This week I took a look at some options for people who want to get rid of old electronics, one way or another. The good news is that there are a handful of Web sites that make it easy to do this — and some of them may even pay you for your old products. The bad news is that you’ll likely receive only a fraction of what you originally paid, especially if you waited a while to get rid of it.

Some sites, like Gazelle.com and VenJuvo.com, offer cash for your items and/or will recycle products. Another site, TechForward.com, lets people pay a fee to “lock in” a value for how much the site promises to pay for the product in the future. MyBoneYard.com accepts only laptops, desktop PCs, cellphones and flat-panel monitors, and gives Visa (V) gift cards rather than cash.

I was surprised to receive significantly different value offers from Gazelle and VenJuvo when trying to sell the exact same products on each site. In one instance, VenJuvo offered me $30 more than Gazelle for a digital camera; another time, I got $15 more from Gazelle for an old Apple (AAPL) iPod. It’s worth the extra step to shop around at more than one of these sites before getting rid of something.

Both ask a few questions about the item, including its condition and whether or not it still has the accessories that originally came with it. Gazelle determines a product’s value using retail — think Amazon (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY) — and wholesale channels; VenJuvo uses similar criteria and also looks at competitors’ prices.

If you worry about someone stealing your digital data, you’ll likely not feel comfortable dropping something in the mail that’s chock full of personal information, especially if it no longer powers on to allow the owner to wipe this information.

Both Gazelle and VenJuvo accept at least some types of digital cameras, laptops, MP3 players, GPS devices, camcorders and gaming consoles. Gazelle also accepts cellphones. But they don’t take everything. Gazelle doesn’t take LCD TVs and VenJuvo doesn’t accept satellite radios and portable hard drives or any smartphones or cellphones other than the iPhone; neither accepts desktop PCs.

I took the closest look at newly released Gazelle, owned by Second Rotation Inc., and walked through the simple start-to-finish process of selling a gadget and receiving money from the site. After pulling up the site, people can find their product and its value by choosing from a list of nine categories or by typing some part of the product’s name into a search box.

I sold Gazelle a first-generation iPod Mini with four gigabytes of memory for which my boss paid $249 in 2004. I answered a few questions about the product: Yes, it still powered on; no, I didn’t have the original AC adapter, manuals or software installation CD, and it was in “excellent” condition, according to my assessment. Gazelle placed its value at $25.

At this step, I opted to add the iPod to my box and check out, but users can also add other items to a box, including electronics for recycling. Gazelle’s policy is that it pays 100% of shipping costs for any box shipped to the company, so long as there’s at least one item in the box worth $1. Eighty percent of transactions qualify for a free box; the rest can be sent with printed-out prepaid shipping labels, but you must find packaging.

Gazelle lets users receive payments via a mailed, paper check or using PayPal; money is received either way within five business days. People can also donate their money to one of 23 causes, including the American Red Cross and World Vision. I opted for PayPal, and the $25 amount was deposited shortly after Gazelle received the iPod.

I sent the old iPod to Gazelle in a brightly colored, empty box that arrives at a customer’s door a few days after he or she sells the device to Gazelle. I secured the old iPod in the box using balled up paper, and sealed it with packing tape. A prepaid shipping label was already stuck to it, and I needed only drop it off at UPS.

If Gazelle receives a product and decides that it isn’t worth what you said it was — either more or less — and you’d rather not sell, the company will ship the product back, free of charge. But while Gazelle’s site guarantees users that they’ll receive their money, and that personal data are safe with the company, no money-back guarantee is offered.

Gazelle hopes to calm nerves by posting detailed instructions on the site about how to wipe a device of all private information. But the company hasn’t yet done this, and numerous users will remain skeptical even with such instructions.

I also poked around on VenJuvo Inc.’s Web site of the same name, www.VenJuvo.com, which is derived from two Greek words meaning “support, assist and delight sellers,” according to the company. This site, too, buys products back from people, though it pays via check, PayPal or Kmart (SHLD) gift card. Users fill out similarly simple questionnaires on each product to help assess value. Unlike Gazelle’s style of mailing boxes to users, VenJuvo gives users only prepaid shipping labels to print out and stick on a box that the customer must supply.

One notable difference between the sites is Gazelle’s broader range of products. In the case of digital cameras, for example, Gazelle accepts 80 brands while VenJuvo takes only Canon (CAJ), Sony (SNE), Olympus and Kodak (EK). Unlike with Gazelle, if you send VenJuvo a product that isn’t worth what you said it was, the company won’t return the product free-of-charge; instead, it will charge you for shipping.

