Contour's latest wearable camcorder, the Contour+, boasts new features like clearer audio and a Bluetooth viewfinder, but its video quality, while good, keeps it from perfection.

Sony is delaying the launch of its 3D Handycam video camera by roughly a month due to difficulty securing parts following the March 11 earthquake in Japan.

Cisco's recent announcement that it was closing its Flip mini-camcorder business got us thinking. It's pretty clear that today's smartphones, with their excellent HD video cameras, are partly to blame for the Flip's demise. But how many other consumer products and services -- digital or analog -- are being killed off by the big, bad smartphone?

There I was at the San Francisco Giants game the other evening, when my buddy decided to do something a bit silly -- but memorable -- and handed me his little Flip camera. I'm not going to share the YouTube link, but the video is pretty good, considering the lighting was weird and it was a very chaotic environment. There's no way that I would have done nearly as well with my iPhone.

The Contour GPS hands free camcorder crams a 1080p sensor, Bluetooth and GPS radios, removable storage and a rechargeable battery into a small, lightweight package. Designed for outdoorsy types and extreme sports enthusiasts, the video quality is good for a camera this size and while the audio capture is good when stationary, there's a lot of wind noise when moving.

Now that YouTube officially supports 15-minute videos, Andy Warhol's dictum that we'd all be famous for 15 minutes has proven more than a little prescient. Viral video is nothing to scoff at. There's more than just page-view bragging rights at stake--there's real money to be made. (Get popular enough, and YouTube will cut you in on ad revenue.)

Video chat is all the rage these days, thanks to new services such as Google+ Hangouts and Skype/Facebook integrated video chat. Video chatting is a great way to stay in touch with family and friends--seeing loved ones' faces on a computer screen is almost like actually being there.