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!

I'm not always the best at them, but I love DIY projects! I am the person that would put stuff together, but end up with parts left over. Sometimes the finished project worked fine without the extra parts, other times...well, it wasn't so pretty. Ask me about the last computer I worked on. But on the plus side, family and friends no longer ask me to fix their computers. ;-)

We came across this great DIY project for the 'goto cam'. Don't worry, I won't make this project for you. The smart people at Gotomobile have figured out everything for you. They have a great, affordable, and easy to make mobile testing device that even works with Morae! Check out the directions here to make your own goto cam. Luckily, they give you all the directions to make it yourself!

There's a nice video at the end of their blog post where you can see the goto cam in action.

Last week, I was excited to see a package waiting for me in my office! In it was my copy of Daniel Park's new book, Camtasia Studio 4: The Definitive Guide. This book is over 500 pages of Camtasia Studio tips, tricks and techniques. The book will take you through your project from start to finish and the book is appropriate for users at all skill levels.

Daniel resides in Spain, but stopped by our offices for a visit around the holidays and we made a quick screencast. In this screencast, Daniel gives his top tip for your Camtasia Studio videos. Click the picture below to watch the screencast. It's a short one that runs less than 8 minutes long.

You can pick up the book from the TechSmith website here or from Amazon here.

I have a few copies of Daniel's new book to give away and a signed copy the last version of the book, Camatasia Studio 3: The Definitive Guide. The first 4 people to e-mail me ideas for future screencasts will get a copy. I'll post in the comments when I'm out of books.

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Ohio State University where they used Camtasia Studio to make a screencast with Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, the President of Icleland,! You can read more about Olafur Ragnar Grimsson's visit and his presentation about the challenges of climate change here.

I like this screencast because they utilize many of Camtasia Studio's features such as the iPod video and MP3 output as well as Picture-in-Picture and a nice Table of Contents.

Click here to watch the screencast. It runs just over 45 minutes, but you can listen to it on the go since they have the iPod and MP3 output.

I've received some great nominations for upcoming Screencasts of the Week. Keep them coming! Feel free to e-mail your nominations for the Screencast of the Week!

Growing up in Michigan, we'd head over toward Lake Michigan and stop off in Holland, Michigan. Next week, I'm off to Europe and my first stop is in Holland! I'm sure my visit to Holland next week will be 100% different than my visits to the little city in Michigan. For starters, when I booked my hotel room in Amsterdam, I had the option to add breakfast and a bike rental to my room!

First stop on my trip is a meet-up with Hans Mestrum from Tulip Computers. That's him pictured below. You might know him by his blog, Hans on Experience. Hans is an expert at screencasting. We're having a blogger and screencaster meet-up. More details are here. We'd love to see you! Anything you'd like us to screencast about?

Next up after that is a quick talk at Ad:Tech Hamburg. I'll be talking about blogging, forums, screencasting and working with all of you!

If you'd like to meet-up, I'd love to hear from you. E-mail or call me, 517.410.0030, although this phone number will not work in Europe. I'll post a new phone number next week. I'll even take travel tips for Amsterdam and Hamburg. Anywhere I should see or restaurants to visit?

I will be posting pics to Flickr here and hopefully making some screencasts too. The long flight should give me that time I need to edit the backlog of screencasts I have. ;-)

I met Tom Bunzel, also known as The Presentation Professor, several years ago at the PowerPoint Live tradeshow. That's him pictured below. I always learn something new everytime I see him.

I was happy to see Tom's recent article about how he uses SnagIt for IT Training and how he uses SnagIt for graphics in his books and other content.

Check out Tom's article here. I'm sure you'll learn something new!

Do you have any SnagIt tips to share? E-mail me or post them in the comments.

I've been wracking my brain trying to think of a witty or funny phrase for our new Camtasia Studio T-shirts. And, it occurred to me...who better than you, the people that use and love Camtasia, to help craft the new t-shirt for Camtasia Studio!?

Here's the short list I have:

• Camtasia Studio is _________________ (this t-shirt would come with a washable marker so you could change the phrase everytime you wore the shirt)
• Front: Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Back: I'm screencasting.
• My screencast is better than your screencast.
• Show AND Tell
• Camtasia Studio...now with more cowbell
• I'd screencast that, but my battery just died

The last two ideas came up at O'Reilly Etech while I was chatting with the fabulous David Crow and Jay Goldman.

Thoughts on the ideas above? Add your own ideas in the comments. Can't wait to see what you come up with! Your idea just might be emblazoned on the new t-shirt!

Are you like me and wait until the last minute to get gifts? Well, this year is no different for Mother's Day. I just couldn't find the right gift. I didn't want to get my mom another pair of shoes, CD, plant or similar gift. I could not find a gift that carried the sentiment I wanted to express.

