I have recently started using a new desktop screen and video capture program called Jing. Overall I have been impressed with this utility and it shows a promising future as a utility for web publishing, teaching, tech support and other uses involving screen image and video desktop captures.
Just this week I used Jing to capture screen shots of images from my desktop and generated a report for work in a fraction of the time it takes to printscreen images and crop them in preparation for insertion into the highly visual report. This time saving was significant with real value added functionality to my workflow.
Here’s the brief rundown of features and items to keep in mind
Jing was easy to install. Download Jing at JingProject.com. It is compatible for both Windows and Mac. Windows requires .Net 3.0 framework which you can download here.
There has been some reported instability reports with Jing, so definitely be aware of possible issues depending on your machine setup.
In preferences you can set Jing to start-up on boot or launch it as needed.
The launch program is a cutesy icon that rides on one side of the screen either top, bottom, left or right depending on your preference.
Screen captures or desktop video can be saved to your machine to be uploaded to your website, placed in documents or emailed.
The other option for file distribution is to share the image or video by which the file is uploaded to screencast.com and a link is created in your clipboard that you can paste into an email. There is currently an issue with placing the link into Instant Messaging, but the workaround I would use would be to create a short URL at www.urltea.com which will give you an abbreviated version to send via IM or social media/microblogging sites like Pownce or Twitter.
Jing does not feature a resize for images. If you capture an image, you will either want to resize it in a blog editor or other publishing application. A better method is to edit it in an image editor before uploading or embedding in a document. This will make the file much smaller, especially if the size reduction is significant.
The video is created as a .swf file, a flash file with no automated way of embedding into a website. Definitely not an intuitive process, but it can be done fairly easy by using the Embedded Media HTML Generator created by UCSF’s Center for Instructional Technology.
The image size captured for the video is the size it will appear in the browser, so plan your desktop video imaging accordingly. There is a five minute Limit for a single segment of video.
You can choose to turn your microphone off or on. Keep it off if you don’t want to use voice recording for a smaller file and cleaner presentation. The video recorded below was done with a cheap microphone. I will invest in a higher-quality one for better sound if I get serious with this feature.
Two examples of Jing
Screen Capture
Video Tutorial
Jing is not necessarily the cats meow, but so far, it has provided the quick functionality I needed for rapid printscreen with immediate cropping upon capture.
Considering a Series of Tutorials on Thoughtsparks.net
I’ve given thought to developing a series of short tutorial videos for reader consumption for HTML, CSS, and graphics training. Is that something that strikes your interest? Do you like this form of communication? Why or why not?
Ok, all of my dear Mac users, go ahead snicker, gloat and smile. Yeah you’ve had this feature for a gazillion years. Well, stickiesforwindows.com offers a utility that Windows should have built into their OS or at least got it right with Outlook, but alas they didn’t.
The primary issue w/ the Outlook notes is that closing Outlook causes all the notes to disappear from your desktop. If you are a user like me and not pleased w/ the memory hog Outlook can be, you don’t keep it open all the time. Also, notes in Outlook don’t repopulate to the desktop when you open the app. So basically, they are a waste as a stickies concept.
Stickies for Windows on the other hand has some great features:
The stickies stay on the desktop and reappear on reboot.
The stickies are customizable for font, color and transparency.
They work like normal windows so they can float above or below other windows.
For code changes, they work nicely to hold temporary edits, settings or snippets.
Stickies can be saved as .rtf files, stored or emailed. For quick generation of simple docs, this is a quick word processor.
Stickies is the lightest third-party option available with the lowest resource utilization which means more computing power.
It’s simplicity is eloquent with no added bells and whistles to slow it down.
Stickies are developed with Windows XP standards which means it’s done right to work across current windows installs.
So do yourself a favor and check it out, especially if like me your office becomes adrift in reminder notes and loose paper. It does require the .Net 2.0 environment installed.
There are a plethora of search optimization tools available online. While one could do endless analysis and obsess over the Google PageRank for a domain, the real touchstone is folks finding your topic in a search for related information. Search optimization is a learned skill that comes in developing quality content and positioning it with effective URLs, titles, alt tags, keywords and well formed pages that are quick loading.
One simple yet very helpful utility is the SERPs Finder from 4neurons.com. This tool performs one helpful function, it searches one of the three top search engines for your keyword queries.
The results pop-up in a window indicating where that query ranked in the results.
