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It's been 5 years since Jon Udell invited his readers to propose names for making videos of software. They landed on the term Screencast for this genre.

And, since then, screencasting has grown leaps and bounds. It's easier to record and produce a screencast. Software and hardware have improved. The barriers to entry on screencasting have been lowered. You don't need a production studio or expensive, complex equipment to do it.

Our newsletter writer, Daniel Foster, recently wrote an article for one of my favorite blogs, ReadWriteWeb (RWW) about the rise of the micro-screencast that reviews some of the history of screencasting and some tips. You can read the post here.

How will you celebrate the 5th anniversary of the term 'Screencast' (someone please make me a screencast!)? :-) What do you think the future holds for this medium?

We asked, you responded! Remember last month when I asked for your tips to share with a new screencaster here? We compiled all of your comments from this blog post, as well as comments from the Education blog and our Newsletter. Big thanks to the 40 people who responded. I appreciate it!

From your responses and tips, we created a booklet "What would you tell a new screencaster?". Download your free copy here. If you left us a comment, your name will be listed in the booklet! Now, if I could just meet up with all the contributors and get a signed copy, I'd be all set!

The booklet has several sections including: General Tips, Content & Planning, Before Recording, During Recording, and Editing & Production.

The top tips (by number of mentions):

* plan out screencast &
do practice takes
* create a script/storyboard
* shut down apps to free up memory & avoid pop-up notifications
* use a good mic

Download your free copy here and feel free to share the PDF with others you think would find it useful.

Thanks to all who shared their knowledge and tips! What else would you like to learn from others about?

Calling all Camtasia users! There have been some great resources cropping up on the internet for screencasters and Camtasia users that I wanted to share with all of you.

First up, check out Scrast. Scrast is a site all about screencasting. Scrast launched earlier this year and they've been adding more content, tips and tricks and tutorials all the time. They have a nice section with 'Tips for better Screencasts' and a section dedicated to Camtasia.

Also, Camtasia Studio expert, Lon Naylor has set up the Camtasia Users Group. There are already 155 members sharing tips, tricks and techniques in the group. I love the tagline for the group, "Simply useful Camtasia stuff!".

Have you found other useful sites for Camtasia users and screencasters?

"Help, I need somebody, Help, not just anybody, Help, you know I need someone, help!"

Yes, I need your help! More and more people are screencasting. We're looking to gather and compile a list of the best screencasting tips to share with people that are new to screencasting or looking to take their screencasts to a new level.

If you have any tips to share, would you please comment on this post? I look forward to seeing your feedback and creating a great resource! So the question is:

What three things would you tell a new screencaster they must do to be successful?

Where will we use the info we gather? We'll post the results in a future newsletter and blog post.

Together we can make better screencasts! Thank you for your input - we could not do this without you!

Sometimes I hear people say that it is too hard to make videos. Think again! If you have 7 minutes, Ian Ozsvald of ProCasts can have you screencasting!

Ian just participated in BarCampBrighton4 and led a talk about ''Screencasting in 7 minutes with Jing' workshop at BarCamp Brighton 4'.

Check out Ian's blog post here and he'll show you how to start screencasting in 7 minutes. You'll see his video of his session and him helping others install Jing and make their first screencast. You will also see one his friends in the session use his MacBook to record his first screencast on searching Wikipedia (there is a link in the blog post above), plus Ian gives some tips on recording better screencasts.

Ian has some great tips for first time screencasters:

• Do a walk-through first of all so you're practiced
• Speak slowly and clearly
• Record the audio in a quiet room (you can clearly hear other background voices in Jez's example above - best avoid this if you're doing work for clients!)
• Don't wiggle the mouse to highlight something, prefer to use an editor later to add highlights or spotlights
• Just Do It - don't worry about it, just make a recording and repeat it if it wasn't good enough. Soon you'll have something online that Does The Job

Ian has made 170 screencasts since 2005 so he knows what he's talking about. :-) And, I'm excited for his next project to be released - he's working on 'The Screencasting Handbook'! Be sure to sign up on his website for updates.

