres­i­dent Bush, either.

Again, the Zi6 was a trooper. I never had to change the bat­ter­ies once, and I shot all day in HD mode (30 frames per sec­ond). My 16GB SD card laughed as I recorded over 140 videos that added up to well over an hour’s worth of footage, with giga­bytes to spare. The dig­i­tal zoom was sur­pris­ingly sharp. When I used my Flip Ultra, I avoided touch­ing the zoom like the plague. But on this cam­era, it’s not bad. Sure, you’re not going to get any­thing as crisp as you would with an opti­cal zoom, but for a sub-$200 pocket-sized point-and-shoot video cam­era, it’s amazing.

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Last Sat­ur­day, then President-Elect Barack Obama made a whis­tle stop in Bal­ti­more, and tens of thou­sands of peo­ple waited all day in 17-degree weather to see him speak. I was one of them, and ended up wait­ing in line at about 9:00 am for his speech at 4:30 pm. But you know what? It was worth it. I ended up about 30 yards away from where he spoke, and the energy of the crowd was some­thing I’m really happy I got to expe­ri­ence. Bal­ti­more is over­whelm­ingly excited about our new President.

Even though the events of the day were widely tele­vised, I think the news chan­nels and net­works largely missed the spirit of what it felt like to be “on the ground”. So here’s my per­spec­tive on the day, con­densed to a lit­tle under 15 minutes.

I recorded the whole thing with the Kodak Zi6, and I have to say it was a beast! I brought a pocket full of extra AA bat­ter­ies but never had to use them. The recharge­able bat­ter­ies that came with the cam­era lasted all day, and then some. When I got home, I con­nected the cam­era to my TV with the included com­po­nent cables, and the qual­ity of the video was star­tlingly good.

Any wor­ries I had about the Zi6 being bulkier than my old Flip Ultra are gone. More than a few times I had to pat down my jacket pocket to make sure it was still there. It some­how man­ages to be very light­weight, yet also feel solid in my hand. It’s got a good solid grip to it which I much pre­fer over the glossy-bodied Flip. Even stand­ing out in the cold wear­ing two pairs of gloves, I felt like I had a firm grasp on it.

My Inau­gu­ra­tion Day video is up next, along with more thoughts on the Zi6. This cam­era goes every­where with me, now.

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That’s the video I took on the National Mall in DC at the moment Barack Obama took the oath of office. Nobody real­ized it would only be the first take! Hon­estly, I just thought there were weird audio things hap­pen­ing with the elab­o­rate sound sys­tem on the Mall. I didn’t real­ize that Jus­tice Roberts tripped up Obama with the oath.

Any­way, con­sider this a bit of a teaser. Sat­ur­day, I took a ton of video dur­ing Obama’s visit to Bal­ti­more with my Kodak Zi6. I have hours of footage from Inau­gu­ra­tion Day that I’ve just barely begun to go through. Tomor­row, I’m going to buy myself a Vimeo Plus account so I can get every­thing up in crisp, HD qual­ity. (Unless, of course, some­one wants to buy me one!)

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A Zi6 with my name on it

Every­thing lined up just right dur­ing lunch today. I’m lucky enough to be able to walk to work, and today I hap­pened to stop by my apart­ment to make a sand­wich. As I stood at my kitchen counter, smear­ing mayo, I heard a knock at my door. I was per­plexed because nobody ever knocks on my door, espe­cially in the mid­dle of the day. (I’m not pop­u­lar.) I opened it and was greeted by my apartment’s prop­erty man­ager. He’s a nice guy, around my age, and he had a box in his hand. He told me he just hap­pened to be out­side, just hap­pened to see the deliv­ery guy strug­gle to find my apart­ment (it’s pretty well-hidden), so he signed for the pack­age and brought it to my door. If he hadn’t been there, I would have had to go down to the deliv­ery annex and pick it up later tonight.

So, thanks to Kodak for ship­ping the cam­era to me so quickly, and thanks to my prop­erty man­ager for grab­bing it from the deliv­ery guy! Great ser­vice all around. I can’t wait to unbox and play with the cam­era when I get back home tonight.

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This has been a great week­end for foot­ball. First the Ravens beat the Titans, and this morn­ing I saw the doc­u­men­tary Har­vard Beats Yale 29–29 at The Charles The­atre. It was part of Cin­ema Sun­days at the Charles, which I think might have become my new favorite Sun­day tra­di­tion. I just heard about the film series from an email the the­ater sent last week, even though their web­site has a list of films shown on Cin­ema Sun­days dat­ing back to 1995.