If users choose to receive a gift card, they get a 10% added value. While VenJuvo doesn’t let people donate a product’s value to a cause, it will add this feature next week and will include different causes (like Ronald McDonald House and Big Brothers Big Sisters) than those found on Gazelle.

Unlike Gazelle, VenJuvo will always take items for recycling and will pay for the shipping, regardless of whether you traded something in for a value.

A useful resource for general electronics recycling is the Consumer Electronics Association Web site, www.MyGreenElectronics.org, which locates nearby electronics-recycling centers according to ZIP Code. And almost every computer manufacturer has a recycling program in place; some will even recycle computers that aren’t their own brand.

One way or another, it’s time to clean out the old junk drawer. Just be sure to do some comparison shopping if you want money for your old products.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Searchme

This week, I tested two applications that turn searching into feasts for the eyes. Instead of showing search results in lines of text, these results are visually based. One, called SpaceTime, displays search results in three-dimensional views that make images look as if they are flying onto the screen. The other, an actual search engine called Searchme, spreads image results out in fan-like patterns. Both SpaceTime and Searchme encourage people to search by choosing what looks visually familiar or accurate, rather than trying to discern what the text in a link might mean.

The idea of improved search isn’t a new one. Many have tried, ranging from Ask.com’s media-rich result pages to Mahalo.com’s human-powered search engine. But Google’s (GOOG) simplicity and experience have made it hard to beat, and competitors know the importance of relevant and reliable results. Rather than comparing these sites with the big G, I looked at them as add-ons that could be especially useful for certain searches.

Searchme, a search engine built from the ground up, is technically in private beta — meaning that it is still a work in progress and users must be invited to use it. The company gave me access to the site and created a link so that readers of this column could also use it: www.searchme.com/wsj. This Web-based tool works on Windows and Mac operating systems and in any major browser, and it tries to improve search by asking users to choose a category for their search terms.

For instance, when I typed “US Open” in the Searchme box, categories appeared to the right, including Tennis, Squash, Gambling & Casinos and Golf. Since I was looking for the tennis-related grand slam, I chose the Tennis category and saved myself some typing. The more I used Searchme, the more I came to rely on these categories for faster, more-refined results.

SpaceTime

Searchme’s visual search works by displaying snapshots of Web sites, each of which has the search term highlighted on its page. These pages fan out from the center to look like Cover Flow in Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iTunes, visually sorting images like album covers in a jukebox so they can be flipped through until the best Web page is found.

By moving a cursor along a horizontal scroll bar below these pages, I skimmed through 10 to 15 Web sites in a matter of seconds, quickly weeding out unwanted sites. But these pages don’t allow interaction like scrolling down or playing of embedded videos. A button below these images reveals a list-view where text and links relating to the images are listed, but I kept this option hidden more often than not.

Though Searchme’s categories are helpful and I liked using visual searching, I did notice many more results, overall, while performing searches through Google and Yahoo (YHOO). A Google search for the Regency Hotel in New York City returned accurate links to the hotel’s Web site — and a map. Searchme’s first result was a defunct Web page for the Regency, and the younger search engine doesn’t yet have maps, news or stock quotes like Google.

Settings can be adjusted for Searchme, including one option to filter out adult content and another to open up new windows whenever a Web page is selected, so as not to lose the current page.

SpaceTime (www.spacetime.com) differs from Searchme in that it doesn’t try to be its own search engine. Instead, it is a browser that works with established search engines and Web sites. It isn’t Web-based, like Searchme, and must be downloaded to a Windows (MSFT) PC (it doesn’t yet work on Macs). The intense 3-D graphics of this program work best on a computer with at least one gigabyte of system memory and 256 megabytes of dedicated video memory.

At first glance, SpaceTime appears to be a normal browser. It has the usual URL line where specific Web sites can be entered and a search box at the top right that can be set to search Google, Google Images, Yahoo, Yahoo Images, eBay (EBAY), Flickr, YouTube, RSS feeds or Amazon (AMZN).

But using this search box starts the fun of the product. Search results appear as images lined up on the screen, floating through space and descending into the distance in a 3-D visualization akin to that of Windows Vista’s Flip 3D. SpaceTime’s dark background gives it a dramatic edge, and each object is reflected in an artistic, glass-like surface. Results can be tweaked, turned, magnified and moved within this 3-D space.

When I performed normal Google or Yahoo searches, the returned results appeared as images of each Web site on which the searched term appeared. When I searched for images on Google, Yahoo or Flickr, the results came back in image-only fashion — not images embedded in Web sites — that looked stunning lined up in 3-D. Searches of eBay are especially useful on SpaceTime because each item up for bid zooms onto the screen as its own object along with its current price, number of bids and remaining auction time. YouTube searches return videos lined up in SpaceTime’s 3-D environment.

