The Visual Lounge lets you find out about TechSmith behind-the-scenes. Watch screencasts and videos from other customers, meet up with your fellow TechSmith users and staff, and get more tips and tricks!

This week's Camtasia Studio Screencast of the Week comes from one of my favorite tech bloggers, Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo!. I like this screencast because of the style of the recording. The screencast discussion was informal, but did a great job at illustrating Renkoo, a service that uses IM and text messages plus the web to help communicate and coordinate social events with friends. I really liked the conversational style of the screencast.

And, they also did a nice job with the zoom feature in Camtasia Studio. If you'd like to learn more about Camtasia's zoom feature, visit here.

Click the screenshot below to view the video.

You can read more about the screencast on Jeremy's blog here.

And, Renkoo looks interesting. After watching the screencast, I thought I'd try Renkoo out and signed up for the service. Renkoo looks like it might be a good way to chat with you and meet-up on the road. If you're already on Renkoo or decide to join, you can add me as a friend. I'm signed up under my TechSmith email, b.weber(at)techsmith.com

Any nominations for next week's screencast of the week?

Did you know it's Videoblogging Week 2007?! I didn't know until a favorite blogger and vlogger, Raymond Kristiansen, alerted me to it!

You can find more details here about Videoblogging Week.

You're suppose to post a video a day for the week. I wonder if you can play catch -up and post extra videos if you start late?

If you are participating in Videoblogging Week 2007, let me know. We'll show you off on the blog. If you need some inspiration, check out some of my favorite tech vloggers like LabRats (they use Camtasia Studio in some of their episodes), commandN, GeekBrief.TV, and Neo-Fight (they use Camtasia Studio in some of their episodes).

And, in the interest of disclosure, I should let you know that we sponsor the LabRats vidcast. But, I was a fan long before we started sponsoring them.

The SnagIt Product Manager, Tony Dunckel, and I are heading south to Orlando, Florida next week. We'll be in town April 10 - 13.

If you're in the Orlando area and want to meet-up let me know. Tell Tony what you like about SnagIt and what you'd like changed. I'm sure he'll give you tips and tricks about SnagIt as well. Beer, coffee...orange juice (hey, it's Florida) are on me!

Twist our arms and we'll even meet you at Disney World! :-)

Remember Terry Brock from this screencast we did last year about public speaking? I know Terry Brock will be meeting-up with us on Wednesday in Orlando. I'm sure he'll give you some points on public speaking if you'd like to meet-up with us.

On Friday, we're driving over to Tampa for the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) Convention. So, if you'd like to meet in Tampa, we'll be there April 13 - 16.

To meet-up with us, drop me an e-mail or call me on my cell: 517.410.0030. Hope to see you there!

On a side note, do you think they'd let us screencast in the Magic Kingdom? Although the thought of lugging a laptop, camera and microphones to Disney World is not overly appealing to me.

Camtasia Studio is... fill in the blank

Add your answer in the comments below

This week's Camtasia Studio Screencast of the Week is from Dr. Jacques du Plessis from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Jacques has a great site where you can learn Afrikaans complete with some Camtasia Studio videos! Check out his site here.

I love these videos because when he's teaching you a subject like clothing, you will see a picture of the clothing as well as hear how to say the word. A perfect blend of visual and audio.

Click the screenshot below to watch a screencast.

Poke around the site. I'm sure you'll find all sorts of interesting content and videos!

Any nominations for next week's Camtasia Studio Screencast of the Week? E-mail me or post it in the comments.

We're celebrating the release of Morae 2.0 today at TechSmith! We listened to feedback from users and our beta testers and made lots of updates and changes.

Some of the updates include:

• Graphing - Let Morae do the work for you. Morae 2.0 will calculate data and build graphs for you. Makes it easy to visualize your results.
• Built-in Survey Tool - you can easily measure participant satisfaction with Morae's new built-in survey too. No need for a separate tool.
• Tasks - Quit killing trees by using paper to track participant tasks. You can now define the tasks you want participants to perform in Morae 2.0.
• Markers - you can now view, edit, add more detail, and fix mistakes to your markers during logging on-the-fly...

