One of my biggest pet peeves is when companies run out and buy a pocket HD video camera and post all sorts of videos on the Internet, without thinking about how the poor, distant-sounding audio from the camera's on-board microphone hurts their image. With a small $25 investment, they can get a battery-powered microphone that will vastly improve their viewers' ability to hear their message. Many new pocket HD cameras like the Kodak Zi8 have a microphone jack built-in, and an inexpensive microphone like Audio-Technica's ATR-3350 features great sound, a 20-foot cable and solid construction.