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!

For the first time, the Screencast of the Week...is a Jing video!

Remember when you were back in school? You'd put your heart and soul in a paper, turn it in to the teacher and a week later you would get some cryptic feedback written on the paper in red ink. Sometimes, for me, a few words weren't enough for feedback and it often left me with more questions than answers.

Alisa Cooper, a professor at Maricopa Community College, has changed the way she grades papers. Most students turn in their papers electronically now, right? Well, why not grade and comment on them electronically as well? Alisa has created a 'grading toolbar' for Microsoft Word that she uses to comment and grade student's papers. In this quick Jing screencast, she'll show you how she adds comments and feedback.

Click on the screenshot below to launch the Jing video. It runs 4:20 minutes.

You can read Alisa's blog post about her technique here. Alisa's method saves time for the teacher and gives students clear feedback. No more questions and everyone is happy! You can read more about Alisa here. Thanks Alisa for sharing your tips and tricks!

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

I love MindManager. I use it often - sometimes I use it to help me plan blog posts (yes, believe it or not, I do plan and organize these things), presentations and I'm using it to plan for 2008 right now. Mind mapping helps me be creative and stay focused on my projects.

And, you all know how much I love SnagIt. No surprise there. But, did you know that we have a SnagIt output for MindManager? You can easily use SnagIt to add graphics and images to your MindManager maps. A perfect match! Check out the SnagIt output here.

Dr. Brian Friedlander did a blog post recently about the SnagIt MindManager Output. You can read his blog post here. He made a quick screencast showing SnagIt and MindManager working together. Check it out here. I heard from Gaelen O'Connell at MindJet (makers of MindManager) that Dr. Friedlander will be doing an education webinar for them later this month. Check here for the schedule.

And, in the interest in being transparent, I will let you know that I did get a comp copy MindManager 7 for review and testing the SnagIt output. I have paid my hard earned money for prior versions of MindManager.

What other programs do you use that you'd like SnagIt to output directly to? Comment away...we're listening.

I've posted about this in the past, but we have many new readers and I wanted to make sure everyone knows that you're invited to visit TechSmith. We love visitors! If you're ever in Okemos, Michigan, you are welcome to stop in.

We've had people visit us on vacation from as far away as Florida! Remember Phil Parr? I can't think of a better way to spend a vacation. :-)

Drop me an e-mail or call me on my cell, +1.517.410.0030 and I'll gladly schedule time for you to go on a quick tour, raid the swag room, meet the product teams so you can give them your feedback directly...and...if you come in on Friday, you can have lunch with the entire company! One of the cool things about TechSmith is that every Friday we all get together for lunch. It's a great time to catch up with friends from other departments or buildlings (we're in 4 buildings now).

Kate Sumbler from Tech Support took the pic of our front door. Come in and visit her too! She'll help you out on any of your SnagIt or Camtasia Studio questions...in person!

Sorry this is a day late. I had some technical difficulties in Barcelona. I'm at the Microsoft TechEd conference this week. If you're in the area, I'd love to meet-up!

OK, back to the Screencast of the Week! Nathan Segal at WebReference.com is writing a series on Camtasia Studio v5. You can see his tutorial complete with a screencast about SmartFocus here.

Nathan also wrote a series on Camtasia Studio v4. You can check out all of his Camtasia Studio v4 and v5 tutorials here.

Any nominations for our next Screencast of the Week? I'd love to find some screencasts about the holidays. Let me know if you have made any or have found any screencasts about the holidays.

...What would you say?

We're working on some new SnagIt t-shirts and I thought who bettter to ask about what they should say or look like than you! When you talk about SnagIt, what do you say?

Post in the comments or e-mail me.

What were you doing three years ago? It's been just over three years since the term, 'screencast' was chosen by Jon Udell to name that genre of videos. I had not realized it had been that long ago since the term was coined until I read this post on Jon's blog.

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Beth Kanter. Beth Kanter has a great Jing screencast sharing how she learned about screencasting from Jon Udell and her experience with screencasting. You can read her post and watch her Jing screencast here.

I can't wait to see where the next three years take us with screencasting! Any predictions? What are you going to do to celebrate?

We're celebrating the release of Camtasia Studio v5 in German today at TechSmith! You can find all the details here. You can also watch a video and even take it for a test drive. Features are the same great ones that are in the English version.

And, check out Dieter Schiecke and Axel Becker's German Camtasia Studio blog here. They'll have some posts on the new German version as well. That's Dieter and Axel pictured on the left from my last visit to Germany earlier this month.

Any feedback about the German version of Camtasia Studio? And I'm looking for someone to practice my German with. Any volunteers?

This week I'm off to Las Vegas for Autodesk University.

So, in honor of that, I thought I'd highlight a screencast about CAD. I found the following screencast on Robin Capper's blog. It runs just over 3 minutes.

I like this screencast because it seems like you're looking over Robin's shoulder. Screencasting is a great way that Robin can share his knowledge with anyone. You can read more about his video on his blog post here. Plus, Robin uses MindManager - a program I love, as you know.

And, you may remember Robin from Autodesk University last year. He made a Camtasia Studio video that won him a free trip to Las Vegas! You can read more about that here.

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

Did you get the new Jing release earlier this week? Version 1.4 came out on Wednesday. Jing shoudl have alerted you to the new update. You can find details about the release here. As you know, I love Flickr! So, one of my favorite updates is the option to output images directly to Flickr!

You also have the opportunity to help shape the future of Jing. We need your help. Please send your feedback about Jing by either posting here in the comments or leaving your feedback here. I'm begging and pleading with you for feedback.

You'll also notice when you install the update that you have the option to give us anonymous usage reporting. This helps us to help improve Jing for you and we will use the statistics about how the sharing methods are used. And, it helps us figure out where to head with the Jing Project.

Lastly, if you love Jing, we have some fun freebies for you - a couple different desktops, graphics and buttons. You can download them here.

And, as always, check out the Jing Project blog for the latest and greatest!