There may be plenty of nerdy spy gadgets around that allow the socially challenged to eavesdrop on their nearest and dearest, but few are as elegant as the latest Japanese video pen from Digital Cowboy.
Unlike similar gadgets that cost much more, the dully named DVR-BP will set you back just ¥17,800 (£87) – a mere snip for the opportunity to alienate and enrage all and sundry.
Hours of furtive filming
The 30g pen does its thing through a 1mm hole just above the pocket clip and a microphone secreted just beneath it. A generous 2GB of onboard memory should be enough for several hours of 352 x 288-pixel 15fps video compressed in the AVI format.
Power comes courtesy of a lithium-ion battery that charges by USB, giving two hours of runtime from a similar period attached to a PC. Naturally, the DVR-BP operates as a mass-storage device when connected and – best of all – it even works as a real pen.
