The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere.

Paraphrased from Tech Support: "Hi, I bought a new USB microphone to use for my screencasts, but my audio still sounds terrible. It's tinny and there's a lot of background noise. The mic sounds great in other apps though."

Ah-ha! Here's what's probably going on. I'd like to explain how Jing works with audio devices (microphones).

The core issue is that if Jing finds a microphone that has worked before, it will keep on using it until you say otherwise. It doesn't automatically pick "the best" microphone or the newest one connected. The following example will make the workflow more clear.

Let's say your computer has multiple audio devices connected. For example, perhaps it has USB mic, and a 3.5mm analog mic that likely came with your computer (or often the built-in mic in the case of laptops).

If you're using audio from the USB microphone, and then disconnect it, the next time you go to make a Jing recording, Jing will interrupt the countdown and warn you--asking you to choose a new audio input device.

However, Jing does NOT warn you if you add a new microphone that wasn't there the last time you made a video. (Whether this is a good idea or not is a fair matter for debate and perhaps we indeed should notify the user.) Therefore, you need to tell Jing to use the microphone you wish.

Here's how to do that:

1. Click More > Preferences.

2. Next, under Audio Input, click Select Device.
3. Jing will present available audio devices. Choose the one you wish to use, and click OK.

Something I've not done in a long time is use Jing to capture a score from a game. Today, I decided to look for the most odd game I could find in 60 seconds.

I'm not sure who thinks of this stuff, but here's a game where you're a piece of toast trying to get as much jelly as you can while avoiding being eaten. You get to be launched out of a toaster, so I suppose that's fun.

Play You're Toast

I only played it once--and I was only able to run for 85 seconds. Here's my high score having never played it before. Can you beat it? Put a link to your score screen in the comments. Then get back to work! :)

I wanted to mention the Screencast.com beta over here on the Jing blog, mainly because we just released a new Search feature and greatly enhanced the ability to move and manage content.

If you're a Jing user that uses Screencast.com, we think that you'll find it much faster and more efficient to locate some of your Jings in the often-crowded Jing folder.

What do you think? The best way to send us feedback is to post it here. Thanks in advance for taking the time to tell us your thoughts. We crave it.

Have three minutes? Check out this overview video.

Learn about everything that's new and changed!

You’ve no doubt heard of The Cloud. You’ve got cloud computing, Azure, Amazon S3... It’s like “The Internet” but so much more exciting, new, and profound.

The thing is, Jing’s been there and done that--we’ve been letting people host images and videos in "the cloud" for years. Sure, it’s great. People can click a link and see the video. We get it.

But what does the future really hold? The Jing team never stops looking ahead. We’re visionaries. And we’re convinced the future lies in The Clod.

We asked ourselves this question: Why do people like the Internet? Why do they call it the Cloud? Wouldn’t a more accurate name be “huge-tangled-mess-of-wires-and-radio-signals-I-have-to-pay-to-have-inconsistent-access-to”?

The answer is clouds are cute, puffy, day-dreamy. You don’t need to understand them or explain them--you just sort of know they’re there. People don’t associate clouds with something that’s going to store a bunch of your important stuff for free and then likely lose it or charge you for it later.

Brilliant marketing and naming, but we know the truth. Clouds are here one day and gone the next. People: Are you with us? Get your heads out of the Cloud and come back down to the Clod.

So what is Jing and the Clod?
It’s the texture of punch cards
The whirr of a hard drive
The motion of magnetic tape
It’s the heat generated from a physically altered piece of plastic

In short, if you can’t touch it, it’s not the Clod.

And Jing’s going there. Now with a multitude of output buttons, including the “Mother Earth” Button XL Combo which not only saves your video to your hard drive, but also puts a copy on an SD card, USB thumb drive, DVD, CD, Zoetrope, View-Master, and 8-track tape--you can rest easy knowing that not only will that video be yours forever, but you can deliver it to just about anyone in a format they can use. And by deliver, we mean you can even throw it at them if you are so inclined.

Can you do that in the Cloud?

Didn’t think so.

Check out this video of Shauna Hedgepeth. You can see how she helps her math students reduce “Brain Flush” by using Jing. (Camtasia works for this too!)

We’ve all been there. While in class or in a training, you feel like you’ve got a good handle on something, but then later--even as early as that evening--something’s not quite clicking. If only there was an easy way to get a “re-cap” of the lesson!

In school, one consequence of brain flush is students arrive the next day with uncompleted homework and you spend part of your precious class time answering questions and rehashing yesterday, instead of moving ahead.

Shauna’s little Jing videos both help her students, and increase classroom productivity. Students in need of a memory refresh (and don’t forget about absent students) can click a link and watch the video. Best of all, it’s free and easy to do.

You might be thinking, “But I don’t have an interactive white board or a webpage like Shauna does!” Don’t worry, you don’t need much to make a big difference! Let’s break this down into the basic requirements.

Things You Need

1. Download and install Jing. The free version is more than adequate for what you will be doing. It works on Mac and PC, and your computer doesn’t have to be close to top-of-the-line to run it.
   
   Note that Jing and Jing Pro are limited to five minutes in length. In a way, that’s good. Would your students watch something longer than 5 minutes hoping to find the part they need? If needed, try to break your content up into multiple videos, so students can click on the area they need.
   
   
2. A microphone. We recommend a USB one, but if you have the little plastic one that came with your computer or an internal one from your laptop, it’ll do. In fact, that’s all Shauna uses.




3. A means to get the videos to students. Ideally, you want videos in a location where students and parents can watch them from home. The easiest way to do this is upload your video to Screencast.com, and share the link with students. This way there are no files to mess with and you don’t have to put the videos on a network drive behind your firewall.

You can post the link on a blog like Shauna does, on your class website if you have one, or email it out. Worst case, you can write the little random URL (hyperlink) on the board and students have to copy it down on paper. Be careful because upper case “i” and lower case “L” look the same. Here’s what a sample Jing URL looks like--the bolded part is the random part: http://screencast.com/t/5HJwW4OiU

Bonus Stuff

1. An interactive white board is nice, because you can record the lesson in real time. You also might record some student interaction. It's easy to write freehand too, which can be especially helpful for math. Even without an interactive white board there are a number of ways to draw freehand on the screen. Here’s a segment from TechSmith’s The Forge Webcast that shows a number of them.
   
2. Better microphone, like a wireless mic, or multi-directional microphone. If you’re moving about the class or trying to capture student explanations, you want to have a way to pick up any audio that’s not by the computer recording the action.
   
3. A blog or webpage like Shauna has is nice because you can display many days or weeks of lessons, and perhaps even recycle them for next year. If you don’t want to set up a free blog, two really good alternatives are to keep updating a Google Doc and share the Doc, or try http://www.delicious.com.
4. TechSmith makes Camtasia for Mac and Camtasia Studio for Windows. These products allow you to record indefinitely as well as edit and produce your video in numerous ways. Learn more.

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