The Sanyo Xacti GC9 is a sweet little toy. All you need to do is pull out this very small device, and you can shoot high definition 720p video anywhere. After you are finished shooting, pop out the SD card, slide it into your computer, and you are ready to edit and upload.

The Xacti is not as simple as the Flip HD, but that is where it shines. Unlike the Flip, the Xacti has a nice fold out LCD that can flip forward or backwards, it has a 5X optical zoom, it shoots 9 megapixel still photos, and it has face recognition technology.

One particularly nifty feature that makes using solid state media for recording video viable, is the fact that you can record directly into H.264... TWiT's favorite compression codec. Since you are going to compress your video to put it on the web anyway, you may as well just do it right in the Xacti so that you can record for longer on less space, and skip the transcoding process later.

If I were to make my recommendation, if you like messing with features and options, get yourself the Sanyo Xacti. If you want to give a gift to a n00b, or you want to have the simplest experience possible, get yourself the FlipHD.

We have an Xacti here at the cottage, and love it.

Either way, you can't go wrong.