If you’re looking for something a little more powerful than those pocket camcorders that seem to be making the rounds, then you may want to turn your attention to the Panasonic SDR-SW21 Shock & Waterproof Camcorder. It takes on the more conventional camcorder shape, which is quite different from something like the Flip Mino or Kodak Zi8. This is arguably more comfortable for longer shooting sessions.

Many of the features that you find on this Panasonic camcorder are quite a step above what its lower price point may lead you to believe. For starters, this is a completely shock and waterproof camera, making it a great candidate for recording your memories at the beach, while camping, or even at a crowded rock concert! It’ll survive up to two meters deep, even in sea water.

The 70x optical zoom lens allows you to get really close to the action, even if you’re quite some distance away. Add in the 100x digital zoom and you can get even closer. Other notable highlights include the SD/SDHC memory card slot, 2.7-inch touchscreen display, VideoCam Suite software for direct uploads to YouTube, and the Intelligent Auto Mode. This allows for face detection, optical image stabilization, and intelligent contrast control.

The Panasonic SDR-SW21 is currently on sale for $212.31, which is 47% off the regular price of $399.95. This is through Amazon Canada and it is available in your choice of green, orange or silver.

Many different kinds of people choose to use Bluefur for their web hosting needs and one such customer is Apple Home Inspection. Before you buy any home, it pays to have a proper inspection done to reveal any possible problem areas.

Serving Victoria and most of the southern Vancouver Island area, Apple Home Inspection is completely independent and free of third-party influence. Further still, it uses a unique infrared system to reveal potential issues that may not be visible to the naked eye.

The main inspector with Apple Home Inspection is Mark Nicholet and he is a member of the Canadian Association of Home and Property Inspectors. He has 14 years of industrial experience and he serves such areas as Courtenay, Comox, and Nanaimo.

Do you use BlueFur as your preferred web host? Let us know and we can feature you in a future blog post. Send an email message to blogfeature@bluefur.com with your name, website, and a brief description of what you’d like to see highlighted.

Looking for a new theme to go along with your shiny new WordPress blog? Why not turn your attention toward Chunky Theme. Don’t worry; this isn’t a template that needs to go on a diet, but it does come chock full of fantastic features.

Fully compatible with WordPress 3.0 and all the new features that accompany the latest build of the content management system, Chunky allows for a custom header image and it provides space for all your social media icons. These icons are located just below the header, prominently featuring access to your Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and more.

The main navigation is located above the header and the single sidebar is pushed off to the right hand side. The RSS and search bar integration are also executed beautifully, making for a clean and effective WordPress blog.

Check out the live demo on Press Coders, which is also where you can find the free download link for Chunky Theme.

Let’s go for another tour of the blogosphere. What did the bloggers have to discuss this week?

Susan Gunelius approaches a subject that may be challenging for many novices: how much should I charge as a freelance writer? I don’t completely agree with her formula, however, as you should be aiming to make more than the absolute minimum you need “to live.”

John Chow recently had the opportunity to attend the Austria Vancouver Club, despite not being of Austrian descent. While there, he tried to explain Twitter to the attendees… and they’re not exactly tech-savvy. So, John demonstrated by asking for free money (and he got it).

Dragon Blogger explains some of the new features found in Social Spark 2.0. More specifically, the new marketplace allows for Google Analytics integration, helping you better track your metrics. In case you didn’t already know, Social Spark is designed to compensate bloggers on a pay per post basis.

Simon Mackie lets us know how you can make the most of your coworking space. Just because you’re working for yourself doesn’t mean that you need to work by yourself. Coworking can really give you the best of both worlds. Just make sure you invest in some good headphones and pick the best spot to get your work done. Working in the cloud helps too.

Rebecca Bollwitt highlights the new t-shirt design contest from the Vancouver Police Museum. They’re looking for something that they can use to promote the museum in the best possible way, so feel free to shoot your creative ideas their way. You have a little more than a week to enter.

There are rumors going around on the Internet that YouTube wants to better invade your living room. You can already access YouTube videos through different media players and home theater PC setups, but it seems that Google wants to have even better penetration, possibly beating out a traditional TV subscription.

As the rumor goes, consumers will get a set top box that is connected to their YouTube account. YouTube tracks the kinds of videos you and your friends enjoy, creating a “random” playlist that fits in with these interests. The playlist is then streamed to the set top box in the living room, continually moving from one video to the next with little to no user interaction. This mimics the experience of watching traditional television, but in shorter clips.

So, what does this have to do with marketing? Should this idea truly take off, it is very well possible that YouTube could start offering advertising opportunities among these generated playlists. Advertisers could buy 30 second spots to insert their videos, not unlike television commercials through the conventional channels. Executed successfully, this could prove to be a major revenue source for YouTube and Google.

What do you think? From both a consumer and an advertiser’s point of view, would sponsored videos among your streamed playlist be a good thing or a bad thing overall?

Search engine optimization is a very important whether you are running a small blog or you are trying to promote your business website. If you have WordPress as your chosen content management system, you also have access to a wide range of plugins and customizations that can aid you in this effort.

An oldie but a goodie in this realm is SEO Slugs. This WordPress plug-in accomplishes one very simple task, but it does it very well. In short, it shortens the “post slug” portion of your URI, removing superfluous words. This generates a shorter URI and one that is more easily indexed by search engines like Google.

The example used in the plug-in main page has a blog post called “What You Can Do Immediately For Higher Rankings.” If left at default, the post slug in WordPress would be “/what-you-can-do-immediately-for-higher-rankings”. By using the plugin, the slug is automatically shortened to “/immediately-higher-rankings.” That’s shorter and more efficient.

For more information and to download SEO Slugs, head over to vretoolbar.com.