Hi, you may know me (right) as the blog guy, but I also run the Jing Help Center with my German buddy Anton (left). We work together to create the topics, then he does the videos and I provide the written parts.

Embed code topics are the bane of our existence.

What the heck is embed code? Does it apply to me? How would I use it? How do I change it?

Check it out: We've updated our embed-related content. Most importantly, Screencast.com Embed Code (It also includes a new printable PDF option).

We *think* this is a big improvement. But how do we really know? One way to find out is if you tell us! Check out a topic or two then leave us some comments on this post. Don't hold back. We have thick skin and I doubt it can be worse than the back and forth Anton and I have. All we care about is helping people be successful with Jing.

So, put us to the test. After visiting the Screencast.com Embed Code topic, do you:

• Understand what embed code does?
• Know whether or not this feature is something that would be useful to you?
• Think you could create a new button that returns embed code?

Thanks for your feedback!

If you were the Jing Product Manager for a day, what would you do? What would change? What features would you add? And, why?

We love hearing your feedback here at TechSmith! And, we need it so we can continue to make products you can use. Jing is better because of the feedback you provide. Please comment away and feel free to use screencaptures and screencasts to help illustrate your feedback!

We decided to jump on the Twitter bandwagon so we can provide our beloved users with tips & tricks, information and other neat stuff about Jing and Jing Pro.

So come check us out, our Twitter name is 'JingTips'. You can also click on the graphic on the left to get to our site.

It's an easy way to stay up to date on the latest Jing happenings and to learn cool stuff about Jing. Oh, and did I mention the occasional give-aways?

We're looking forward to having you follow us.

PS: There are CamtasiaTips and SnagitTips as well. ]]> We decided to jump on the Twitter bandwagon so we can provide our beloved users with tips & tricks, information and other neat stuff about Jing and Jing Pro. So come check us out, our Twitter name is 'JingTips'....http://blog.jingproject.com/2009/07/hooray-jingtips-are-on-twitter.htmlhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JingBlog/~3/dar9Duxt90E/techsmith-launches-new-blog-an.htmlDave McCollomThu, 25 Jun 2009 12:27:04 PDTtag:blog.jingproject.com,2009://6.2832Hi Everyone - I'm Dave McCollom, the Education Evangelist here at TechSmith. Long time lurker here, first time poster. We just launched a brand new blog and have added a new page of great resources for educators that are using all TechSmith products (including Jing of course). We already have some Jing content up and will be adding more in the near future. I encourage you to take a look around and let us know what you think.

Education Community Site

Screencast Tour of Community Site (also embedded in the first post on the Education Blog)

Education Blog

If you want to check out the new content where Jing is specifically featured:

Introduction to Screen Capture in Education

Students Demonstrate Understanding via Video

Provide Thorough and Personalized Feedback to Students

Capture Instructional Content for Additional Student Practice

Thanks for taking a second to check things out. If any of you educators out there have any Jing content and/or stories that you'd like to share please let me know! This blog is meant to be about you! ]]>Hi Everyone - I'm Dave McCollom, the Education Evangelist here at TechSmith. Long time lurker here, first time poster. We just launched a brand new blog and have added a new page of great resources for educators that are using...http://blog.jingproject.com/2009/06/techsmith-launches-new-blog-an.htmlhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JingBlog/~3/pu8T5Wd3SNc/embedding-jing-videos-on-wordp.htmlHow Do I...Wicked Cool UsesblogvideowordpressAnton BollenTue, 23 Jun 2009 11:14:32 PDTtag:blog.jingproject.com,2009://6.2829One of our users, Julia Brewster, was having some issues with embedding Jing Videos on her Wordpress.com blog. Instead of displaying her video, nothing would show up. Quite frustrating, if you ask me.

Fortunately, she went out to the WordPress.com forums, posted her problem, and with some help from the community, she quickly found the solution: The Vodpod Button.

With this button, you can post just about any video to your WordPress.com blog, including your Jing videos hosted on Screencast.com. This works for Jing and Jing Pro, and it's quite easy.

Here is how:

1. Create a Screencast.com Output Button in Jing that returns Embed Code instead of the URL.
2. Add the VodPod Extension to your Browser (should work with most major browsers).
3. Record your video with Jing, and share it using the newly created Screencast.com Embed Code Output Button. This will copy the Embed Code to your Clipboard.
4. Click on the Vodpod Button. This dialog will appear:
   
5. Paste the Embed Code in the Embed Code field.
6. Enter your Wordpress.com Login Information.
7. Enter the Post Details (Title, Body etc.)
8. Publish your post, or choose 'Send to blog editor' to further edit your blog post. Then publish it.
9. Your Video will now be embedded on your blog and people can easily watch it.