We're busy working behind the scenes at TechSmith gearing up for the launch of Camtasia for Mac later this month! We're excited and hope you are too!

In the interim, I thought you might be curious about what kind of videos you'll be able to easily make with Camtasia for Mac. So, roll out the red carpet, grab some popcorn, and get comfortable... check out a screencast, Troy Stein, recently made using Camtasia for Mac.

Stay tuned... I'll be sharing more information and additional screencasts as we count down to the release of Camtasia for Mac on August 25!

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what's a screencast video worth? How about $2.4 million?! I was really excited to see this 'tweet' this morning on Twitter from Paolo Tosolini at Microsoft.

Paolo has been doing amazing stuff at Microsoft - he has created a "Podcast-in-a-Box". These are audio/video creation kits that allow Microsoft employees to capture and share their knowledge with each other in a rich multimedia format. In the Podcast-in-a-Box kit, there is a copy of Camtasia Studio plus a Flip video camera and professional audio recorder among other things.

Paolo captured a great video with Bob Lincavicks. Bob is an Information Worker Solution Specialist at Microsoft. He shares his story about how he leveraged Academy Mobile (Microsoft's internal enterprise podcasting platform) and applications like Camtasia as sales tools to close a $2.4M deal. How's that for ROI?! The video runs 4:30. Check out Bob's story below.

Paolo is willing to share his knowledge about enterprise podcasting with you - if you have any questions, email Paolo or you can find him on Twitter here

Got a story you'd like to share about how you're using Camtasia Studio, Snagit, Jing, Morae or Screencast.com? Grab a video camera and tell it to me! I'd love to share it!

Hey Camtasia Studio and Jing users! Are you up for a challenge?! I thought so! MindBites has a screencast contest and the grand prize is $1,000!

I know what you're asking yourself. Self? So, what is MindBites? Well, MindBites is a website where you can find, publish, sell and distribute video tutorials and how-to lessons (on the MindBites site, on your own site, and across the web). You can find instructional videos on everything from Calculus lessons to Photoshop tutorials.

Now, how do you win the screencast contest? Simply register at MindBites and then create and upload an original screencast tutorial. The lesson must be instructional in nature, focused on tech (e.g. software, development, or gaming), at least three minutes long, and meet the standard MindBites lesson guidelines. You can find the rules here.

What can you win? Well, there are two prizes - The Grand Prize winner will receive $1000 plus a copy of Camtasia Studio and Snagit. There is also a People's Choice Award winner who will walk away with $500 and a copy of Snagit!

So, what's the timeline?

* April 21st - Contest and weekly People's Choice voting begins
* May 18th (11:59 PM CST) - Entry Deadline
* May 19th - Daily People's Choicevoting begins
* May 26th (11:59 PM CST) - Daily voting ends
* May 27th - Winners announced

How do you vote? Simply login or register as a user (don't worry it's free and painless), click on the "All Entries - Vote!" tab here and add your vote to your favorite. And, as an added bonus every time you vote, 10¢ goes to the Youth for Technology Foundation (up to $1000)! Vote - it's for a good cause!

If you're on Twitter, you can follow along at @mindbites for reports on the contest and the hashtag to use on Twitter to tag contest tweets is: #cast4cash

And, in the interest of transparency, I have to let you know that TechSmith is a sponsor and I have the honor of being a judge.

I would love to see a Jing or Camtasia Studio user win this contest! And, I'm looking forward to seeing the great screencasts you create! Make me proud!

What would you do with the $1,000 if you win the Screencast contest?!

What I've learned over the past few years is that it is much harder to make a shorter screencast than a longer one. For the blog, my goal is usually around a 3-5 minute video. And, if I'm really pushing it, 10 minutes max. The shorter the screencast, the more I need to prepare. I know I personally prefer shorter videos that I can 'digest' quickly. And, if the screencast is longer, it needs to be really engaging. Otherwise, I prefer the screencast broken up into small chunks.

