World’s Smallest Camcorder

Over the past 30 or so years I’ve written ‘World Smallest Camcorder’ so many times that it’s set in Word AutoComplete. Here’s the latest, it’s from Shenzen AEE Wireless Technology and it’s called, rather confusingly, the ‘Mini DV’. In fact it has nothing to do with the camcorder tape format of the same name, it records in AVI format on Micro SD cards.

Whether or not it is the ‘World’s Smallest’ is open to debate but it is teensy, measuring just 55 x 20 x 118mm and it tips the scales at just 50g. Up front there’s a fixed focus lens and behind that a 2 megapixel image sensor, image resolution is 640 x 480 at 30fps. Power comes form a rechargeable Li-Ion battery that lasts for up to 2 hours. Read more

Century Old Idea for Memory Cards

Don’t ask us how they know, but SanDisk claims that its new 128Mb Write Once, Read Many times (WORM) SD memory card will store data for up to 100 years. If true and they’re on pretty safe ground from warranty claims — that’s a definite improvement on current technology. Data on rewritable cards and drives can start to deteriorate in as little as 5 years, though most manufacturers reckon they’re good for between 10 to 25 years.

Potential applications for the new WORM card includes storing evidential data used in police investigations, medical data, company records and so on. WORM cards can also be used for archiving photographs and home videos, in fact anything that you would like still to be around in 100 years time, though the big question with all these things is, will there be anything that can read SD cards in just 10 years, let alone in 2108…