With all of these images flying in and out of the screen, things can get a little overwhelming. One pile of search results is called a stack, and each stack is automatically saved in a dock at the bottom of the screen, labeled with a thumbnail image of where you last left off. Searches can be saved and snapshots of screens can be captured and saved in the dock.

To return results as fast as possible, SearchTime says it will pull up just 10 at a time for image, product and video searches, or five pages at once for content-heavy sites. But in my tests, using two different Vista computers with 2GB of RAM each, I usually never saw more than five results at a time. The next five or 10 images can be retrieved by choosing a “Next Set” button at the bottom of the screen.

On-screen Web sites and objects are interactive, meaning that I could scroll down within a Web page or play a YouTube video within the SpaceTime screen. A clever magnifying glass pops up on the screen to pinpoint the original search term on each page.

SpaceTime allowed me to rapidly flip through tens or even hundreds of images and Web sites in a very short time, but it wasn’t perfect. Some search results took a while to load, only displaying the first object while the other lined-up objects appeared as empty frames because they were still loading. YouTube seemed sluggish and wasn’t as easy to navigate as some other searches, and Flickr was especially slow to load in a few of my tests.

SpaceTime is working on a Web-based version that won’t rely so heavily on each user’s PC specs, and Searchme is still in its testing phase, working to return more relevant results. But for now, these two sites turn search into a different, much more visually stimulating experience. After using these programs for a little while, I started to search differently — moving through results faster and clicking on fewer links that returned unwanted results. Though I’ll still rely on Google for basic searches, visual search can save time and turn searching into a fun process.

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

A fondness for TiVo has encouraged users to refer to it with designated nicknames and/or genders. A teacher friend of mine was recently asked by a student if her husband’s name was TiVo after the child heard her say she would have to tell TiVo about a new TV show. But like any old friend — or spouse — who has been around for a while, TiVo has a few tricks up its sleeve that might surprise longtime users and new owners alike. This column includes just a handful of those tricks and highlights some features that may make TiVo more useful. These tips are for everyday users, not serious hackers, and many others exist.

Remote-Control Codes

Each of these codes is entered one time to enable an otherwise-hidden function, and three chimes signal the code is set. These functions can be disabled by entering the code a second time, or if TiVo is rebooted.

Clock: If you miss having a VCR nearby to tell you the time while you watch TV, TiVo can help. A digital clock can be programmed to show up in the lower right-hand corner of your television screen by pressing “SELECT-PLAY-SELECT-9-SELECT.”

While playing recorded shows, this clock displays the current time and the elapsed time of the program you’re watching. Personally, I check a show’s progress by pressing the remote’s Play button to see the progress bar, and the Info button shows the current time. But the on-screen clock might come in handy when you’re watching TV on a terrible date and you don’t want to get caught glancing at your watch.

30-second skip: One of the glorious functions of TiVo and other DVRs is their ability to fast-forward through commercials. But it takes practice to know when to press Play so as to completely miss commercials.

If you’re unsure about your fast-forwarding technique, TiVo can be permanently set to skip ahead in 30-second increments, by entering “SELECT-PLAY-SELECT-3-0-SELECT.” This code must be set while watching a recorded show. After that, the 30-second skipping works whenever you press the “Skip To Tick” button, which looks like an arrow pointing right to a straight line.

TiVo says this code won’t work for longer time increments, like 90 seconds, and I tried using various increments, to no avail. Still, pressing this button about five or seven times in a row (depending on the show) gets you through commercials with less guesswork.

Disappearing progress bar: TiVo’s progress bar, which shows how far along a program has progressed in terms of the entire show’s duration, appears at various moments, such as when you first play a recorded show or unpause. This indicator lingers on the screen for just about three seconds, but if this seems too long, you can enter “SELECT-PLAY-SELECT-PAUSE-SELECT” to set the progress bar to disappear after less than a second.

I tried this setting on my TiVo, but one second showed only a quick blink of the progress bar, not enough time to see anything.

Number Shortcuts

From the TiVo Central menu, pressing each number on the remote control’s numeric keypad skips directly to a different tool. Some of the more useful shortcuts include pressing “1″ to go to Season Pass Manager (a list of programs that are set to automatically record every episode), “4″ to go to Search Title and “8″ to go to TiVo Suggestions.

Viewing Tips

TiVo can display a programming guide in a TV-Guide-like grid, or as a two-columned TiVo Live Guide that can list future shows for hours or days out. The top of Live Guide gives a detailed description of each selected program, along with its duration and TV rating.

