Video editing accessories company Bella Corporation recently announced the Catapult, "the world's first device to allow capture of video footage from DV or HDV video cameras directly to iPods or virtually any USB drive, and begin editing immediately." As you can see from the photo, the Catapult is not too much bigger than an iPod (it's supposed to be around the size of a Blackberry). It's powered by rechargeable battery or an AC adapter, works with Macs and Windows, and takes FireWire connections from camcorders and digitizes the footage, storing it on your iPod or any other USB 2.0 drive, effectively turning them into DTE (direct-to-edit drives). It should be coming out in the second half of 2006 and priced under $300.

Catapult [Bella Corporation, via Digital Camcorder News]