Betsy, from TechSmith's Visual Lounge sat down with Dirk (Product manager of Jing and Screencast.com) and asked him some questions about his background, various TechSmith roles and ... she brought up Jing's five minute video limit.

I thought you'd like to hear about this interview, and you can post comments to this post or send it to us directly.

If you're reading this, you probably have a really good handle on how to use Jing.

But can you think back to when you first installed it? Did you even see the Sun launcher? What in the world is that yellow orb thing? Did you capture an image or video and wonder what's next?

We created an interactive, Flash-based tutorial. We'll get this into Jing for the next release, but we wanted people to try it right away. Do you think this would be helpful to new users? We're hoping to get some feedback and we encourage you to send it to others.

Why did we make this tutorial?

We know a few things. We know a lot of people can be confused by the non-traditional UI, and don't "get" the idea of sharing content via a Screencast.com link.

We also know that once people have that first successful share, they tend to get Jing and from then on, it's pretty easy.

This tutorial then, is just one more way to try and help people get off to a good start with a successful capture! We hope it works!

For this next release, we will be addressing some of our top feature requests from you. Among the improvements on tap is Facebook integration.

We've asked for feedback before, but this time, let's do something different.

We want to invite you to be a part of the Jing team. Well, as much as possible.

Most of you reading this are regular Jing users. Our guess is a lot of you also use Facebook.

Seems almost too logical then... If Jing is going to work with Facebook, and we have people who use Jing and Facebook, it seems we should work together to learn what people really want and nail this feature.

We revamped Jing's Facebook page, started a discussion and we hope people will talk with each other, and not just at us. To facilitate, we're going to be posting a lot of behind-the-scenes videos, demos of our progress and post specific questions which we hope will spawn some good discussion and debate. We hope some of you will take us up on it.

Hello world! My name is Alan and I'm the user experience\user interface designer on the Jing team (with a smattering of programming on the side). This is my first post on the blog!! Weee!

As you probably already know, we recently added Twitter to the list of places Jing can share captures to. I hope you all have been enjoying this new functionality, I know I certainly had a lot of fun working on it!

But now that it's been out in the wild a little bit, we'd really love if you could give us some feedback on this new feature. If you could spare a moment, completing this teeny-tiny survey that Anton put together would really help us gauge how well a certain aspect of the design is working. Also, if you have any other feedback or requests, please feel free to post a comment, or send it in through our feedback form!

Thanks, and happy Jinging!

Didn't get the Twitter button working? Check out the Twitter help topic for info on how to get it going.

We shared Marc's Jing story last week. It's neat to see how people use Jing and often learn about a new application, in this case JiWire.

We were wondering if anyone out there would be willing to share their Jing stories with us--and more importantly--the Web. We have dual motives. We really want to understand how people are using Jing, and how it is and isn't quite meeting their ideal needs. This helps us prioritize and make Jing better. Sometimes we are exposed to ideas we've never even thought of.
Our second goal is to spread creative uses to the masses. People use Jing in ways others never consider. (Like using a webcam to share an image that's not on your computer.)

Do you have a story to share?

We are specifically looking for stories involving:

• Strategies for recording system audio (the sound from your computer speakers) with Jing.
• Using embed code for some purpose.
• Using Jing in educational settings, especially student use of Jing.
• Using Jing for business purposes.
• Examples of how Jing increased productivity in the workplace.
• Funny uses of Jing.

And even if you don't tell us your story, we hope you'll tell a person you know. We thank everyone who spreads the word.

Hello;
Take a look at my to-do list for the summer:

• Clean Garage
• Go Camping
• Update Video Capture Tutorial

As you can see, the only thing left to do is to update the Video Capture Tutorial. And this is where I'd like your help.
Please check out the current Video Capture Tutorial, it's just over 2 minutes long.

The video can also be found in the Help Center.

So, what are the things you think should improve in the video? Do you understand the process for taking a video capture? Are any parts confusing or unclear? Do you feel some information is missing?

I'm looking forward to your input - it will help to create a better video.
Thanks!

Take a little break--you deserve it! Copy the text below into the comments, then replace the variables with some words of your own. Be serious or creative, positive or negative!

Jing is so [adjective] and [adjective]. I use it at [place] to capture [noun plural] and then [verb] them to [noun]. If I could change or add one thing to Jing it would be [noun or verb]! If Jing were an animal, it would be a [animal].

Here's mine:

Jing is so yellow and bouncy. I use it at home to capture photos of my kids and then post them to Facebook. If I could change or add one thing to Jing it would be a way so I didn't always have to click "Image"! If Jing were an animal, it would be a young cheetah with a head-mounted laser.

Hi. We've been getting some feedback about surprises (the bad kind) people are encountering when deleting things from their History. I figured the least I could do is make a blog post in the hopes of helping others.

When you delete content from your History, Jing will also attempt to delete the content from its stored location.

For example, if you saved an image to a folder on your computer, then delete it from the Jing History, Jing will attempt to delete it from the folder as well. Content is also deleted from the History and location if you put it on Screencast.com, an FTP server, Flickr, and YouTube. Learn more about the History.

Why do we do that? Well, when Jing started, Screencast.com was still in beta and some features were missing. For example, there were no thumbnails, deleting was a mult-step process, and there was no ability to multi-select content. Therefore, it was much easier to delete your content from right within Jing. We also thought if people had a video on their FTP, and an image on Flickr, they wouldn't have to go to the web, login to two separate accounts, and delete them. Convenient, right?

Maybe not. Now we're not so sure it's a good idea that deleting stuff in History also deletes it from the stored location.

What are we going to do about it?

1. First off, make a clearer and better warning message in the product.
2. Get feedback.
3. Reexamine this behavior, and rethink the History in general.

Here's what we'd love from you. What do you think of the current deleting behavior? Does anyone use it? Have you gotten burned by it?

If you'd rather not comment on the post, send us feedback directly. Thanks!