For your strongest queries in the top page or two, the search engine itself does the trick. But if your result is several pages deep, this handy tool indicates where your site ranks for that search. This is the PageRank to be most concerned about as apposed to the general Google PageRank.
A new, super user-friendly website platform has recently premiered at JimDo.com. It’s a new service out of Europe. I played-around with it and setup a site in literally a couple minutes. Check out thoughtsparks.jimdo.com for a peak. While it does not yet have blog functionality incorporated into it, you can do RSS feeds. Great concept for a club, small business or special interest site. It’s pretty slick with very little skills required. Check out this great interview from podtech.net/scobleshow or visit JimDo.com.
This weekend I installed my complimentary copy of Microsoft Office 2007 on my desktop at home. As a developer, Microsoft gave me a full version copy at the Vista Launch. I haven’t really spent much time w/ the new app yet, but my daughter has. Tonight when I walked in the door she shouted, "I love Microsoft!" I don’t share quite the same enthusiasm as her, but it’s been fascinating to watch over her shoulder as she dove into Word and is creating documents with very unique formatting. She intuitively learned some of the latest features with zero training from her dad. I just let her go. I imagine that she, unlike many adults, took Word much farther as she’s less inhibited in the learning curve. She certainly does not have the comparison of the way it used to be syndrom that plagues most adults. Sure the new app will require some re-learning, but I think M$ got it right on this one. I wonder how much product testing Microsoft does with nine year-old children. Probably a good idea.
ust when you aren’t looking, Google ups the anti again for free web services. They just announced that picasa web now gives users 1GB of space. This is some pretty beefy storage space if you, like me, want to off-load your photos from your overloaded HD at home. Very cool and very flexible. I’ve been using the online version of Picasa web today to upload photos for work and it’s a pretty slick app. Unlike flickr that only allows a limited number to be upload in one shot, Google allows for true bulk upload which is very convenient. Select, click, upload and go get a cup of coffee while the bits are transferred upstream.
In one evening I "developed" an intranet system for my household complete with email, calendar, file sharing, chat, customized views of information, widgets and RSS feeds. If you’ve used gmail before, it’s basically the same concept only they are extending it to allow shared info under your own domain. I also have pointed the domain thoughtsparks.net to this blog which gives me an instant homepage for the domain. Yeah, with work and side pro-bono stuff it may be a while before I actually build-out the cool new site for thoughtsparks.net but for now I’m rolling. It’s a no-cost deal but if you want more than 2 GB space and a few other bells and whistles you’ll have to pay $50 a year. Still not bad for all the capabilities in one centralized deal that is quick to configure.
Still, this is a very new feature for Google, so they have some kinks to work out namely:
The configuration for the "intranet" home page is a little clunky. It’s not as smooth as the customizable tweaks in Blogger. I was able to tweak the header a bit to reduce the screen space but what a bummer for folks who don’t want to mess w/ HTML tags.
The website hosting capability they do offer does not yet integrate with Blogger which is kind of a drag. Sure I could use their clunky WYSIWYG tool and probably find a way to integrate an RSS feed but if I’m going to do much development on a new site, I think I’ll use something like WordPress on my hosted account with 1and1.com. (Which by the way I really do like as a host service). You can upload your own HTML files but who wants to mess w/ a static site, major retro move.
Okay, so it’s not perfect, but for small organizations, churches, clubs, groups etc. it provides a lot of functionality for the right price. It would certainly be possible for an organization to host all of their online needs on Google Apps, but you’d have to do some monkeying around w/ feed your blogger feeds back into the site. My recommendation at this point is to host a site with database capability and manage the rest of your services through Google Apps. That is until Google offers integrates Blogger well and/or ads db functionality, which they will do in time, just watch ‘em.
In one evening I "developed" an intranet system for my household complete with email, calendar, file sharing, chat, customized views of information, widgets and RSS feeds. If you’ve used gmail before, it’s basically the same concept only they are extending it to allow shared info under your own domain. I also have pointed the domain thoughtsparks.net to this blog which gives me an instant homepage for the domain. Yeah, with work and side pro-bono stuff it may be a while before I actually build-out the cool new site for thoughtsparks.net but for now I’m rolling. It’s a no-cost deal but if you want more than 2 GB space and a few other bells and whistles you’ll have to pay $50 a year. Still not bad for all the capabilities in one centralized deal that is quick to configure.