The Now Playing list shows content stored on a TiVo. By default, this list is organized in time sequential order with same-series TV shows grouped into folders. Remote-control shortcuts re-sort this list: pressing “1″ switches from sequential to alphabetical order and vice versa; pressing “2″ ungroups shows to display each title; shows are regrouped into folders when “2″ is pressed again.

Lesser-Known Features

Universal Swivel Search is a way of seeing how TiVo’s various shows and movies are related to one another. It lists details about each program, including actors, directors, tags associated with a show (like love, dating and addiction) and suggestions of similar content. Swivel Search is accessed through the Find Programs menu or More Options while looking at a recorded show.

By selecting a Swivel Search detail about a particular show, such as one of its actors, you can see what else he or she starred in and whether or not that show or movie is available through TiVo or Amazon.com’s Unbox. Unbox downloads movies directly to your TiVo ranging from $2 to $15 each depending on whether you rent or buy a movie.

Plenty of free Internet content can be downloaded from the Web to your TiVo. But TiVo confusingly places this content in two menus: Find Programs and Music, Photos, Products & More. Under Find Programs, a Download TV & Movies section offers Amazon Unbox movies and free TiVoCast content. The latter can be set to automatically download with Season Pass settings, such as The Onion’s weekly video or ExerciseTV’s twice weekly videos.

The Music, Photos, Products & More menu holds content like photos and unprotected MP3s from a nearby computer, podcasts, Rhapsody music, Yahoo! Weather and Traffic and on-screen games. You can even buy movie tickets through Fandango.

TiVo takes up valuable space in a home entertainment center, so it’s important for the company to make sure its content is varied and useful. The codes and shortcuts mentioned can change the way you use this valuable device every day.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

But how much is too much when it comes to shelling out a little more for convenience, and are you really getting what you pay for? This week, I tested what could be thought of as the ultimate convenience: a box that plugs into your television and Internet connection, letting you download movies whenever you want to watch them. The box costs $399 and doesn’t include the price of movies, which must be rented or purchased for fees as high as $4 or $20 each, respectively.

This box, called Vudu, comes from a Silicon Valley company of the same name (www.vudu.com). Vudu’s biggest strengths are its easy setup, good picture quality and simple user interface, easily navigated using a scroll-wheel remote control.

Vudu costs $399 plus prices to rent or own each movie title.

If the director yelled “Cut!” right here, Vudu would be a box-office smash. But actually using this device is just one problem after another. For starters, though Vudu says it has relationships with the major Hollywood studios, many of the 5,000 titles it offers don’t seem to be popular by mainstream standards. Lots of them are old or obscure. For instance, you won’t find any of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, but how about a 1984 sci-fi/fantasy movie called “The Ice Pirates,” instead?

If you do find a movie that you’d like to watch, you must have a bandwidth speed of at least two megabits per second to download it instantly; millions of broadband homes have slower connections than that. Vudu offers to measure your bandwidth on its home page before you buy it. I tested Vudu for a week on a typical home-type DSL line, and my connection only clocks about 1.5 Mbps, so it took me about 45 minutes to download each movie.

While Vudu’s $399 price tag might take some getting used to, its fees for buying or renting each movie could be harder to swallow after a month’s worth of use: as much as $80 if you bought one top-tier movie a week. Worse, you have to pay in advance. Rather than charging your credit card on a pay-as-you-go basis, Vudu customers must choose a $20, $50 or $100 amount at setup from which movie fees are deducted. When your account hits $0, the amount selected at setup is charged and the debit process begins again.

On top of all this, Vudu relies on a peer-to-peer network system for faster downloading. So, essentially, this company is using your bandwidth to help it save money it would have otherwise spent on its own servers and bandwidth.

I set up Vudu in a snap, plugging it into three things: a wall outlet, the back of a high-definition Sony Bravia television and an Ethernet cord. Wireless connections won’t work with Vudu without a special “bridge” or a power-line adapter. Once Vudu turned on, a friendly voice guided me through setting it up, and I got started in minutes.

Vudu’s home screen is broken down into five menus: Find Movies, New Releases, My Movies, My Wish List and Info & Settings. I used the tiny remote, which fits perfectly in a hand, and rolled through menus using its scroll wheel. This wheel can be pressed down to select something, saving me from glancing down at the buttons. Also, Vudu uses an RF (radio frequency) antenna so you don’t have to point the remote at it.

In Find Movies, I looked through 18 genres, including biography, romance, family and historical. A sorting feature can filter movies by release date, MPAA rating, critics’ rating, studio, availability to rent and availability to own. An on-screen alphabet can be used to type in names of actors, directors or movie titles; the scroll wheel speeds up this process.

