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.