Since Jing's last big update we've received thousands of emails filled with feature requests, praise, and the opposite of praise. We read and appreciate every one. We also act on your feedback. Of course, we can't do everything at once, but ... we think a lot of you will really like the upcoming version of Jing.

We hope you're having a nice holiday season and happy New Year. We also hope you'll check back here early in 2009... say... January 6th?

I wanted to share a free (GNU General Public License) program called Synergy. I use Synergy many times every day--usually in conjunction with Jing. I use two computers at work--a Mac and a PC. (Synergy will work between two Windows computers or two Mac too.) I often want to make a Jing of something on Windows, but I'm in a conversation or document on my Mac.

Synergy allows you to copy text from one computer to another. I don't know how much time Synergy has saved me, but was enough to inspire me to donate. Here's one example of how I just used Synergy. You see that graphic above? Well, I made that using Snagit on my Windows machine. (Synergy also allows me to use my Mac mouse and keyboard.) Now, I suppose I could transfer that image file to my Mac via email, network drive, usb drive...but really all I care about is the embed code for that image.

Here's the exciting part:

Using my Mac mouse and keyboard I fire up my Jing hotkey and capture the image, then use my Screencast.com embed code button. My cursor wanders back over to this blog entry, and PASTE. Done!

I can't really say to you that installing and setting up Synergy is a snap, but they do have some good documentation. If you're on Mac be sure to also check out SynergyKM --it's Synergy with a graphical interface. I found after playing with Synergy for a bit, once I got it to work I just don't mess with it, and it's been good to me ever since. Do you ever employ that strategy?

Anyway, I find that Jing and Synergy work great together and if you have a hint like this too, I hope you'll share. Hah! I just copied URLs from my Windows computer for the links in this blog without even realizing it! I tell ya, this is handy.

Hello everyone,

Lately we've seen an increase in audio-related issues and questions. I thought I would summarize some of the key points and leave you with some links and resources for additional help.

Does Jing record audio with video? Absolutely. If your microphone isn't working, something's wrong. Jing looks for the default audio input device. Usually that's the microphone. Check your Control Panel (Windows) or System Preferences (Mac) and make sure that the default audio input device is your microphone. If you need help, try the topics and people at TechSmith Tech Support. Here's a link to their Jing topics.

Can I record my system audio? Jing can usually record system audio. Why the italics? Well, especially with Windows Vista there are a lot of "if's" and conditions based on your sound card and more. Keep in mind though--for both Windows and Mac, Jing was not really designed to capture system audio. We focused on voice capture and keeping the audio files small. I want to also make clear that you can't switch back and forth between microphone and system audio once you start recording.

Here are two posts that explain more:

Recording System Audio with Jing--Windows Edition

Recording System Audio with Jing--Mac OS X Edition

If you're the kind of person who's interested in doing a lot of more advanced audio work and want to really be in control, you could research some kind of mixer that would work with your computer. Here's just one example.