The International Space Station was passing at exactly the right time and angle to take this beautiful travelling shot of tropical storm Fay, which is now increasing force over Florida threatening to become a hurricane and close the Kennedy Space Centre. From space, everything looks so calm and harmless. And nobody can hear you scream, which is a plus unless you are the moron who decided to kite surf in Miami using the storm winds, logically crashing against a wall (the following video may be too strong for the sensibilities of some readers).

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Sanyo's HD700 Xacti was the then smallest 720p camcorder in the world, and we liked it. Time's moved on and Sanyo has a new Xacti, the HD800, and it's apparently a great leap in video quality. The new cam has an 8-megapixel CMOS sensor, and shoots 720p video at 30fps in MPEG4 format. It's also got "three-dimensional noise reduction" for improved image sharpness, can track up to 12 faces in the scene for optimum image settings, a 5x optical zoom and can shoot down to a minimum of 3 lux. The SDHC-recording cam comes this time in whacky 70s-esque colour schemes, and is available August 22nd in Japan at first, for around $460. Press release below.

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Toshiba's budget HD camcorder, the Camileo H10, actually doesn't skimp on features, it seems. The SD-based device records in 720p to its internal 64MB memory, or SDHC cards (up to 8GB, around 4 hours of footage) and has a 10 megapixel CCD. It squeezes in a 5x optical zoom, video stabilisation, motion-detection shooting, night mode, HDMI output and a 2.7-inch display. Not bad for US$350, and available from the end of July. [Pocket Lint]

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Benny may have reviewed a bunch of cheap camcorders for our cheap camcorder Battlemodo, but he's much less British than we'd like. Good thing for us Dr. Ashen of Vii, PolyStation 3 and various other shitty gadget fame has decided to put two of them head-to-head. Spoiler alert: The Creative Vado sucks, even in the UK. Oh, and Ashen's couch is slightly dirtier than last time. [Dancing Yak - Thanks Sean!]

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Back in January, Hitachi released the BD9H Blu-ray camcorder, and it's taken just six months for the next generation to come along. The DZ-BD10H takes the same core design, but squeezes it into a slightly smaller package. It's still a full HS palmcorder, recording to 8-cm BD, DVD-R/RW/RAM or a 30GB HDD but this time the sensor is a 7-megapixel CMOS and the camera has the ability to write stills and movies to SD/SDHC cards too.

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Canon's AVCHD HF10 camcorder got an excellent reception earlier this year, and now Canon have tweaked it slightly into the upcoming HF11 version. The most important tweaks are doubling the internal storage from 16GB to 32GB and the addition of a 24Mbps high quality MXP imaging mode. Otherwise, most features of the camera remain the same. Similar tweaks have been made to last year's HG10 HDD camera, adding in the 24Mbps shooting mode, a 120GB drive and now allowing movies to be saved onto SD card whereas before it was limited to still imagery. Both cameras will be available in August for US$1,300. [AVWatch]

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The high definition wizards at RED have a new design update on their Red Scarlet HD Pocket Pro, their handy high definition camera priced under US$3,000, which can shoot 3k resolution 120fps video. Looking at the new rugged exterior, it can probably shoot anti-matter beams or armour-piercing grenades too. We want. [Scarlet user]

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Kodak's first entry into the pocket camcorder pool, the Zi6, may be the new king of cams. My lab assistants and I have done more scientific research in the field of cheap-arse camcorders than anyone we can name off the top of our heads. In my expert opinion, this is a winner, ready to unseat Pure Digital's original Flip Ultra. Why? 720p HD video!

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Samsung's SC-MX20 follows up the MX10 with some fairly useful features such as h.264 video mode for better YouTube, iPod, iPhone and PMP compatibility, as well as a max 720x480 resolution for DVD-quality video. It stores up to 16 hours on one 32GB SDHC card, has three hours of battery life (best-in-class they claim?), 34x optical zoom, image stabilisation and "3D noise reduction." Out in August for US$280 in black, red and white. Not too bad a price if you're looking to go a little higher than the entry-level Flip cams. Not having to re-encode everything you shoot is real nice too. [Samsung via Electronista]

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DXG's new 567v looks designed to join Flip cam lookalikes in the YouTube camcorder game. But this candybar form-factor camera packs in a 5-megapixel CMOS sensor and records at 1280 x 720 pixels HD resolution at 30 frames per second: meaning it's far beyond YouTube's video requirements. Recording to SDHC cards, it also comes with all the cabling to connect it to your TV and has ArcSoft TotalMedia editing software in the box. Available now for US$179. Press release below.

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