The 2011 Guerrilla Video Pledge Drive.

Come, I will conceal nothing from you: the iPad 2 is a temptation.

It’s one that I’ve been resisting, because up until quite recently it was a tempting toy to me.  Toys are nice; toys are fun; and toys are luxuries.  And with the economic situation the way it is, luxuries take a backseat to building up financial reserves and not going nuts with purchases of highly expensive toys.  Which was fine.  But then Charlie Stross had to write this, damn his eyes:

The front and rear video cameras on the iPad 2 (which appear to match those on the iPhone 4) are supported by FaceTime, Photo Booth, and the on-iPad port of iMovie. (Yes, it’s a lightweight 720p video shooting and editing platform — all in one.) There’s an HDMI-out dongle, so you can mirror the iPad’s screen on an HD television — potentially very useful for presentations and guerilla media production. You probably wouldn’t want to film and edit a serious video using the iPad’s built-in camera, but the SD-card reader should let you work with an HD camcorder. If iMovie on iPad is as good as iMovie on OSX, this is going to revolutionize video blogging.

Because here’s the thing: over at RedState we could have used something like this at the ’08 conventions.  We had one of our guys out there covering the protests, and being able to process video more or less on the fly would have been a help.  I mean, I have my netbook, which is invaluable for phone interviews, and is even adequate for impromptu video editing (no complaints there: it wasn’t purchased for that); but it certainly sounds like this platform would be an improvement.  And before you ask: no, I don’t expect to be able to finagle one out of Eagle Publishing, which is fine and I’d be the first to argue that even if one was forthcoming from them then it should go to one of my cobloggers anyway.

So.  I have a recent generous contribution from PayPal from a reader; and my birthday is in a week, so I have negotiated for some cash originally dedicated for that; and I can squeeze enough out from the household accounts to get about roughly half of the total.  There’s a PayPal button above and below: if you want to contribute, great.  If you’d rather give to Japanese disaster relief, go ahead (that’s where any of the extra money from this is going to be going anyway).  I’m certainly not going to fault your priorities.

I’ll be running this drive for a week, or until I get enough, whichever comes first.

Moe Lane