More information about the release is here, complete with a Getting Started Video.

The Morae Product Manager, Shane Lovellette, sat with me to do a quick screencast to show off what's new in Morae 2.0. Click the screenshot below to watch the screencast. It runs just under 14 minutes.

Materials used in this screencast:

Hardware:

• Dell Latitude D820
• Samson CO3U Microphone

Software:

• Camtasia Studio v4.0.1
• Morae 2.0

Upgrade questions? Visit here!

Interested in making Morae better? Drop me an e-mail if you'd like to join our Advisory Board and start sharing your thoughts and feedback for future versions!

And, we'd love to get any of your feedback about the release. Please visit our feedback form here to send feedback directly to the Morae team.

How many of you have used MindJet's MindManager software for mind mapping? For me, it is indispensable. I use MindManager when I need to visualize my thoughts, think creatively, or plan a project or strategy. Mind mapping with MindManager really gets you thinking in new ways. I've even MindManager for presentations in place of PowerPoint (works great with a Tablet PC). Writing your mind map out for a presentation makes for an interesting and engaging presentation.

I saw this great MindMananger screencast made with Camtasia Studio on MindJet's site that I wanted to share with you. The screencast is about using Microsoft Office Visio 2007 to create custom topic shapes for MindManager. Click the screenshot below to watch the video.

You can see the blog post about the video here.

There's also a handy SnagIt Output for MindManager so you can easily add screencaptures to your maps with a single click. You can learn more and download the free SnagIt output here.

There is an eval of MindManager so you can give it a test drive. Download it here.

And, in the interest of disclosure, I was given the latest version of MindManager, but I used MindManager long before I was given a comp copy.

Once it quits snowing in Michigan and it finally starts warms up, it will be time to start dodging bees and wasps. In that spirit, this week's Screencast of the Week comes from Mike Lougee from the University of Minnesota. It's all about insect stings, first aid and Camtasia Studio!

I like this screencast because it is not your typical tech screencast. Click the screenshot below to watch the video. It's a short one running less than 4 minutes.

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week?

I'm headed up to Toronto next week for Flash in the Can with Troy Stein, the Camtasia Studio Product Manager, and our Senior Flash Developer, Brooks Andrus.

We're driving up. I'll be armed with a computer and video camera so maybe we'll make some screencasts on the drive. Any suggestions for topics or questions you'd like answered? It's a 5 hour drive from Lansing, Michigan to Toronto so we'll have plenty of time to make some screencasts. I promise not to screencast while I drive.

Anyone interested in meeting-up? We'll be in-town April 21 - 27. Want some tips and tricks about how to use SnagIt, Camtasia Studio, Screencast.com, Morae or UserVue? Have some feedback you'd like to share with us about the products? We'd love to hear it from you in person! Drop me an e-mail or call me on my cell (517.410.0030) if you'd like to meet-up.

We're also participating in DemoCamp on April 24. I'll be showing off Morae and maybe Camtasia Studio if there's time.

Hope to see you there!

They were both used in a recent project together! I saw an amazing Camtasia Studio screencast on YouTube this week!

A digital artist used Photoshop to paint a picture of Jennifer Love Hewitt for her upcoming show on CBS called 'Ghost Whisperer'. He recorded the whole process with Camtasia Studio and sped it up. He calls it speed painting!

You can read more about this screencast on Wired's blog here. Wired posted the tech specs as well.

Click the video below to watch the screencast.

If you're interested in making your own speed painting or recording, here's how you speed up your Camtasia Studio screencast. In Camtasia Studio, if you right click your video on the timeline, you should see the menu below.

Simply click on 'Clip Speed'. From there you can speed up or slow down your clip.

You can view more of macpluenta's speed paintings here.

Simply amazing!

There's a new screencast in town! Across the pond, in Germany, Axel Becker of FortyTwo Graphik Design and Dieter Schniecke of PowerPoint aktuell have started a new vidcast all about PowerPoint, PowerPoint-TV! You can watch the screencast here.