I was happy to hear from Dave Schappell about Unitus. He told me about how I could create tribute page for the important women in my life and help empower other women in the process. Perfect! I'm able to express myself and create something personal for my mother. And, since I could include a picture and video on my tribute page, I could use SnagIt and Camtasia in the process! So, I did just that!

With Kathy Jacob's help, I made a simple PowerPoint Presentation which I recorded with Camtasia Studio. I produced the Camtasia Studio video as a WMV sized at 320 x 240. Then, I uploaded it to YouTube since that is how I could add a video to my tribute page. I also used SnagIt to crop a photograph for the page. You can see my tribute page here and you can view the YouTube video below.

I originally had planned to make a more grandiose Camtasia Studio video filled with pictures like this video by Kathy Jacobs (click the screenshot below).

But I just ran out of time to assemble the photos and scan some in (remember? I'm a procrastinator).

If you'd like to make your own Camtasia Studio video like Kathy's, simply select 'Import Media' in Camtasia Studio. Import any BMP, JPG, GIF or PNG. Then drag the pics to Camtasia Studio's timeline, add transitions, change your timing, add a title clip and audio...then produce your video! There's a nice tutorial here about creating a Camtasia Studio picture slideshow.

Anyone else making electronic Mother's Day or holiday gifts with SnagIt and Camtasia Studio?

Remember making flash cards in school? I loved flash cards and would buy packs and packs of notecards to make them. I made them for everything! From Latin to Chemistry (yes, I took Latin...don't ask me why).

I was happy to hear from Frank Gaeta from The Student Tablet PC recently about his Camtasia screencast. It was about...you guessed it...flash cards! And, instead of the old school paper notecards, Frank makes flash cards on his Tablet PC. In this screencast, Frank shows how he gets his flash cards from his Tablet PC to a mobile device.

You can read Frank's blog post about the screencast here.

Click the screenshot below to watch the screencast. It runs just over 11 minutes.

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

A new SnagIt output was recently released! The latest SnagIt output is for Microsoft Visual Studio Team System. The screenshot below shows how the new button looks in SnagIt.

Use this new SnagIt output to quickly create images to describe and show tasks, bugs or design ideas. It's a quick way to add screenshots to bug reports with the click of a button. And, it eliminates the hassle of attaching an image.

You can download and learn more about the SnagIt output for Microsoft Visual Studio Team System here.

This new SnagIt output for Microsoft Visual Studio Team Systems is just one of several SnagIt output accessories. There are outputs for Word, PowerPoint, Flickr, MindManager, and more. You can download additional SnagIt outputs here.

Any suggestions for other SnagIt outputs you'd like to see? Microsoft OneNote is on my wishlist. What programs are you using daily?

This week's Screencast of the Week comes to you from straight from the Netherlands! I'm having a fine time on my trip in the Netherlands so I thought it was only fitting that our Screencast of the Week come from here. Today I had the honor of meeting with Hans Mestrum and Pierre Gorissen (see pic below), long time screencasting and Twitter friends!

That brings me to this week's Screencast of the Week, which is by Hans Mestrum. Last week, Hans, Pierre and I jumped on Ustream.tv to test it out and talk about our upcoming meet-up. Hans recorded it with Camtasia Studio and made a great screencast about it. In this screencast, Hans will go over the features of Ustream.tv.

It's a short screencast - less than 9 minutes. Click the screenshot below to watch the video.

What's Ustream.tv? It's a platform that lets you broadcast video live to anyone complete with a chat room. It's cool because you can even use Camtasia Studio with it. In addition to hooking up a webcam and broadcasting yourself, you can use Camtasia Studio's Live Output feature to stream your screen instead of the camera. It is perfect if you want to show someone how to do something on the computer live. You'll see me demonstrate this at one point in the screencast.

You can find more info about Camtasia's Live Output here. The tutorial is a little out of date so note the screenshot below. It shows where to find the Live Output option in the Camtasia Studio Recorder - open Tools > Options > Video and you'll see the Live Output options.

I'll be interested to see where Ustream.tv goes. I love what Chris Pirillo, aka Lockergnome, is doing with it - he's taking tech questions live! You can view his channel here. And, yes, in the interest of being transparent, I should note that we are an advertising sponsor of Lockergnome.

What do you think? I've been experimenting with Ustream.tv with the TechSmith Lounge. Would you be interested in chatting with Product Managers or others from TechSmith plus other users?

On a side note, you can see pics from my trip here. I'll be in Hamburg and Berlin, Germany next week. Let me know if you'd like to meet up. My cell number for the next week is 517.974.2528. After 5/24/07, it's back to my regular cell number - 517.410.0030.

