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!

In the United States, next week, on July 4th, it's time to gather up the family, fire up the grill, line up for a parade and stake your spot on the lawn to watch some fireworks...and for some, it's time to make a Camtasia Studio video. ;-)

And that brings me to this week's Screencast of the Week. PowerPoint MVP, Geetesh Bajaj, recently sent me the following video:

I thought many of you would be interested in doing something similar. It's a quick and easy way to make your own slideshow presentation with Camtasia. I like making these types of animated slideshows for gifts. It's an easy way to capture and share the fun with other family members.

Geetesh has sample presentations for other holidays and events that you can view here.

Geetesh told me he made the video by taking his PowerPoint presentation and exporting all slides as PNGs. Then you can import the PNGs into Camtasia Studio, add a soundtrack, insert Camtasia's transitions, and produce it as a WMV. Then he uploaded the Camtasia Studio video to YouTube. You can see more about this presentation here.

To export your slides as a PNG in PowerPoint 2007, select, Save As>Other Formats.

Then, under 'Save as Type', select PNG.

Jack Cook, of Experience Mobility and the Mobility Site, e-mailed me about one of his latest Camtasia Studio screencasts. It's all about ZoomIt - a free utility than you can get here at Microsoft TechNet.

ZoomIt is perfect to use when you're presenting or when you're recording your Camtasia Studio videos. ZoomIt allows you to zoom in on an area of your screen using hotkeys. This is perfect to use when you want to focus your screencast viewer's attention on a particular area of your screen. ZoomIt also lets you annotate your screen - there's a nice 'Draw' and 'Type' feature. Keep in mind, you can use ScreenDraw in Camtasia Recorder or, you can zoom in and out in your video after you record it with Camtasia's own Zoom-n-Pan. Depending on how you like to make your screencasts, you may prefer ZoomIt. Plus you can use it when you're giving presentations.

Click the 'play' button on the video below to watch Jack's screencast. It's 3 minutes long.

You can read Jack's post about ZoomIt here.

Have you found any useful utilities to use with SnagIt, Camtasia Studio or Morae? Pass them on! I'd love to share them with everyone.

You will start to notice some changes here on the Visual Lounge starting on Friday. We've been working hard to redesign and move the blog to a new blogging platform. We're moving to MovableType by SixApart to help everyone have a better experience with the blog. And, I like that SixApart has a Chief Evangelist too, Anil Dash! :-)

I hope you'll like the new changes - it should be easier to find old posts and we'll have tags and categories soon. And, when you post a comment, you'll be able to link to your own site or blog.

I just wanted to give everyone the heads-up. So, if something is not working as it should, you'll know what is going on. And, there is a small possibility that we might lose a comment or two in the process, but we're working to make everything port over and function properly. So, please bear with us and thanks for your continued support!

I got a phone call last week from my husband, Mike. Not uncommon, but his request was. He asked me to bring him dinner and some bottles of water because he was...you guessed it...camping out for the iPhone!

Now, there aren't many things I'd camp out for, but I will say I'm kind of glad he did so I can test out his iPhone. I did a quick test and as I expected, Camtasia Studio videos play just fine on the iPhone. I just used the Production Wizard and selected the iPod output (M4V output). If you'd like to make your own Camtasia videos for the iPhone or video iPod, check out this screencast.

That brings me to our Screencast of the Week. I got an email last week from Pierre Gorissen and he sent me a link to a great screencast that shows you how to use a development tool for the iPhone from Aptana. Remember Aptana from this post? They make great screencasts! Click the link below to watch the screencast. It's a short one that runs less than 3 minutes.

Anyone else making videos about or for the iPhone or video iPod?

And, yes, I took Mike dinner and water. Fair trade for a new gadget to test, don't you think? :-)

As you probably know by now, I love technology and...I'm always running a little behind. With that in mind, there's a blog that encompasses both subjects - Lifehacker! Lifehacker is all about software and websites that will save you time! Perfect! Was this blog written just for me? It's one of my favorite blogs.

I was excited to see that Lifehacker is running a screencast contest. You can get all the details about the screencast contest here. And, you could win a signed copy of the Lifehacker book!

Use your Camtasia Studio skills and win that book! All you have to do is simply screencast your favorite shortcut or timesaver in action on your computer!

I noticed in the comments that one of my favorite bloggers, Amit Argawal from the Digital Inspiration blog has submitted a Camtasia Studio video for the contest. It's about FireFox keyboard shortcuts. You can see it here.