For those of you who'd like to see the Vodpod button in action, watch this video:

So as you can see, adding Jing videos to your blog can be quite easy. I hope to see more and more embedded Jing videos on Wordpress.com blogs.
Do you have a good example? We'd love to see it - share it in the comment section!

Well Mark and Fatih did some detective work and fixed it. It had to do with a goofy way XP was inserting a space in some path during the install. One little space...

We're not going to force an update, but if you want to grab the latest Jing, re-download and install it from: http://www.jingproject.com. The only thing different in this Jing from yours is that Jing will now respect our dear Windows XP users and start up upon launch like you told it too.

Happy Jinging!

I also made a convenient PDF (less than 2 pages) with all the steps too.

Overview:

1. You need Jing Pro, and a YouTube account.
2. Create a YouTube button in Jing.
3. Record a video in 16:9 aspect ratio (Hold Shift while selecting area) at 1280 x 720 dimensions.
4. Upload to YouTube, and wait while your video is processed!

Tech Support has been receiving a number of calls from people experiencing Jing crashes on start up. We have confirmed and can reproduce the error and want to share what we know at this time.

This seems to be a Tiger-only issue at this time. We know this is affecting Mac OS 10.4.11. It may affect more versions of Tiger.

Users are having some success with Jing if they disconnect from the Internet, then restart Jing.

Fixing this issue is our top priority and we are currently investigating leads. We will update this post with new information as we get it.

The core internal debate was whether we should show all available dimensions at once or just the next closest dimension. 97 people told us something, but by the time we had to lock down the decision, it was slightly in favor of Prototype A--show one region at a time.

However a number of people asked for both.

Ok, fair enough. :) So here's how it panned out. On the Mac, we got it in. You can display one dimension (default) or ALSO hold the alt/option key if you want to see all available dimensions. Windows doesn't have this ability yet, but we'll get it in there. (Tempting to blame the intern, but that wouldn't be fair or true.) For now, think of this little option on the Mac as something of an Easter egg.

Now, on to working on the next Jing release! If we start another food fight in the lunch room debating the "right way" to do something we'll be sure to ask for your feedback again!

And, we're off! The Jing Speed Series has started! Can we pull off 6 Jing Screencasts in 60 minutes? We will find out!

Up first, we have David Moulton, Senior Web Designer, shows me how to turn an unused button on your mouse and making it a hotkey for Jing. Makes captures fast! You can see the Jingcast here. By the way, he made our cool Jing Speed Series graphic you see in this post.

Jing Lead Developer, Bill Scanlon and Katie Lewis, the Product Marketing Manager, will be going over what's new in Jing. You can see the Jingcast here

Katie and Mike Curtis, Information Developer, go over an easter egg in the latest version of Jing on the Mac giving you the ability to display all of your easy region selection options. You can see the Jingcast here

Training Manager, Matt Pierce, and Tech Support Engineer, Casey Phear, go over how to move the Jing sun and using it with a hot key. You can see the Jingcast here.

Matt Pierce and Instructional Designer, Chris McQueen, go over how to use Jing with Snagit and Camtasia Studio. You can see the Jingcast about using Jing with Snagit here and the Jingcast about using Jing with Camtasia Studio here.

And, lastly, Mike Curtis, Information Developer, and Katie go over demystifying embed code and the value of the new Screencast.com folders. You can see the Jingcast here.

If you'd like to tune in live, you can watch here on Ustream.tv here

Note: Well, we actually made 6 screencasts in 60 minutes with Jing, but found out we had audio issues (as in no audio) on 2 of our videos. So, we had to re-record them! Always something! :-) Thanks for tuning in!

If you've plunked down the pocket change for Jing Pro, get ready to witness a whole new way to communicate visually--by taking advantage of our new webcam integration! Now you can provide a quick "in person" intro to your videos, send "video postcards" to your kids away at school, or even show off your latest big purchase to your friends by recording with your webcam.

Don't worry if you haven't scrounged up the $15 bucks for Jing Pro, all Jing users are getting some cool enhancements today, like:

Easy Region Selection

By holding down the Ctrl or Shift while selecting your area to record, your selector will maintain standard aspect ratios of 4:3 or 16:9 for widescreen. The easy region selection lets you choose any dimension you want while locked to the set aspect ratio. OR if you want, you can snap to a standard present dimension such as 320x240 or 640x480, etc.

Output to Snagit and Camtasia Studio

For more advanced editing and production options, Windows users can now take your Jing screen capture and recordings straight to our more advanced TechSmith tools, "Snagit":http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.asp and "Camtasia Studio":http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp. No worries if you don't own a license. You can try them both free for 30 days.

Want to hear back feedback on your Jings or start a dialogue about your capture? When you share your stuff through Screencast.com, you can now enable commenting on that content from within Jing!

