Greetings BabySpot Friends,

Welcome to my first blog post for BabySpot.  I’m sorry that it has taken me quite some time, but as you can imagine flying all over the country to help build BabySpot has taken its toll on my time management!  Such a travel schedule was one of the main reasons that James and I created BabySpot.  We have family all over the world and we wanted a free, safe, secure, and trusted online environment with which we could keep in touch with our families and see our little ones grow.  Today’s memories can be captured and uploaded to memory sharing sites like BabySpot.com with digital cameras, camcorders, and even from our very cell phones.  So while I am may be on the road I won’t miss a memory of seeing my little loved ones grow.

There are many options available to capture these memories.  I recently had the privilege to give a Sony Camcorder a test drive.  Ana Reyes, Sony Electronics, provided us with a DCR-SR220 40GB Hard Drive Handycam Camcorder to use for a week. I tested it out while at the National Board of Director Meeting for the Association of Latino Professionals in Finance & Accounting.  I had the opportunity to interview Board Director Steven Mendez.   Steven is a Senior Manager with Ernst & Young and a proud dad of his newborn, Andres.  Please check out the video for helpful insight on balancing a challenging career and new parenthood!

Take 1 from james rivera on Vimeo.

Some of the key features of the camcorder are highlighted at the end of this post.  However, my personal review of the camcorder is based more on ease of use and functionality than the specific technical details of the camcorder.   In three words – I loved it!!!  The camcorder is built with today’s user in mind.  Having a touch screen is very helpful in terms of navigating the different screens.  Once you’ve recorded a segment you can easily edit it and play it back from the touch screen.  The layout is intuitive and pretty self-explanatory.  Downloading the recorded segments from the camera to my computer were very simply.  I simply connected the camcorder to my Macbook pro and boom there it was.  With 40GB of memory I was never worried about running out of space.  My only wish was that it was the HD Version – we’ll get to that next time.  Overall, great product and one that I would definitely consider looking at to record memories.

Just a note of clarity – every time I read a review I wonder if its objective or if the company paid someone to write it.  I wanted to share with you that Sony did not pay for this review and the contents were solely my opinion based on my experiences.  We hope to keep bring you valuable insights through BabySpot.com.  Thank you so much for joining our family and growing with us.  If there is anything that we can do to make things better please let us know.  Hope that you and your family are having a wonderful holiday season!

Key Features:

Available now for about $800
Sony face detection technology identifies up to eight faces and automatically corrects focus, exposure, color control so everyone in your video and photos will look their best
Hybrid movie recording on Memory Stick™ media cards and built-in 40GB hard disk drive so you don’t have to worry about running out of space
4-megapixel photo capture with premium Sony ClearVid™ CMOS sensor technology
Records in Dolby® Digital 5.1 surround sound with built-in zoom microphone for clear recordings of subjects
Super SteadyShot® optical image stabilization eliminates shake for smooth video and photos
For more information visit www.sonystyle.com