YouTube camcorders

Call them minicamcorders, call them straight-to-Web wonders, call them whatever. They don't really have a name. They're cheap, compact, one-trick video ponies, but if all you want to do is quickly shoot and upload your life's most embarrassing, amusing, or engaging moments, that's what these models are designed to do. The software necessary for playback and upload comes loaded on the devices so that you can share your masterpieces from any machine, though they don't all operate so ideally on Macs.

With low-resolution VGA video and some hoop-jumping required to actually edit the files in real video-editing software, though, you may want to consider some alternatives, like a plain, old, budget camcorder or a digital camera with a decent movie-capture mode. And for a few dollars more, you can bump up to the same models with visibly better HD resolution.