If you are looking for a great simple free tool, that allows you to record your own video and publish it online, your search is over: Hellodeo allows you to record straight from your webcam, camcorder or from any other video signal you have incoming into your personal computer and it makes it then very easy for you to publish your video on your web site.

Photo credit: Robin Good introduces Hellodeo

Hellodeo requires no software installation, is completely web-based, it utilizes the Flash plugin and it is completely free to use.

The fact that it also makes it so easy and straightforward to publish the recorded video clips on any blog post or web site makes it a truly innovative and useful new tool with unlimited application potential.

But how does it work?

To run it, you don't even need to register or sign up. Just go to Hellodeo.com and simply click on the television monitor icon that reads "Click here to begin!". Once you do that, a Flash plugin dialog box will prompt you for allowing your video and audio channels to be used by the Flash plugin installed in your browser. If you click "allow", you should start seeing your video input being shown live inside the television monitor icon you first clicked on.

To start recording, you simply click the "record" button, and from there on, you are "on air", recording everything you showcase and say.

Once completed your message you click the "stop" button, which automatically replaces the "record" one once you are "taping". The newly recorded video clip becomes immediately playable, as a red play button is displayed on top of it, in a fashion similar to YouTube video clips.

Not only.

Hellodeo, allows you to submit your recorded video clip to the public directory of clips that showcases what everyone else has been recording, right on the front page of Hellodeo.com, while providing you instantly with a snippet of HTML code that can be easily placed within the code of your next blog post.

Hellodeo requires no specific operating system, browser or configuration. It just works. Obviously you need to be on a good high-speed Internet connection or you may not enough bandwidth to have the Hellodeo servers record in real-time your performance.

Troubleshooting:

a) Make sure you have the latest Flash plugin properly installed. If unsure about how to do this, or if you have the Flash plugin but things don't work, do this:

1. Download a flash uninstaller from the following URL: http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_14157

2. Uninstall Flash.

3. Reinstall Flash 8 from http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer

b) If you want to record a second video clip and the record button is not clickable anymore, simply refresh the Hellodeo web page by pressing F5 on a PC or using the refresh/reload button of your browser. Once you have done so the "record" button will become active again, right after you will have clicked on the "Click here to begin" television monitor.

c) If your audio or video don't work, right-click (Ctrl-click on Macs) on the television icon and select "Settings". Now click sequentially on the microphone and webcam icons and make sure that the corresponding drop-down indicating what device is active, showcases your appropriate microphone or webcam device.

That's all there is to it.

While Hellodeo is NOT the first Flash-based one click recorder I have tried, it is the first one that works fully across platforms, that it is free and that gives you immediately a piece of code that you use to republish your video clip on your site.

Odeo, the company behind Hellodeo, has also just released a very interesting new tool called TWTTR which is nothing short of being one of the first swarming tools I have been anticipating as coming a short while ago.

Go give it a try!