Share to Different Screencast.com Folders

You can now choose to share your stuff to any folder you have set up within Screencast.com. Just create a new button for each different folder (Jing allows up to 8 unique buttons). That way if you want to keep your work and personal Jing stuff separate, then go ahead and share to different folders!

So you're probably thinking, so what is it going to cost me to upgrade? Nothing! The webcam feature is free to all of our Pro users. If you're not Pro and want webcam support, you can always "purchase Pro":http://store.techsmith.com/countryselect.asp?target=/order/jing.asp&sid=877940445&productid=jing&c= for $14.95/year. The rest of the features are included in both Free and Jing Pro updates. With these updates now public, you will be notified to update your version of Jing on your next restart of Jing or within the next 24 hours.

We hope you enjoy the new fun things in Jing. These are directly the result of "your feedback":http://jingproject.com/support-choose.asp so keep the comments coming our way. You can check out Jing and Jing Pro at www.jingproject.com.

Cheers,

Tony Dunckel
Product Manager, Jing

]]>

"I feel the need... the need for speed!" Ah, one of my favorite quotes from the movie, Top Gun. Remember that scene?

Last weekend was the Indianapolis 500. I was watching the news and found out that those cars hit speeds of 220 mph or more!? That got me thinking about speed... which led me to thinking about Top Gun and then got me thinking about one of my favorite topics, screencapture and screencasting (yes, that's how my brain works)! ;-) It occurred to me that Jing is like the racecar of screencaptures and screencasting! It's all about speed, baby!

And, I've been thinking lately about how much fun it was to do the Camtasia Studio 24 videos in 24 hours. And, wondering if we should pull another all nighter to make 24 videos for Jing? But, since a big benefit of Jing is how quickly you can create and share content, I thought a speed test would be a better idea instead! Besides, I'm not sure if I've caught up on sleep after our last all nighter screencasting. :-)

So, for our speed test, we'll create 6 Jing screencasts in 60 minutes next Tuesday, June 2, 2009 at 3:00 pm EDT (GMT-4)!

A variety of TechSmithies will be joining me on the screencasts from Jing developers, to Graphic Artists, to Trainers and Information Developers to Product Marketing Managers. We'll post the Jingcasts here on The Visual Lounge Blog as well as on the Jing Blog as they are available (hopefully every 10 minutes). If you'd like to tune in live, we'll be streaming from Ustream.TV here. There will be a chat room on Ustream.TV so feel free to ask us questions there. I will also post updates on Twitter (TechSmith and BetsyWeber).

We'll show you some new tips and tricks and reveal some new surprises as well. So, tune in!

Any topics you'd like us to cover?

Entering the contest is easy. Simply register at MindBites and then create and upload an original screencast tutorial. The screencasts must be instructional in nature, at least three minutes long, and focused on tech (e.g. software, development, or gaming). You can find the rules here. Not sure what to teach in your screencast? It doesn't have to be rocket science, and it doesn't have to be something that no one other than yourself knows how to do. Make a screencast about tips to get more out of software or online apps you use every day, or maybe sneaky tricks for online games you play... If you do it on a computer, it's pretty much fair game.

The Grand Prize winner will receive $1000 plus a copy of Camtasia Studio and Snagit. There is also a People's Choice Award winner who will walk away with $500 and a copy of Snagit!

So get out there and Screencast!

If you're still not sold on the idea of making a screencast for the contest (probably because you just have no use for $1000, right?), there's no acceptable excuse for opting not to vote. For every vote cast, $0.10 will be donated to the Youth for Technology Foundation. YTF obviously can't buy too much technology for a dime, so we need everyone to mobilize to make sure they walk away with enough money to really make a difference for some deserving kids in some underserved communities. Voting begins Tuesday June 2nd and will end on June 8th. The Grand Prize and People's Choice Winners will be announced on June 9th.

In the interest of transparency, I have to let you know that TechSmith is a sponsor. Our Chief Evangelist, Betsy Weber will be a judge for the grand prize winner portion of the contest.

Happy Screencasting!

Katie Lewis
Product Marketing Manager

Now, on to the video, but first a couple of tips:

• Don't be alarmed by the face close-up at the start of the video. It lasts less than 10 seconds. If you need to, just look away until you hear the audio change.
• You can watch the video in full screen mode. (You may want to wait to go full screen until the "face scene" passes.)

Right now she's wrapping up at the 360|Flex conference and has some entertaining interviews with interesting people. Check 'em out especially if you like bacon-flavored lollipops. Seriously.

But the main reason I'm writing is to highlight a recent post she made highlighting Heather James' Jing guide she made for colleagues. Heather lives in Ireland and is a fan of Jing and Camtasia Studio. Thanks for going to the effort of making this PDF and sharing Heather!!