I asked on Twitter to see what people thought the ideal length of a screencast was. You can see some responses to below. One of TechSmith's Flash Developers, Brooks Andrus, has an interesting post on his blog proposing 120 seconds for video length. Is that long enough? I'm really curious to hear what you think. What's the ideal length of a screencast or Jingcast? How long are you willing to watch? Other thoughts?

My computer's desktop is often like my desk. Messy! Which is fine for every day work. But when you're making a screencast, a messy desktop can be an ugly sight and major distraction to your viewers.

Stardock released a new product today, Fences. Fences can help with the organization and 'housekeeping' of your computer's desktop. Fences allows you to group your desktop icons and files together for organization or it can hide them with the click of a button. Perfect for quick clean up of your desktop for screencasting.

Lifehacker did a great review of Fences today - you can read it here.

And, you can check out this demo video (made with Camtasia Studio!) about Fences.

The price is right on Fences - it is free! Found any nice tools to improve your screencasts lately?

At Microsoft TechEd last year, I met Peter Bruzzese, the Director of Screencast Production (I LOVE that title!), from ClipTraining. That's him pictured to my right. ClipTraining had a booth next to the TechSmith booth and they make a lot of Camtasia Studio screencasts. Talk about a great neighbor to have at TechEd!

We're all trying to tighten our belts and spend our money more wisely. An article Peter wrote at Infoworld caught my eye. He talks about how screencasts can fit into being a smart training option in a tough economy. Could screencasts be your secret weapon? Check out his article here. Have you saved money or travel costs using screencasts?

I got a new laptop last week and yes, it has Vista on it. And, there's a feature on Vista that's is great for screencasting! Tony Dunckel, the SnagIt Product Manager, tipped me off to it last week when he was prepping for a webinar and it occurred to me that it would work well for screencasting too!

When screencasting, it is good to have as little distraction in your video as possible. You want your viewers to focus on the topic at hand. One way to do this is to clean up your desktop or other areas you will be showing off. A little 'house-keeping' is good! I made a quick jingcast to show you how to clean up your desktop quickly in Vista (Note: I learned this option is available on XP too from Pierre and Owen. See comments below!). The video runs less than a minute.

Got a screencast tip to share? If so, I want to hear it! Or better yet, Jing it to me!

Mark your calendars - I just got word from Daniel Park at dappertext that he's being interviewed tomorrow on all things Camtasia Studio and dappertext by 'Views from the Coop'.

You can hear Daniel's interview live on Blog Talk Radio here tomorrow at 3pm EST, If you can't listen live, they usually post the podcast to their site here within about a week (usually). I can't wait to hear Daniel's tips and tricks. I always learn something new from him.

Daniel also has a new newsletter that is dedicated to screencasting. You can sign up for it here.

Put your screencasting skills to use and win some prizes! I noticed that Firefox is holding a screencasting contest and thought some of you might want to enter! FireFox needs your help to create screencasts for their support articles. Grand prize gets a Flip Video Ultra Series camera!

By the way, does anyone have a Flip Video Ultra Series? I was thinking about getting one. What do you think of it?

I've talked in the past about the importance of storyboards. I thought I'd also share another tool we use when planning our screencasts. We have a 'Video Project Form' that we use for planning before we record so we don't run into any 'gotchas' during recording or production. If you think about the goals of your video the audience before you make your screencast, it can change a variety of things like file format and video dimensions, if you use audio or captioning and other options.

You can download blank storyboards and a video project form here.

How do you prepare before you record your screencast?

I just learned that it's Videoblogging Week- April 20 - 28! It's not too late to celebrate. And, even though the organizers are talking about videos made with a camera, I think a screencast counts too. Afterall, you can easily record your screencast in Camtasia Studio complete with camera video combined with screen video together. There is a tutorial about how to do that here.

Judging on how my week is going so far, I probably won't have time to make a screencast a day to celebrate Videoblogging Week, but on my list for screencasts this week is one about creating iPod or iPhone videos with Camtasia Studio. But, I'm open to requests. What would you like to see?

There is a wiki full of info about Videoblogging Week which you can find here. Are you going to celebrate Videoblogging Week?