Every Sun­day, the box office opens at 9:45 am, and the $15 cost of admis­sion includes bagels, cof­fee, an intro­duc­tion to the film, then a Q&A ses­sion and dis­cus­sion after­ward. Here’s a descrip­tion from the Cin­ema Sun­days website:

In Har­vard Beats Yale 29–29, [direc­tor Kevin] Raf­ferty takes us into the world of America’s Ivy League uni­ver­si­ties via a 1968 foot­ball match that had a highly unex­pected out­come. He inter­views play­ers on both sides, who – in addi­tion to talk­ing about the game – sum­mon the socio-political milieu of the time, rec­ol­lect­ing their thoughts on issues like Viet­nam, birth con­trol and stu­dent insur­rec­tion. These tes­ti­monies inter­weave with remark­able footage of the game, an erst­while style of col­lege play that pos­sessed a grace lack­ing in today’s pro­fes­sional football.

Mil­ton Kent, host of Sports At Large on WYPR, led the dis­cus­sion about the movie, col­lege foot­ball, the way sports have evolved since 1968, the shame­ful state of the Bowl Cham­pi­onship Series selec­tion process, and of course the Ravens win over the Titans last night. It was great to hear reac­tions and rec­ol­lec­tions from peo­ple who were in the sta­dium dur­ing the Harvard/Yale game 40 years ago. It’s true that col­lege foot­ball isn’t as impor­tant to this area of the coun­try than it is else­where (espe­cially the south), so it was neat to hear some per­spec­tives on it I really hadn’t considered.

The con­ver­sa­tion turned to the ques­tion of why peo­ple like sports in the first place, and it made me think about last night’s Ravens game. No mat­ter what back­ground, eco­nomic sta­tus, eth­nic­ity, polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion, or any other dif­fer­ences, they can all be set aside to share in watch­ing their team play. In the video I took, every sin­gle Ravens fan in that room shared in the celebration.

It was lots of fun and a spec­tac­u­lar way to spend a Sun­day morn­ing. I’m look­ing for­ward to this week’s announce­ment about next Sunday’s movie.

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Last night I watched my Bal­ti­more Ravens beat the Ten­nessee Titans at DuClaw down in Fells Point. The place was elec­tric, and I took some video from the bar. As I write this, I’m get­ting ready to watch the San Diego Charg­ers take on the Pitts­burgh Steel­ers. The win­ner of that game takes on the Ravens next week. You can feel the excite­ment here in the city, and you can def­i­nitely see it in this video.

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Here’s my Hip­ster Dance Party sta­tion on Pan­dora to help you get through the last few hours of your Fri­day. I’ve posted this on Twit­ter a few times before, but it’s avoided the blog for some rea­son. Any­way, put on your head­phones or, if your job allows, crank it up! It’s still a work in progress, so if you hear some­thing that doesn’t seem to fit, just skip it and for­give me.

Hip­ster Dance Party

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Update: The Kodak Zi6 HD is com­ing with me to Inau­gu­ra­tion Day! See updates below.

I’ve got a bit of a dilemma on my hands. I’m plan­ning on going to Obama’s Inau­gu­ra­tion in a cou­ple of weeks and want to bring an HD cam­era with me to cap­ture the day. I have a standard-def Flip Ultra now, so I fig­ure this is as good an excuse as any to upgrade to HD.

So here’s the dilemma: Flip and Kodak both have two pocket-sized HD cam­eras avail­able now (the Flip Mino HD and the Kodak Zi6 HD) and I’m hav­ing trou­ble fig­ur­ing out which one to buy. Their specs are very similar.

Both cap­ture H.264 video, but the Kodak Zi6 HD has an expand­able SD mem­ory card slot, and the Flip has four giga­bytes hard-wired, giv­ing the cam­era 60 min­utes of record time. The Zi6 has a 2.4-inch LCD, big­ger than the Flip’s 1.5, but I don’t mind the smaller screen on the Flip so that’s not a deal-breaker for me. But the Zi6 has a closer focus range at .7 meters to infin­ity, com­pared to the Mino HD’s 1.5 meters to infin­ity. I’m not sure how notice­able that would be. But the Zi6 appar­ently has a “close up” mode or range of focus, so things two inches from the lens will the­o­ret­i­cally be in focus. Again, with­out get­ting my hands on a Zi6 to test it out, I can’t really know for sure.

