As AllThingsD.com gets its holiday hat on, the reporting team brought a little news cheer our way this week in the form of some acquisitions, freaky gadgets and reassurances that Google was not born with a heart two sizes too small.

Boom Town went Bing early in the week at the Microsoft (MSFT) event that showcased a rollout of features. New tools included an update to its mapping interface and some third-party “mash-ins.” Kara did ringside commentary for the title bout between Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt and all the so-called whiny news folk. Her translations paint a slightly less cuddly picture of the search boss’s undertones, but we’ll let you decide for yourself. Just when things were getting a little dicey, Kara lightened the mood with a post about her appearance with Walt Mossberg at GadgetFest. Kara finally got a little “me” time, getting her face exfoliated by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg live on stage. Gadget freak Greg Harper was there to showcase some of his picks, and Kara rounded it all out by getting up-close and personal with the most adorably frightening bear-toy-bot ever.

While Walt did make time to venture west to share his gadget gravitas, he was hard at work this week with the expected combo of tasty tech tips. Walt took a trip to the cloud to see if ZumoDrive could really make it rain. The smallish cloud storage company aims to solve the problem of sharing data across multiple devices by allowing you to keep a “drive” in the cloud that can be virtually mounted on any capable device. He was complimentary about the execution of the storage and was able to access his files across a broad array of devices. The caveat, for now, seems to be the price and a little glitchiness when handling certain kinds of files. Over at Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt addressed some queries about getting rid of that pesky spam that even shows up on the iPhone. He also provided some sage advice for a laptop seeker with $500 to spend, and helped guide a fan through the super-smartphone jungle to a GPS-enabled device. Katie’s gadget of the week over at The Mossberg Solution was the FlipShare TV, a set-top box from the makers of the popular ultraportable camera line. The video-wrangling box taps into a “channel” of your own videos you create using the bundled FlipShare software. Once your videos are up on your personal channel, the set-top box can tap into and play them right on your TV by grabbing them wirelessly from your computer. The gadget got an A for effort in getting computer content to the living room, but didn’t do as well in the intuitiveness and ease-of-use departments.

Over at Digital Daily, John brought news of what may come to be known at the “great perv purge of aught nine.” Some 4,500 registered sex offenders in the state of New York had their social networking privileges revoked. Weekend Update supposes the law is in place to keep the popular and harmless “Facebook stalking” pastime of perusing your friends’ photos from turning into the less desirable “actual stalking.” Next up, we had to shout egad, gadzooks and holy-48 cores, Batman! John covered the unveiling of a next-generation superchip that boasts 10 to 20 times the computing power of Intel’s current Core CPUs. Finally, John always does a great job of sniffing out a story before it gets huge, and Motorola’s investment into a high-tech multitouch platform may trigger the next big smartphone battle. The haptic touch technology, which enables virtually any material to become touch sensitive, may pave the way for a new generation of devices.

Down the hall at MediaMemo, Peter reported on what might be the shiniest news of the week. Time Inc. (TWX) released a concept video of Sports Illustrated as it may appear on a large multitouch device. The result is a mag-as-multimedia showcase that might exist as soon as a suitable device is released to the public. In an effort to reduce some of the cash that has been weighing down its bank accounts, Google picked up AppJet, the makers of Web-based collaboration software EtherPad. Peter rounded out the week with a purchase of Apple’s (AAPL) very own: The iTunes maker purchased online music service Lala, reportedly at a steep discount.

With the holidays looming and lots of frenetic travel ahead, you can always rely on this site for a little direction in any particular (technological) storm. We cant help it, we’re just givers.

This week, I tested the device that hopes to do that: FlipShare TV (www.theflip.com). This is a $150 box that’s available as of Wednesday at Amazon.com (AMZN). It plugs into any TV and receives videos that are wirelessly shared. These videos can come directly from the hard drive of a nearby Windows PC or Mac, or via “channels” that you create so you or anyone else can post and share videos via the Internet by simply entering an email address.

The $150 FlipShare TV consists of a box (top), remote and USB key.

FlipShare TV would be a useful gift for friends or family members who don’t want to bother with logging onto a site to watch shared videos or photos. It takes just minutes to set up, thanks to straightforward plug-and-play software, which originally made the Flip video cameras so popular.

I tried FlipShare TV using Windows PCs and Macs, on an analog TV (using the included red, white and yellow audio-video cable to connect the box to the TV) and on a high-definition TV (using an HDMI cable, which is sold separately, usually for between $10 and $20). Included with FlipShare TV are a simple white remote control and a USB key that plugs into the computer to communicate with the box.