Unfortunately, my German is not that good. But, luckily, the Camtasia Studio Product Manager, Troy Stein, who is fluent in German, is at the Flash in the Can conference with me this week. He was kind enough to watch it with me and translate.

I like this screencast because it's a nice balance of full screen, digital video intermixed with Camtasia's video screencapture.

They used Camtasia Studio for parts of their video podcast. You can see some nice examples of zoom feature. You can find a tutorial about Camtasia's zoom feature here. I also like their use of Camtasia's cursor highlight feature nicely as well. You can find more about this feature here.

I had the honor of meeting Axel and Dieter earlier this year when I went to Germany for the DLD Conference. Here's our pic at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin.

We're excited in Michigan because the weather is finally warming up and that means baseball season has started. I know several people at TechSmith who have headed out to some of the recent Detroit Tigers baseball games.

And, on that note...I ran across this great baseball video made with Camtasia Studio over at the Video Copilot website! The video is about much more than baseball. This screencast will teach you how to add the camera shake effect to your video with Adobe After Effects. Sometimes you want to create the perception of an event in your video where something is getting rocked or there's a collision. Camera shake can bring a lot of impact to your video.

Click the screenshot below to launch the video.

Hit a home run and add camera shake to your videos! OK - I apologize for the bad joke, but I just couldn't help myself. :-)

Don't stop at this video. Wander around the Video Copilot site. Andrew Kramer has lots of great video advice.

We're having a fine time up in Toronto at Flash in the Can this week. Although, I've had a hard time with internet connections, so sorry about the lack of blog posts.

Earlier this week in Toronto, we met up with Andy Walker (Cyberwalker and LabRats.tv). Andy recently made a DVD, 'Getting Started with Windows Vista'. They used Camtasia Studio on the DVD when they needed to show any of Vista screen activity. You can see the DVD promo video here (no Camtasia Studio video on the promo). And, lucky me, I have a 2 copies of the DVD to give away to you, faithful blog readers! So, if you're like me, and just getting started with Vista, this is a great resource. First two people to e-mail me a suggestion for our next screencast will get a copy.

I posted some pics here on Flickr from our Toronto visit, DemoCampToronto13 and meet-up with Andy Walker and other friends.

Are you like me and still searching for a Nintendo Wii? Maybe I should camp out at the store to get one? OK, I'm not at that point yet, but if I can't have a Wii, at least I can watch cool Camtasia Studio videos about it.

Last week at Flash in the Can, we got a little preview about what you can do with WiiFlash and Papervision3D. WiiFlash allows you to control your Flash games and applications with the Wiimote. There is a great Camtasia Studio screencast showing the pitch and roll rotations of the Wiimote.

I love this video! The picture-in-picture is so valuable - sometimes just showing the screen activity is not enough. The picture-in-picture video gives the screencast context and without it, you'd only have half of the story.

Click on the screenshot below to watch the video. It's less than a minute long.

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week?

Well, I finally did it. I broke down and created a MySpace page and I have SnagIt to blame!

You may remember that we celebrated SnagIt's anniversary last year. SnagIt turned 16 this year! And, just like any other teenager, SnagIt now has a MySpace page! You can view it here. Be sure to add SnagIt to your list of friends for periodic updates.

Even though SnagIt turned 16 this year, thankfully SnagIt is not getting a driver's license anytime soon... :-)

Ryan Eash (pictured below), an Instructional Designer from our Training Department, is headed out on the road conducting Camtasia Studio training.

This 2 day training course is perfect for beginner and intermediate Camtasia Studio users.

Upcoming dates are:

• 5/22 - 5/23 San Francisco, CA
• 6/19 - 6/20 Charlotte, NC
• 7/17 - 7/18 East Lansing, MI
• 8/21 - 8/22 New York City, NY
• 9/18 - 9/19 Los Angeles, CA

You can find out more about the Camtasia Studio training here.

If you come to the East Lansing, Michigan Training, I'll gladly give you a tour and introduce you to the Camtasia Studio team. And, I'll even spring for meal! How can you turn that down?