You always wanted to put your iPod to work for something besides playing music, right, find a way to write it off as a business expense? Bella Corporation might have the answer in the form of its new Catapult, a battery operated device which enables the capture of HD or HDV video directly from video cameras to iPods or other USB drive so you can begin editig footage immediately. the total size of a Catapult-wrapped iPod isn’t much bigger than a BlackBerry, and it eliminates the costs (in time and money) of digitizing or converting HD or HDV footage for editing.
Catapult works via a standard USB connection, and sports a neoprene pouch design to hold an iPod, or anything as large as a 2.5-inch USB drive (although, of course, if you’re willing to haul the drives and power supplies, you can connect any USB 2.0 storage system to the Catapult).
But Catapult isn’t just a way to fly data from your video camera to a drive: it also sports a configurable Time Lapse feature enabling the recording of frames at pre-determined intervals (perfect for documenting long events: grass growing, a building going up