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After reading thousands of feedback emails you've sent us--and responding to as many as we could (probably hundreds)--we're trying something new.

We're using a platform called Get Satisfaction and would love to hear what you think. Get Satisfaction is carefully crafted around the idea that when companies and customers work more closely together--out in the open--everyone wins. We're looking forward to the increased transparency and the ability help people find answers to questions we frequently get via the former feedback forms.

Feel free to head on over to Get Satisfaction right now and post a topic or a response. We're just getting started, so you have a chance to help make it great by sharing your questions, answers, and ideas.

Here's what's in it for you...

• Have a louder voice: Other people can vote up your requests (or you can say "me too" to theirs!) and our product teams will better understand what people need and why
• Find answers faster: Get Satisfaction increases the odds that you'll find the best answer--before you even post a question!
• Hear from a broad range of experts: Over time, you'll see responses not just from our amazingly dedicated and knowledgeable volunteer moderators...but you'll see technical responses from TechSmith developers, tips and work-arounds from user-assistance specialists, and responses from the Product Managers who shape the future direction of the products.

We have high hopes that Get Satisfaction will enhance your TechSmith experience and help you rock (even more!) at what you do. Please give it a try and let us know what you think!

Six months ago, we asked what you did with your Jing captures. Your response was great and it was cool to learn how people used Jing in conjunction with other applications. We also learned (among other things) that by far the most common activity is to use the save and copy buttons.

Well, it's time for another short survey, and we hope you'll participate!

This time we want to get a better sense for how you (granted, people that follow the blog are likely not the "typical" Jinger) use Jing to solve everyday problems and whether it's doing anything in terms of your productivity.

This survey will just take a minute. Thank you!

On August 24th, not only did a new version of Jing come out, but the Jing Help Center was migrated over to TechSmith's Learning Center to hang out with our other help resources.

I thought people might be especially interested in the new FAQ topic. I coalesced thousands of pieces of data--from YOU--and made a comprehensive FAQ list.

See what you think, and send me feedback on what you'd like me to add.

Here's the FAQ topic

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!

Survey: What do you do with your Jing captures?

We've been working on a collection of presenter materials to help educators tell and teach others about Jing. We're almost done, but one area we could use more help is collecting diverse examples showing the wide range of how Jing is being used by teachers, students, IT, administrators, etc.

If you've got a story and are willing to share, email Dave McCollom our Educational Evangelist, at d.mccollom@techsmith.com, and me at m.curtis@techsmith.com

Here's what we've got so far. You'll be able to pick and choose the things you'd like, and use them however you want. What's missing from this list? Post a comment or send us feedback!

• PowerPoint presentation: Non-salesy, basic overview of Jing. It emphasizes the "how and why."
• Handouts:
  • Get Started "how-to" guide
  • Examples of how Jing is used in the real world
  • Screencast.com frequently asked questions
  • Using embed code
  • Using Jing with YouTube
• Resources:
  • Sample agenda, list of additional resources, FAQs
  • Various images and screenshots of Jing you can add to your own instructions or presentation
  • Special version of the Jing Interactive Tutorial (so you don't have to rely on Internet)
  • Download-able copies of our most popular Jing videos

We're planning to have the materials ready in early June.

In February we posted a draft of a tutorial we were working on. Well, it's done and it shipped with the latest Jing update. (The old one is here.)

In this post I want to:

• direct you to the final version
• acknowledge and respond to some feedback we've received.

The tutorial lives in two places. It shows up if you're a new user and install Jing on a computer for the first time. (That's why you may not have seen it.) It's also on the Jing Help Center. We hope you'll pass it on to your friends that might not be familiar with Jing.

Now, on to your great feedback:

Jing isn't a "traditional" application and we know from observing new users and other sources that a lot of people don't find the sun and don't "get" sharing the link to their content with others. We strove to address these two issues with the interactive tutorial.

We received a number of comments like this one posted on the blog. "The fact that you are sharing an image of a map from a browser window seems to be an odd choice to me. Most users would just paste the URL."

It's a fair point. In fact originally we had a graph in there, and we thought...that's kind of stupid. People would just email the Excel doc. We liked the comments about maybe adding a step to annotate the map which would have helped make it a better example, but inserting that step in the Flash project at that point would have been a tall order. Plus, we really wanted to focus on the location of the "Sun" and the getting of the link." I can imagine that in Tutorial 2.0 we'll have a better example.

"Paste with Command-V? Is that a Mac thing? I always use control-V."

We only posted the Mac version at the time and initially we were planning to make platform-specific tweaks only to the location of the Sun and the pasting instructions. However, we love our Mac and Windows people so if you look closely you'll see that the sample "webpage" is in Safari on the Mac version in addition to the sample graphics at the end of the tutorial.

There is no way to get to the tutorial from within Jing

Errr, yeah, that's true. We wanted to find a way to make it easy so that if you skipped it or wanted to do it again later, you could do it from within Jing...but that didn't make it. We'll get it in there in the next release or two.

Please keep the feedback coming! We read every single one, and try to respond to as many as we can.

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.