And, Chris McQueen, from our Training Department, submitted a screencast about a SnagIt shortcut which you can view here.

Good luck! Let me know if you enter the contest - I'd love to show off your screencasts!

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a blog post with a screenshot worth?

I was happy to find on Dan York's blog, the Disruptive Conversations, a discussion about what to use for adding images and logos to your blog.  On that post, there was a link to a SnagIt plugin for Windows Live Writer.  So, if you're using Windows Live Writer for blogging, you can take your SnagIt captures and easily embed them right into your post.

You can download the Windows Live Writer plugin here.  Note: TechSmith did not create this plugin.  I am looking for the creator, so drop me an email if you made it.

This is a great use of SnagIt's COM Server!  Did you know that you can add SnagIt’s screen capture functionality into your organization’s proprietary applications?  

Here's a list of the SnagIt outputs that TechSmith has created.  I'm a big fan of the Flickr, MindManager and PowerPoint output.  I keep bugging the SnagIt team for an output for OneNote.  What other programs would you like to see SnagIt output for? 

Are you addicted to Facebook like I am?  I recently joined and find myself checking my Facebook page daily! Facebook is a great way to keep up with friends all over the world.  Anyone can join Facebook for free.

I was excited to see that Amit Agarwal from the Digital Inspiration Blog recently started a new group in Facebook all about Screencasting (link will not work unless you are a member of Facebook).  I'm excited to learn and swap tips with fellow members in the group.  I'm in very good company -  I know expert screencasters, Beth Kanter and Long Zheng have joined the group.  Plus, technology expert Jeremy Wagstaff of the Loose Wire Blog and Wall Street Journal is in there too!  Remember Jeremy? He wrote a great directory of screencast resources which you can see here.

You cannot access the Screencasting group without being a member on Facebook.  But, it's painless to sign up for Facebook. Click here to register. And, if you join, feel free to add me as a friend!

Hope to see you join Facebook and in the Screencasting group to share your tips and tricks!  Now I have an excuse to go into Facebook while at work. ;-)

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Carsten Cumbrowski of the Search Engine Journal. You can click here to view the screencast.

Carsten created a simple animated GIF showing off some of Google Maps new features. There's no audio. I liked this screencast because it was a great reminder that a screencast need not be complicated, long or even narrated to be effective.

I need to do more short screencasts like this for the blog.Carsten makes great use of the highlight cursor option in Camtasia Studio Recorder which I think is very useful for screencasts at smaller dimensions. Otherwise the cursor would be hard to follow on such a small video.

And, it looks like Carsten used his Camtasia Studio screencast with Adobe Image Ready to make the animated GIF (Note: Camtasia Studio can make Animated GIFs too).I think that's one of the benefits of using Camtasia. Since Camtasia creates videos in industry standard file formats, we don't lock you into just one file format.You can use your Camtasia Studio content with other programs as well.

Click here if you'd like to learn more about Camtasia Studio's highlight cursor option or click here to learn about the Animated GIF output.

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

'Jing me!' I hope that's a phrase I start to hear more often! I have a secret to share with you loyal blog readers…Today we are launching a new “project” called the Jing Project. And, you're among the first to know about it.

So, what is the Jing Project? That's a great question. We're hoping you will help us answer that and tell us where you'd like this experiment to go. Jing is all about the instant capture and sharing of images or video. It's perfect for improving and supplementing those daily conversations that you're already having in email, on IM chats, blogs…

And…we have not only a Windows version, but also a Mac version! Woot! We realized we have to be platform-independent and could not limit it to just one platform if we're making a product all about conversations.

Questions about Jing? There's a new blog devoted to all things Jing. The Jing blog will serve as one of the primary places for you to give your feedback about Jing and to find out the latest news. Contributors to the blog are pictured below (left to right): Tony Dunckel , the SnagIt Product Manager (he is the Jing Project Manager in his 'spare' time), Michael Malinak, Lead Developer for Jing, Don Sherry, Mac Jing Developer, Alan Dennis, Interface designer, Nick Gorsline, Senior Web Designer, Chris McQueen, Instructional Design, and Matt Dyer, Tech Writing. I'll be posting to the Jing blog periodically to show off all the great things people are doing with Jing. So, please send me examples of the ways you're using Jing.

Want to get started using Jing? Check this out. And, we need your feedback! Head over to the Jing Project Homepage to leave your feedback.

