Update: The contest is now closed and the drawing went to Ankur Jain. Thanks to everyone for their support. We'll do more fun stuff like this again.
It's a blog post extravaganza! To celebrate Jing's third year, we've got a whopper of a blog post with a contest and an exclusive behind-the-scenes video.
First, the contest...
You can see Jing's wish list below. Sure, there's never enough sunscreen, and the dashing suit would make splendid formal wear. Webcams are always cool for Jing Pro--but our favorite thing is more people using Jing. Maybe you can help?
(Click the image for full size)
If you're reading this, you know Jing is pretty swell. So in honor of Jing's third birthday, we hope you'll help more people discover Jing and explain why they should check it out. If you want a little incentive, use Jing to take a screenshot of your message (email, Facebook post, tweet, WoW chat, whatever) and post the link in the body of the comments below.
We'll randomly draw a winner for a bundle of Camtasia Studio (or Camtasia for Mac) and Snagit for every 30 people that show us how they've spread the word over the next few days. We'll close this Tuesday July 27th at 5 pm Eastern Time (GMT -5:00).
Jing might not be as fancy or sophisticated as its big brothers Camtasia and Snagit, but when you need more power you can always count on them.
Summary:
- Tell someone about Jing
- Do it by next Tuesday
- Capture a screenshot of your message
- Send it to Screencast.com and post the link in the body of the comments below
- Get lucky and maybe win some other TechSmith software
Now, some behind the scenes action!
While coincidental, TechSmith remodeled some buildings and the Jing team has relocated to a new workspace. We consider our new area a nod toward Jing's birthday and it's an appreciated upgrade for us!
I pulled out my Flip and filmed the team in their new habitat. There's nothing developers like more than seeing me armed with a camera for some spontaneous filming. The video is under 2 minutes.
Thanks for all your support over the years! We look forward to this coming year!
Jing currently requires Microsoft's .NET Framework 3.0 or higher. In the next couple of months or so, when the next Jing release comes out, if you don't have .NET 3.5 SP1 (service pack 1) or higher, you'll be prompted to install it before you can upgrade and use Jing.
One way I check to see if I already have .NET 3.5 SP1 on my computer is to use the Add/Remove Programs feature in the Control Panel and see if it's in the list. Here's what it looks like on my machine: http://screencast.com/t/NWNjYjQxZ
If you'd like, you can get the .NET upgrade in advance. In fact, it should be a recommended suggestion from Microsoft if you ever use their Auto Update or www.windowsupdate.com process. You can also download it directly from here.
This higher .NET requirement is important for a number of reasons including better Jing performance, the ability to leverage some nice features Microsoft has made available, and improvements that let us develop Jing faster.
We appreciate your understanding and hope you'll spread the word if you can. Thanks!
I saw this on Twitter a while ago and Amy said it was okay for me to share her History with you too!
She's a Instructional Technology Coordinator from Conroe I.S.D. in Texas. Her Jing Folder is filled with little tutorial videos on everything from how to create a Google form to using a webcam with Skype to creating an Animoto video and more.
She's got a wide variety of information on her blog too. http://friedtechnology.blogspot.com. Hooray for the Internet!
Thanks for sharing your Jing examples, I learned a few things and I bet others will too. I should point out to all the readers--the reason you can see all of Amy's videos is because she intentionally went to Screencast.com and made her Jing folder public. By default, the Jing folder is Hidden, which means people can only see the content for which they have the exact link.
Jing is great for quick & informal sharing of images and videos. However, TechSmith also offers Camtasia for Mac and Camtasia Studio for Windows. Camtasia packs in all kinds of recording, editing and producing powers.
If you're interested in learning more about Camtasia, one fun way might be to tune in to the "24 Screencasts in 24 hours". A bunch of different people from TechSmith share Camtasia insights, tricks, or instructions in an informal setting. We stream it live as well as archive all the recordings. Here's one we did for Snagit not too long ago.
You can see the topics and learn more over on Betsy's blog. She'll be pulling an all-nighter with a couple other people so who knows what you'll see around 4 am! Here's how to join in and info about some prizes we'll be giving away.
I'll be on at 6pm Tuesday and again at 7am on Wednesday. (Eastern Time...GMT -5:00)
We wanted to give our Mac users a heads-up that going forward Jing will still work on Mac OS 10.4, but it won't be getting any more updates. Future updates to Jing (and Jing Pro) will only support 10.5 and higher.
To be clear, we're not just going to leave 10.4 users hung out to dry. When the next update comes out in the next few months, the current version of Jing is going to hang around for 10.4 users--but you won't get any new features going forward.
There's a number of reasons for this decision--here's a few of them:
- From a user's point of view, we're going to be able to leverage some cool things with Apple's Core Animation and Core Image technology. Basically, Jing's going to take better advantage of the graphics card. (Your actual Jing captures will look the same but Jing itself should perform and look better in the future.)
- This technology would also facilitate improving the History should we decide to do that someday.
- A final benefit I'll mention is that by dropping support for 10.4 and being able to tap into some of what 10.5 and higher gives us, developing Jing will go faster.
We hope this will be of minimal impact. We wanted to give you some warning, but let us know your thoughts--and if you know any OS 10.4 users, maybe you can pass this information on? Thanks!
Windows users--have you launched Jing one day and gotten the cryptic error below and lost all your buttons?
This was a crazy and very difficult bug but Mark squashed it. We're not going to force an update to all Jing users because we don't think this affects that many people. But we did put a new build of Jing on our Tech Support site. You can get it here.
This will be of course fixed in the next main release of Jing. Back to our regularly scheduled Jing Blog programming...
Jing's a tricky little application in that it's part desktop software--part Internet utility.
The better we understand how people perceive Jing and how they use it as part of their daily work, the better we can decide what to do next in Jing's development.
I have a super short, 4-question survey for you. (Don't worry, no essays!) I hope you'll spare a moment and take us up on it. This puppy really wants you to!
Anton and I have been working on a package of materials that will hopefully make life easier for those of you interested in teaching others about Jing. Well, our first batch is live and you can find them here on the Jing Help Center.
They have a slight slant toward the educational community, but I think the content is suitable for all people who might benefit from learning about communicating more visually.
We'll add to it over the summer, so let us know what you would find most useful. As always, thanks for using Jing and telling others!
Subscribe to RSS feed