I’ve devel­oped a bit of brand loy­alty for Flip. My Ultra has been super-trustworthy. I like it a lot and take it every­where. From what I’ve read, it sounds like the Flip Mino HD is as depend­able as my Ultra. I know the Flip cam­eras work great in loud sit­u­a­tions because I’ve got­ten some won­der­ful footage from rock shows. Also, I like its sim­ple interface.

Not being able to test out these cam­eras side-by-side, it’s really tough for me to make a deci­sion on what to buy. I’ve read some scat­tered com­plaints about the Zi6 drop­ping frames, but haven’t really found enough exam­ples or spe­cific evi­dence to sug­gest it’s a wide­spread prob­lem. My favorite com­par­i­son of the two cam­eras is this Andy Ihnatko video:

The color on the Zi6 seems over-saturated and the Flip seems like it adjusts its expo­sure a bit bet­ter. Also, in all of Andy’s shots inside the bagel shop, the Flip seems to pro­duce a much warmer, truer-to-life image than the Zi6. The Zi6 has much higher con­trast, and some of the mid-tones seem to get lost.

On the audio side of things, it might just be the camera’s on-board com­pres­sion, but the Zi6 sounds louder. Although there’s some gain boost or some­thing going on, it also sounds like it picks up more wind noise than the Mino HD.

As of this writ­ing, The Kodak Zi6 HD is $154.65 and the Flip Mino Ultra is $209 on Ama­zon. For a lit­tle over $50 more, I per­son­ally think the Mino HD has supe­rior video qual­ity. But the Zi6 has the bonuses of mem­ory card expan­sion and run­ning off of AA bat­ter­ies. When I’m at the Inau­gu­ra­tion all day, I don’t want to have to ration my record­ing time and worry about los­ing my charge halfway through the day. Still, I’m lean­ing toward the Mino HD.

Have you had expe­ri­ence with either (or both) of these cam­eras? Is there one you pre­fer over the other? I’d love to get some feed­back, com­ments, or guid­ance. After all, this site is where all the videos from the new cam­era are going to end up, so if they look crappy it will sort of be all your fault.

[Update 1: Chef Mark help­fully pointed out the Cre­ative Vado Pocket Video Cam HD, which is aimed squarely at the same con­sumers look­ing for some­thing like a Mino HD or Zi6. He also showed me some great videos shot by Mr. Brown at Marina Bay in Sin­ga­pore. Thanks, Mark!]

[Update 2: Thanks to the friendly folks at Kodak, I’ll be tak­ing a Zi6 with me to Inau­gu­ra­tion day! They con­tacted me within a cou­ple hours after I posted this and help­fully pointed me toward some Zi6 press info. Of course, it’s on Kodak’s site, so it’s largely pro-Zi6 mate­r­ial, but I hadn’t seen WIRED’s Gad­get Lab review before and found it quite help­ful to see the two cam­eras oper­ate side-by-side. The Flip looks sleek, but with the Zi6 I won’t have to worry about charg­ing it or run­ning out of space when I’m in DC all day on Jan­u­ary 20th, thanks to AA bat­ter­ies and SD mem­ory cards. Plus, there’s just some­thing solid about the Zi6. I’m look­ing for­ward to putting the cam­era through its paces when it gets here. I’m par­tic­u­larly excited about the level of enthu­si­asm with which they back up their prod­uct, espe­cially through social media chan­nels. Look for Zi6 video and a full report com­ing here soon. Thanks Tom, Julie, and Jen­nifer at Kodak!]

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Down­load the video here.

This is a video from the Mir­a­cle at Mid­night in Ham­p­den, my favorite place to be at mid­night on New Year’s Eve in Bal­ti­more. It’s got every­thing you could want in a New Year’s Eve cel­e­bra­tion: A sea of peo­ple, drinks, the best Christ­mas lights dis­play any­where, fire­works, a ball drop­ping at mid­night, old man 2008, and a grown man dressed in a dia­per play­ing baby 2009. Like I said, every­thing you could want.

We’ve offi­cially made it through our first full week of 2009. Con­grat­u­la­tions, everybody!

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