Parental controls, which are only accessible with a special code, can be set to block a child from buying or renting movies with certain ratings.

Vudu likes to think of itself as the instant-gratification alternative to running to the video store. But not many people I know still go to Blockbuster for a DVD; instead, they use mail-delivery services like Netflix. Compared with the 85,000 titles offered by Netflix, the selection at Vudu is pretty slim. A more similar comparison might be Amazon’s Unbox for TiVo, which has slightly less than 5,000 movies.

Though I couldn’t find numerous titles, I did discover plenty of movies I’d never heard of. A search for last year’s “Casino Royale” returned Robert DeNiro’s “Casino” from 1995, as well as two Asian films, “Casino Tycoon” and “Casino Tycoon II.” Since I never saw Helen Mirren’s “The Queen,” I tried to find her Oscar-winning performance on Vudu. But the closest I came to royalty were “Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy,” an alternative name for the cheesy 1968 Jane Fonda sci-fi flick, and “Prom Queen,” which fell under the Gay and Lesbian category. I tried to laugh this off by watching Steve Carell’s “Evan Almighty.” But typing “E-V-A…” into a title search only returned “Deliver Us From Eva,” an R-rated 2003 comedy starring LL Cool J.

I searched and found the same three titles on Netflix, though Amazon Unbox only had “Evan Almighty.”

I downloaded two romantic comedies: “Music and Lyrics,” starring Hugh Grant, a $4 rental, and a Diane Keaton movie called “Because I Said So,” which I bought for $20. I also rented “Zodiac,” a suspense movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal, for $4. Movies that you own never expire, but rented flicks must be watched within 30 days and expire 24 hours after you start watching.

In the case of each movie, the original estimates for time to download were daunting; two started out by estimating “Available in a few hours” and one movie’s estimate read “Available in a few days.” But all three finished downloading in about 45 to 50 minutes. Only one movie can download at a time.

While watching movies, the remote’s scroll wheel can be used to fast forward or rewind scenes. Scrolling faster moves you farther ahead or back (the fastest jump moves you 30 minutes); the slowest scroll moves you ahead or back five seconds.

Vudu might cast a spell on users who don’t mind its poor selection and high-bandwidth requirement to deliver instant downloads. But for me, the convenience of Vudu is no convenience at all. As is, its lackluster selection, high prices and slow downloads make it more of a letdown than anything else.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Today, parents can use sleek, light video cameras that capture and record high-definition footage directly onto tiny memory cards, which hold much more than an old VHS tape. Yet many people hesitate to buy new camcorders, scared off by steep prices and intimidating technology.

This week, I tested a simple video camera that fits into the palm of your hand and lets you record footage almost as easily as you share or save it: the Flip Video Ultra from Pure Digital Technologies Inc. (www.theflip.com). This rectangular-shaped video camera comes in two models that capture 30 or 60 minutes each and cost $150 and $180, respectively. Both models are available starting today from stores like Amazon.com and Best Buy.

The Flip Video Ultra’s front has a camera lens and microphone; the back, a 1.5-inch viewing screen, four directional arrows, delete and play buttons. A USB plug pops out from its side so you can connect it directly to a computer’s USB port without cables.

Special software that opens when the camera attaches to a computer walks users through sharing or saving clips in a few straightforward steps. And if that’s still too complicated, the device can be dropped off at affiliated stores (like CVS) where footage is extracted and turned into a DVD.

This tiny video camera made it a pleasure to record startlingly good footage for a camera of its size both indoors and outside. It’s designed to be held comfortably in front of you, which didn’t make me feel removed from the event I was recording like many other video cameras. Not without flaws, the Flip’s 2x digital zoom isn’t ideal for shooting from afar, and on more than one occasion its software froze up on Windows PCs and Apple Macs. But once I got going, I started shooting videos in a new way, unobtrusively using it and then fitting the Flip into small purses. Saving and emailing footage was a breeze after a few initial hiccups.

Flip Video Ultra from Pure Digital Technologies

This gadget, however, is not only non-HD, its footage isn’t as high resolution as that of a standard camcorder. Its quality is great for email and Web posting, but won’t fill up a big TV or satisfy serious amateurs. This is the Flip’s tradeoff for size, price and simplicity.

The Flip Video Ultra is an improvement on the Flip Video, which Pure Digital introduced in May. Though it costs $30 more, the newer version features higher-quality sound and video (footage is half as compressed as that on the old Flip), a transflective screen with a better resolution and improved video-processing technology. The new Flip also integrates direct uploads to YouTube in its software program.