I'd love to see you using Jing! Here are some ideas to get you started - use Jing to add comments to the Visual Lounge or other blog posts. Use Jing to make your IMs or emails more visual with images and videos. I'm on Skype (betsyweber) and IM (MSN: b.weber@techsmith.com) most of the day so feel free to 'Jing' me!

I love LinkedIn! What is LinkedIn, you ask? It's a networking site for business professionals. You sign-up (it's free), set up your profile, including your education and job history, and start linking to people you know. It's a great way to keep up with friends and colleagues. You can see who gets a promotion, changes companies or I enjoy seeing what jobs and companies people have worked at in their past. One of the most interesting parts of LinkedIn for me is to see how my friends are connected - it's amazing to see people you thought had no connection to each other are already connected somehow.

So, this week's Screencasts of the Week are all about…you guessed it! LinkedIn!

The first screencast comes from Scott Skibell. He sent me a link to his tutorial about LinkedIn where he used his Camtasia Studio video with another authoring tool. I like Scott's tutorial because it's a great example of how you can use your Camtasia Studio content in a variety of applications or sites since it creates industry standard file formats ranging from AVI, WMV, MOV, SWF and FLV and more...

Click the screenshot below to see Scott's LinkedIn Tour. Or visit here to read his blog post about the presentation. You'll see the part where he uses Camtasia under the section called "Tour of LinkedIn"

Also, Demo Girl also has a great screencast about LinkedIn. She made a 5 minute overview of how to get set up on LinkedIn. Click the screenshot below to watch Demo Girl's screencast.

Plus, I love that LinkedIn has a great evangelist, Mario Sundar, who I hope to meet someday! He's one of my heroes!

You can see my LinkedIn profile here. Maybe you'll learn something new about me or your other connections.

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

August is around that corner and that means tradeshow season heats up again! I'm hitting the road and would love to meet-up with you!

First stop is Vancouver from August 6 - 8 to see the infamous Sean Carruthers from the LabRats and meet-up with some Morae and Camtasia Studio users. I've never been to Vancouver before! Any travel tips for me?

After that, I'm off to Seattle from August 8 - 12 for IgniteSeattle and Gnomedex! I look forward to Gnomedex all year long. Chris and Ponzi Pirillo are great hosts. The attendees are amazing too - I always find myself sitting in the audience thinking that I'm surrounded by greatness with the likes of Marc Orchant, Jeff Barr, Eric Rice, Dave Schappell, Josh Hallett, and so many more!

Then, I'll be in Dallas August 12 - 16 for a few events. I need someone to show me how to do the Texas Two-Step...I promise not to step on your toes!

I'll be posting pics from the trips on here Flickr. And, I would love to do some screencasts with anyone who's willing too.

If you're in any of the areas, I'd love to meet-up! We can talk about our products, technology in general, screencasting, Texas BBQ, or even just go photo walking for fun. I'm open! Feel free to call me on my cell (517.410.0030), Skype (betsyweber) or e-mail me! Hope to see you on the road!

You can help shape the future of our products. Did you know that?

One of the requests I often hear at shows and meet-ups is about Mac versions of SnagIt and Camtasia Studio. We take every piece of feedback and product requests very seriously.

Because of your feedback, we're moving to release new products and expand our current products on both the PC and Mac Platforms.

And, the Jing Project is our first experiment in the Mac arena.

So, if you'd like to be in the loop about any new TechSmith products on the Mac, we've set up a News and Notification List which you can sign up for here.

And, as always, keep the feedback coming…our products are better because of the feedback and input you give us.

There are two programs I use everyday - SnagIt and OneNote. I live by them. So, I can't tell you how excited I was that the SnagIt team has created a SnagIt Output for OneNote 2007!

Just like SnagIt's other outputs, you can send your screen captures right from SnagIt's Preview Window directly to OneNote! I love this because I often annotate my screen captures with arrows, highlights or other effects. If I add these effects and annotations in OneNote, I can't move the image and have the annotation follow the image. They are separate and I have to re-align each annotation. This is where the SnagIt Output for OneNote is useful for me. I just add my arrows, highlights, edge effects in SnagIt. Then I can send the screen capture from SnagIt to OneNote and there I can move the image around all I want. The annotations and special effects stay in the right spot with the image!

You can read all about SnagIt's Output to OneNote here.

Kathy Jacobs has a great write-up about it on her blog here. She details how and why she uses it. Kathy is a OneNote Microsoft MVP so she's an expert at all things OneNote.

And, this is just one of SnagIt's Output Accessories. Check here to see them all.

What other applications would you like SnagIt to send screen captures directly to?