We've blogged about sales on the dead-simple, highly functional, curse-free line of Flip digital camcorders before, but we've never seen anything like this. The 30-minute Flip Ultra, which we use to shoot our video at ZRecs, is selling at the moment - and I'd stress the word moment - for an obscene $50, down from their pretty firm selling price of around $100 and their MSRP of ~$150.

Now, we know that they're clearing these out because more people want a 60-minute Flip than a 30-minute one (those ones are on sale for around $100), and the Mino is super-slim and thus takes up even less room in that pocket (those are on sale too, but not as much), and there's an HD edition out now, which uses a rechargeable lithium battery instead of AAs... don't blame these guys for being innovators.

But if you are in need of a cheap video camera to take on the go, do I even have to say it? This deal rocks. It was kind of hard to steady our hands as we pushed the "Add to Cart" button, but we did - and bought five Flips for some pretty rockin' upcoming ZRecs projects, and one for Z. (This is even cheaper than some really lousy digicams made specifically for kids.) If you wish to do such a thing, you'd better get your spouse involved, because there is a per-customer limit of three. At $50, I almost feel silly saying "we recommend this camera" - the price makes it kind of a no-brainer, from our perspective, unless you really have no need for a device like this.

The one concern we ever had about this camera, the quality of the included software for processing your videos (one of the innovations of the Flip is that it contains its own video editing software, so it works on any computer and doesn't require a desktop app), has been vastly improved - it now works very well and we sort, edit, and process videos like gangbusters. If you're looking for more input, check out the user reviews at the links above or read our review of the Flip Ultra in the ZRecs Archives, where we got a lot of techy reader comments, largely positive and now at least partially outdated.

So! Expect more video footage from Z herself soon, and some interesting news on how we plan to use our five new ZRecs Flip Ultras.