I took the new Flip along with me on a business trip to California and carried it around Washington, D.C., shooting in different environments: inside a dark auditorium at a press event; outside at dusk overlooking the San Francisco skyline from a rooftop barbeque; in my house at nighttime; and during a visit to Google headquarters with my boss, Walt Mossberg. The Flip worked well in each situation.

This video camera measures roughly four inches high by two inches wide and an inch deep, and the 60-minute version comes in black, white, pink and orange; 30-minute models only come in black and white. Though the Flip Video Ultra doesn’t have a flash, it’s designed to perform well under circumstances with low light because Pure Digital assumes most users will be recording indoors. It captures in 640×480 resolution at 30 frames per second.

I used the 60-minute Flip. In capture mode, an on-screen message tells how many minutes remain on the camera. In playback mode, captured clips are labeled with duration and numerical order, such as “Video 21 of 24.” Hitting the Delete button twice while a clip is on screen erases it.

In a couple instances when I wanted to shoot something farther away, I was a little dismayed by the video camera’s weak zoom. But in most situations I was recording things that were nearby, so this issue wasn’t a big deal. Parents who are heading to dance recitals with this Flip will need seats in the front.

The exciting part of capturing video is sharing it with others, and Pure Digital’s built-in software does a superb job of this. I plugged my Flip into four computers running Microsoft’s Windows XP and Vista and Apple’s Mac OS X operating systems and opened the camera’s software to see thumbnail images of my clips. Each clip can be played or selected for saving or sharing. Only on Windows XP did the software automatically open when I attached the camera; opening it on the other platforms required extra steps.

The Save Videos option asked me to choose whether I wanted to save clips to my computer or if I wanted to save them in a smaller format for emailing to someone else. Saving these videos took a little time, but nothing that was too much of a hassle.

Sharing videos took a little longer. Three choices within the Share Videos menu offered to walk me through the steps for sharing videos via emails with links, in an electronic greeting card with embedded video or online using YouTube or other Web sites.

The first time I plugged the Flip into each computer I went through a few extra set-up steps to get the software started. I encountered a few instances during which sending videos to friends via email took a little longer than I expected. Once, on my iMac, it took more than 30 minutes to send a video that was two minutes and 36 seconds. But this was the exception; most of my videos that were roughly that long or shorter took only about five to 10 minutes to be sent.

Editing footage in Pure Digital’s software works for average users who might do some simple editing, like shorten a video or cut out a certain part. Easy-to-use slide bars adjust start and end times for videos, and edited versions of clips can be saved in addition to the originals. The company says that if clips are converted to standard Windows or Mac formats they should be editable in any standard video- editing software.

Muvee software is also built into Pure Digital’s software to let Windows users choose a bunch of clips, select music and a theme for the movie and watch as an automatically organized montage of clips plays.

Pure Digital plans to continuously issue software updates; the next is coming at the end of the month. But as is, this tiny video camera delivers a remarkably good picture on a device that anyone can use. With this product, Pure Digital Technologies again shows the value of simplicity, this time with the bonus of better technology.

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

This week I tested Jaman.com, a Web site that gives users the chance to download independent and international movies from the Web directly to their computers. It also serves as a social networking forum where movie watchers can read one another’s reviews, write their own comments that run alongside the film, and join groups with people who have similar tastes in movies. Jaman (pronounced jah-mahn), has 1,800 titles. It charges $1.99 for rentals, which can be watched for up to seven days, and $4.99 to buy a movie outright.

Jaman.com’s home page (above) suggests movies for downloading, such as ‘Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories,’ and comments can be seen in a side panel while the film is being watched (below).

Jaman isn’t alone in the online movie downloading business, and its competitors boast bigger selections. Just this year Netflix Inc., known for popularizing DVD rentals through the mail, started offering its own movie downloads. So as to encourage this new method, Netflix builds movie-watching hours into its monthly plans, which range from $5 to $24 and include a certain number of hours during which downloaded movies can be watched. Of the 85,000 DVD titles available on Netflix.com, 4,000 titles can be downloaded.

Blockbuster Inc., which followed Netflix into the DVD mailing business, showed an interest in the online downloading method last month when it acquired Movielink LLC, a movie downloading service previously owned by Hollywood’s major studios.

And Apple Inc., which began selling films for $10 to $15 a year ago on its iTunes Store, offers over 500 movies. Amazon is in the game, too, as is Microsoft.

But Jaman hopes its niche films and viewer-comments system will set it apart.