My FlipShare TV box occasionally dropped the signal of a computer that was just 10 feet away, forcing me to unplug and re-plug its power cord to get it to work. Cisco said this was a problem in the pre-production unit that I tested and that this issue was fixed in final-production boxes. The company recommends that the FlipShare TV box be within 200 feet of the computer with the plugged-in USB key. When it worked, I enjoyed watching videos, like those from a friend’s Thanksgiving charades tournament, on the big screen with such little effort.

A few obstacles stand between you and the nostalgia of once again watching home videos from the couch. For starters, only videos that are captured with a Flip video camera (the least expensive model costs $150) definitely can be shared via the FlipShare TV box. (A techie workaround may be used to convert some other videos into a different format for viewing, but the company isn’t advertising this.)

Another problem is that to receive new videos on the FlipShare TV box, your corresponding computer must be on, its USB key must be plugged into it, and the FlipShare software must be running.

But the most irritating issue with the FlipShare TV is that this box lacks an indicator to notify users when new videos are available for viewing. Instead, people must rely on text messages, emails, or Facebook notifications to know when someone has shared a new video. There is nothing wrong with these kinds of notifications—at least not for frequent users of email, Facebook and text messaging. But I imagine my grandparents or my parents using FlipShare TV, and none of them would want to be told about new videos via text message or Facebook. My parents would likely be checking email on a different floor of our house, not near the main TV where this box would sit.

Assuming all systems are go, you need only to hit the “Input” button on your regular TV remote to switch over to FlipShare TV. The box creates its own point-to-point wireless network linking it to the USB key on the computer, so it doesn’t depend on the quality of your home Wi-Fi network, or even require that you have one.

FlipShare software, which installs on a Mac or Windows PC as soon as the USB key is plugged in, is easy to learn if you’ve never used it. If you own a Flip video camera, this software was automatically installed when you first plugged the camera into a computer, offering to save the camera’s videos. It even auto-sorts video clips in folders like “September 2009″ according to when they were captured.

A category called Flip Channels creates a private place online where you can drag and drop any video for instant sharing with selected people, who receive notifications that a video is available for viewing on the channel. Those people can revisit the channel online whenever they want, unlike the traditional method of sharing videos via email, which requires digging up the original email to locate a video link again. And if the original “sharer” allows it, you can “re-share” a video via the Flip Channels with other people. Flip Channels also serve as a Web-based storage place for your videos, so you don’t have to worry about your hard drive crashing and losing all of the Flip videos you’ve off-loaded onto a computer.

A menu button on the FlipShare TV box remote displays a simple list on the TV screen with the option to view favorites (like a special video you saved), videos stored on the computer or videos shared via channels.

As soon as a new video is posted to a channel you have acces to, it appears on the TV menu in a section labeled “New Items.” Two friends shared several videos with me and thumbnail images representing each clip appeared instantly in New Items on my TV screen. After I watched a new video, it no longer appeared in that section but instead was placed into a section with the channel name given by the person who shared it. Along with videos, I also imported some JPEG photos to my personal channel.

After 10 minutes of sitting idle, the screen of the TV connected to your FlipShare TV box will fill with still images representing each video, like an ever-changing collage.

So as it is now, this box helps people circumvent the computer and go straight to the living room—but only as long as they are aware that someone shared a new video with them; their computer is on with its USB key plugged in; and the FlipShare software is running on a computer within range. Cisco says it will introduce a version of the FlipShare TV next year with an indicator so people will know exactly when someone has shared a video with them.

FlipShare TV makes a lot of sense as a simple way to watch videos and look at photos in the living room. But it needs to be more intuitive for all users before family and friends can really sit back and enjoy the show.

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

To keep the prices of its Flip camcorders affordable, Pure Digital always made some sacrifices in quality and style. And though the company improved on style in June by releasing the sleek $180 Flip Mino, it stuck with standard definition while other companies boasted high-definition capturing capabilities.

The $230 Flip MinoHD is the first camcorder from Pure Digital Technologies to use high definition.

Today, Pure Digital adds a high-def member to its family: the $230 Flip MinoHD. This handheld camcorder looks like the original Mino (more digital camera than video camera), but the MinoHD is capable of capturing high-definition footage in 1280×720 pixel resolution, or 720p. (The regular Mino records at 640×480 pixels.)

Both cameras can be personalized with colorful designs that people can either make themselves or select from TheFlip.com. It’s also possible to upload personal photos to decorate the camcorder. This personalization process is free on new Minos, but people who want to personalize Minos they already own are out of luck.

I brought my MinoHD along on a weekend trip to a lake in North Carolina and used it to capture beautiful images of leaves at their color-changing peak and games of charades among friends. Overall, I really liked the quality of the footage, which had rich hues and sharp details such as glistening ripples of waves on the lake’s surface. And the MinoHD’s improved sound even clearly picked up the voices of two guys paddling away from our dock in a canoe.