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

Have you ever tried to save a video to your computer but the video won't play when you try to open it?

Jing produces videos in the .SWF format. Web browsers (that have Flash installed) know what to do with SWFs, but some computers aren't so enlightened. There are two ways to solve the issue. One is to drag and drop the .SWF file into your favorite Web browser. The second is to "teach" your computer to open SWF files with a Web browser. Right-click (or control-click) the SWF file, then choose Open With > Choose Default Program. On a Mac it's Open with > Other... In either case you want to pick your favorite Web browser as the default.

Once you've "trained" your computer, you can take advantage of saving videos locally, burning them to CDs, and more. Oh, and just a small piece of advice if I may? Be careful if you decide to attach a video as an email attachment. The file size can get pretty big and cumbersome for the recipient. And remember--their computer might not know how to open a SWF so you might just want to go into your History and re-share the video as a link to Screencast.com.

One day Mark was eagerly pursuing his Master's degree in Computer Science at Michigan State University. He used and liked Jing and told his professors and classmates all about it. Turns out, Jing was developed just down the road, and Mark thought, "Hey, maybe I could get a summer job there." And he did. Mark's been working on Jing all summer, and he has done some excellent work.

Now the good news/bad news part.

Good news: He's working on some really cool stuff you'll see in upcoming months.
Bad news: He really wants to talk about it, so we had to gag him and stuff him in shipping.
Bad news: He has to go back to school. August 22 is his last day...or is it? We pressured Mark to quit school (joking, kinda), but he's so close to his Master's he was able to resist our peer pressure.
Good news: Mark worked it out so that he'll be taking a couple of classes, but he dropped his assistantship and will be spending his time instead on Jing!!

Throw Mark a comment if you'd like and we'll introduce more of the Jing team from time to time. Is there anything you want to know about the Jing team?

Do you have a website or FTP server? Do you want Jing to be able to send images and video up there?

If so, click the More ball > Preferences > FTP. Once there, you can check out this image for an example of how the fields should likely look. Or, check out this video (3:48) for a more in-depth explanation.

On a related topic, what is the difference between embed and share links? Let's say I want to show people what the Jing share and embed buttons look like. I could embed the image into my blog or website like this:

Note that when I embed something, you don't have to click anything and the content is instantly viewable. You can imagine that using embed code for large images and videos can be a challenge if you have limited space. (For example, this blog limits me to just over 600 pixels in width). Embedding content is not going to work for things like emails or instant messages. It's mostly for blogs, wikis (maybe) and your website.

Here's what happens if I click the Share button: http://www.screencast.com/t/QJYogbyqrp. Note that sharing and embedding works with all Jing-supported outputs.

Hope this helps! Maybe some people in the Jing community can share examples of how they use share and embed.

Have you heard? Jing is here to stay!