I took a close look at Jaman, downloading movies from various countries, posting comments about them on the Jaman.com site and reading what others thought of the films. I used a Mac and two Windows computers running Microsoft’s Vista and XP operating systems, and tried Jaman on all three major Web browsers. The site itself can feel a bit overwhelming, jumbling a lot of text together on pages that lack a clean central place where every element comes together. More than once, films blacked out in midplay, and Jaman’s community aspect didn’t seem as well-organized or integrated as I had hoped.

Jaman has another major downside: It forces every user to designate some of his or her bandwidth to distribute movies for the company, using a peer-to-peer program. Community network setups like this aren’t unheard of; Skype and many others use such setups. But these other companies are often free, while Jaman is charging users for movies while simultaneously using their bandwidth to reduce strain on its own servers. Participation in the peer-to-peer network is required while downloading a movie but can be stopped at all other times. Even so, this is a real chink in Jaman’s armor.

Jaman.com drops users into a site where five movies are showcased, showing their trailers one after another. Other titles can be searched according to region, categories and genres, top movies or films made and submitted by users. I skimmed through flicks from Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, North America, Europe and Latin America. A useful feature displayed details about a movie when I held my cursor over its title including a description, the movie’s Jaman rating (out of five stars), duration and genre. Jaman doesn’t sort movies by duration, which would have saved me time while I was looking for a short film to download for a cross-country flight.

I was surprised to notice that none of the movies prominently displayed Motion Picture Association of America ratings. Jaman explained that these data are buried within a sub-menu of details about a movie, but many films didn’t list ratings — even those with MPAA ratings.

Three rentals come included with each Jaman membership, which was free and quickly obtained in my experience, though a friend of mine had trouble when he didn’t receive Jaman’s email verification with two different addresses. I downloaded and watched movies from Mexico, the United Kingdom and North America, and watched a 21-minute Japanese short film that streamed directly from the site and didn’t require downloading. Community comments and reviews helped me pick movies, especially Jaman’s own one-line summary that it calls “Our Take.”

To download and watch movies from Jaman, users must first download the Jaman player. But this player doesn’t work with the Web site as smoothly as it should. For example, after reading various reviews of movies, I found a comedy from the U.K. called “Nobody The Great,” and opted to rent it. I downloaded the Jaman player but it didn’t recognize that I already signed in and chose the movie to rent on the Web site. I started over by signing in, finding the film and choosing the rental option, this time using the player.

“Nobody The Great” turned out to be an amusing story about two English guys who find supposed terrorists in their home but are more concerned about not ruining an evening planned with two women. The film is only 47 minutes long and 753 megabytes, but it took about two hours to download using a broadband connection. The most maddening thing about downloading the movie using Jaman was that the estimated time until completion kept changing dramatically — one moment it read 224 minutes, the next 69 minutes, then 22, 40 and 17. Other downloads followed this same wacky pattern, some worse than others.

After watching a movie, I was prompted by Jaman to rate the movie or to write a review about it. Jaman uses email messages with links to join discussions with others who saw the same movie. These discussions groups are more like blogs, with each person’s comment listed as a different post. Some of the movies that I watched hadn’t been reviewed in a while, so I wasn’t as inspired to add my comments as I might have been if there was a live discussion taking place.

This staleness was experienced again in one of my favorite Jaman features: comments that run on-screen during a film if you’re online. These can be hidden so as not to distract the viewer, but I found some of the comments really interesting. For example, while watching a subtitled Mexican movie from 1995 called “El Callejon De Los Milagros” starring Salma Hayek, comments appeared roughly every 10 minutes from a user named Cinequest. I later learned that Cinequest represented the Northern California motion picture institute of the same name and that the comments left weren’t live but were stuck to the movie so that anyone watching it could see them. I was free to leave my own comments, but I didn’t have quite as much to say about camera angles as Cinequest. The film director’s comments can also be seen here.

Jaman says that its road map includes plans for live comments, which would encourage more interaction with others as if watching a movie with friends.

Though I didn’t spend a majority of my time there, Jaman’s Community section seemed a little weak. Groups like “Bollywood 101″ and “Cult Movies” had members and comments left by these members, but still seemed somewhat disconnected from films. For example, preview clips of certain movies were posted to share with the group, but most of the comments made by the group weren’t related to the clips.

Jaman introduced me to new films that I wouldn’t otherwise have found. But its peer-to-peer system and its overall lack of real-time comments were frustrating. I’d also like to see Jaman reorganize the look of its site so it doesn’t feel so cluttered.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Blogs have a place in many of our everyday lives, even if we aren’t bloggers ourselves. The word blog, short for Web log, is used to describe personal Web sites that are frequently updated with entries for sharing with others. They can range from your son’s personal blog about baseball statistics to a well-read and more polished political blog that gets tens of thousands of hits each day.