I've enjoyed Andy Beard's blog for sometime. He has great tips on blogging and interesting info on social media. Both are things I'm interested in. Plus, I like what his tagline says, '...Social Media with Original Opinion and Loads of Attitude'!

Andy recently had a blog post about the benefit of screenshots in your communication. Alright, that got my attention. I'm listening now. Check it out - it's a quick read. You can read it here.

Andy also writes about a gentleman, Michel Fortin, who used eye tracking software to test and prove how graphic icons with each post help with clickthroughs! You can read Michel's blog post about iconize your sight with graphics here.

Toward the end of his post, Andy points out how he was able to fix a problem he was having by communicating with a picture. And, Andy point's out he uses SnagIt! That made my day!

That got me thinking...most of my favorite blogs often have pics - Tech Crunch, GrokDotCom, I Started Something, Joel on Software, Creating Customer Evangelists, Guy Kawasaki's How to Change the World, GottaBeMobile.com...and the list goes on.

Sometimes when I'm on the road, I have problems uploading pictures for this blog. And, I always think the posts are lacking something without meaningful graphics. They just don't look or feel right.

As the old saying goes, 'A picture is worth a thousand words'...Isn't it?

I'm happy to announce that today we launched a new series of videos based on feedback we got on the original Camtasia Studio 30 videos in 30 days series. This time we're running 20 videos in 20 days about Camtasia Studio all in German. You can click the screenshot below to access the videos. Bookmark the page as it will be updated daily!

On a side note, I'm having a great time in Germany this week. Today I gave a presentation at Ad:Tech Hamburg and tomorrow I head to Berlin to meet with Axel Becker who makes the great German PowerPoint video podcast, PowerPoint-TV, with Dieter Schiecke. And, if you're interested, I've been posting pics from along the way here.

Bill Myers has done it again! I got an email from Bill about a tool he created for his Camtasia Studio videos...and he has made the tool free for everyone!

Bill has developed a 'video bandwidth protection' tool for use with your Camtasia Studio videos.

With this tool, you can control which site your Camtasia Studio video can be viewed on. And, this tool automatically causes your video to redirect to a specific URL if an attempt is made to display your video on a non-authorized site.

Why did Bill create this tool? Well, he wanted to protect his screencasts that he stores at Amazon S3 (or on any other hosting site) and make it difficult for anyone to steal bandwidth by displaying his videos on other sites.

You can find more information about the tool here. And, Bill even created screencasts to show how to use it.

Thank you, Bill! Check out Bill's site here - it's full of great resources and, of course, lots of screencasts!

Last week's Camtasia Studio Screencast of the Week is a day late - my apologies. I was at Lake Michigan this weekend for some forced family fun (OK, it wasn't forced). While it was beautiful and relaxing, our lodging had no wifi.

This week's Screencast of the Week is from Dean Shareski. It's all about using PowerPoint or Keynote as a storytelling tool. People probably won't remember your bullets and slides, but there is a good chance they'll remember stories! I also like the screencast's use of Camtasia's Picture in Picture feature. The video runs about 20 minutes so get comfortable.

Any nominations for the next Screen of the Week?

When I was a kid, I loved to collect stickers. I'd save up my money and go buy new ones just about every week. Then, I'd carefully place them in a box and put them away. Never really using them. Well, some things haven't changed. I still love stickers, but now I actually use them!

We recently had some SnagIt stickers made. You can see them below.

Here's an 'action shot' of the SnagIt stickers on my laptop.

What are the benefits of laptop stickers outside of self expression and some SnagIt fun? Well, I can easily and quickly find my laptop amid a sea of generic Dell laptops at airport security! :-)

Would you like your own SnagIt stickers? Drop me an e-mail with your mailing address and we'll get a couple out to you shortly.

Maybe the next set of SnagIt stickers we make will be scratch and sniff stickers! Hmmm, but what would SnagIt smell like?!

Several of us from TechSmith will be in Orlando, Florida next week for Microsoft TechEd.

If you're going to TechEd or are in the Orlando area, I'd love to meet-up! Our President, Bill Hamilton, and the SnagIt Product Manager, Tony Dunckel, will be attending too. This is the perfect chance to give them your direct feedback!

I have a few free passes to the expo hall. If you'd like one, e-mail me.

I'll be in Orlando, June 2 - 8. Drop me an e-mail or call me on my cell, 517.410.0030, if you'd like to meet-up. I've also been adding some events I'll be attending at Upcoming.org here. You can also see all the shows that TechSmith is exhibiting at here.

Hope to see you there!