A big problem with blogs is privacy. While some people — especially MySpace fans — don’t mind posting personal news, photos and videos for anyone to read, many of us hesitate to leave details about our personal lives online.

This week, we tested a new, free blogging service called Vox, www.vox.com, from Six Apart Ltd., a blogging software company. One of Vox’s best attributes is its ability to label each individual post, or entry, with a different privacy filter, so that instead of setting your blog to be entirely private or entirely public, you can pick and choose what you want to share.

Vox also excels at making it easy to add photos, audio, videos and book links to your blog without any prior expertise. It lets you incorporate content from Web sites like YouTube, Amazon and photo-sharing site Flickr in only a couple of steps. Viewing of each multimedia element can also be restricted to people you choose. Vox is supported by ads that aren’t intrusive or distracting.

We each made a blog in Vox, and updated them several times. We found the process to be quick and simple, and the results to be attractive. We liked the privacy features. But while its intentions are good, Vox has a few downsides. Its idea of making each blog post visible to different groups is useful. But everyone who views your privacy-protected entries must also be registered with Vox, a quick process, but one that will discourage many potential users.

One example of a Vox blog.

Also puzzling are Vox’s categories for labeling those who view your blog. Everyone must be labeled as friends, family or neighbors, but the filters that determine who can view your posts don’t include neighbors at all.

Vox also doesn’t do a great job of implementing many features that are standard in blog services. These features include interactive elements on a page such as drag-and-drop organizing.

We got started by signing up for Vox — a process that involved entering our email address, creating a password and URL, and entering personal information. A Design section walked us through choosing a layout and theme from numerous choices. Katie chose the Cityscape Washington, D.C., theme, which includes the Capitol and Washington Monument. Walt chose Firefly Night, which includes the moon and stars and a silhouette of a tree.

To prompt you to blog, the Vox homepage always offers a Question of the Day, or QOTD. With one click, you can optionally answer the QOTD in your own blog. When you post your answer, or enter any post, a drop-down menu lets you choose who can view it: The World (Public), Your Friends and Family, Your Friends, Your Family or Just You. If, for example, you choose to allow only your friends to see a post, other groups won’t know that they’re not seeing the friends-only post.

If you see another person’s Vox blog and would like to bookmark it so that his or her latest entries are constantly updated on a special page just for you, you can add that blogger to your neighborhood. Friends and family are automatically part of your neighborhood, but when choosing who can see your content, neighborhood isn’t an option. Vox plans to make the neighborhood concept more understandable in an updated version due out by December.

Each individual post can be made viewable by certain people to provide privacy.

We first posted some simple text entries. Then in the Compose section, we chose from five colorful icons labeled Photos, Audio, Videos, Books and Collections. Selecting each icon let us load content from our computer or from a Web site with that type of content.

In Videos Katie selected a YouTube tab, entered a search word and found a favorite scene from the TV show “Grey’s Anatomy.” She selected a thumbnail image of the scene, hit OK, and the scene loaded onto her blog moments later. No formatting or HTML code is necessary, a requirement that used to plague many blogging services.

As we became comfortable using Vox and its privacy options, we started posting lots of things: vacation photos, a country music audio file to play along with a post about two-stepping and even Amazon links to our favorite books. And unless your post or profile is public, nothing can be retrieved using the Vox search feature.

We found a few hiccups, but mostly forgot about the geeky side of blogging and enjoyed sharing our digital media. And the idea that no one else would randomly browse across our content was a comfort. But that poses another problem: Not everyone will want to register with Vox just to see your protected content. Vox hopes to offer a way to register others so that your grandmother will be able to see your family photos online just by entering a username and password.

Back on the home page of Vox, a section called VoxWatch let us quickly see any recent activity from our neighbors or ourselves. Recently posted digital photos, recent comments and recent posts from everyone in our neighborhood were grouped here.

A helpful Organize section divvies all of your content up into its proper section: Photos, Books, Audio, Videos, Posts and Comments. This section let us quickly find a comment that we wanted to reread but didn’t feel like finding on our blog, and it helped us get a better idea of everything that existed on our blog — a boon as you add more and more content. This section also displays the names of those in your Neighborhood, as well as Friends and Family.

Vox does a nice job of jazzing up the world of blogging. Its designs are attractive, but it really shines when loading media onto your posts, making your blog richer in content and more sophisticated in looks. Updates will continue to be released, improving Vox’s weaknesses, the most important of which is clarifying its group labels. Vox also plans to offer to import your content from other blogging sites, encouraging experienced users to bring their last blog along with them instead of leaving it with the old service.

Email: MossbergSolution@wsj.com