We've been laughing a lot at work lately about Lolcat pictures. If you haven't heard of Lolcats before, they are usually pictures of cats that have been captioned with internet slang and poor grammar. You can see a whole collection of the pictures at a website called 'I Can Has Cheezburger'. The Wall Street Journal even wrote an article which will tell you the history and background of Lolcats which you can read here.

The Lolcat photos always have great captions which brings me to SnagIt. SnagIt is perfect to make these types of images since it has tool that allows you to type text on an image. With SnagIt's Text Tool, you can add text and you can set the font, size, alignment and color of the text. SnagIt's Text Tool is useful to not only write captions, but also to add things like your copyright to an image, instructions, fill in content on a PDF form, and more. You can see in screenhots of the SnagIt Editor below where the Text Tool button is located (it looks like the letter 'A' on the left hand side).

I also made a quick little Jing screencast showing how I used SnagIt's Text Tool to create a Lolcat with my dog, Mutton, since I don't have a cat. (Would that then be a Loldog instead of a Lolcat?!). The screencast runs less than a minute long. And, no animals were harmed in the making of this screencast. Well, maybe Mutton's dignity was hurt, but she got lots of treats after the pic was taken. :-)

And, on a side note, do you have any suggestions for better captions for the Loldog pics of Mutton?!?

Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeeeep! Ever had one of those nights were you swear your head just hit the pillow and then your alarm goes off? I just had a whole week of that! I was running day until night...and often back into day at the Microsoft Mix and SXSWi conferences. The only thing that kept me running was a lot of Diet Coke! Consequently, the blog did not get updated for a few days. My apologies.

You can see some pictures here from SXSW and here for Microsoft Mix. The TechSmith crew had a great time meeting up with people doing amazing things with SnagIt, Camtasia and Morae. More stories on that later...

I also got great news that Daniel Park has started a new newsletter about all things screencasting called, 'The Screencaster'! You can sign up for it here. It's a free monthly newsletter all about the art of Screencasting.

Daniel told me the newsletter will be filled with tips, tricks, news, and reviews. And, he'll be focusing not just on the technology, but also be giving lots of attention to higher-level marketing and training topics as they relate to screencasting, so Sales Directors or IT Coordinators who are left wondering how to implement screencasting in their own organizations will all find something to like.

And, I'm told the first issue goes out early next week, so sign up now so you don't miss it.

To celebrate, I thought I would give away a few copies of Daniel's latest book, Camtasia Studio 5: The Definitive Guide! The first 4 people to comment on this blog post answering the following statement will get a free copy of the book - 'Camtasia Studio is {insert your answer here}...'

What are you doing to celebrate Valentine's Day? Are you boycotting it completely, hitting the town on a big date, or hanging out close to home? If you celebrate the holiday, it can be hard to plan for sometimes - ever wonder what your significant other likes or dislikes? Hate spending money on flowers that will wilt quickly or cards that will be thrown away and forgotten? Or maybe you have a secret crush that you are too shy to tell them how you really feel? It's your lucky day! Screencast expert, Molly McDonald aka DemoGirl comes to the rescue! She recently made two screencasts that can help you get through Valentine's Day.

The first screencast is about a new website called GetinHerHead. You can add your likes and dislikes for restaurants, clothing, and other items. That way there is no question about what you want or like. You can see Molly's blog post and screencast about it here. Molly also did a quick screencast about HadToSay - a website that gives you a fun and anonymous way to tell someone you have a crush on them. Check out Molly's post and screencast here.

My vote for a Valentine's Day gift? I say, give your crush or significant other a screencast for a gift. What's better than that? It's a personalized gift plus you can share your feelings and thoughts with them. And, as an added bonus, they can watch your screencast over and over. It will last a lot longer than that bouquet of flowers ever will. :-)

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. ;-)

Remember when I wrote about SnagIt's new output for Microsoft Visual Team System? Well, I went to TechEd with one of our Screencast.com developers, Justin Welsch. He made a quick screencast showing the new SnagIt output for Microsoft Visual Team System in action. Much better than a write-up about it.

Click the screenshot below to watch the quick screencast. There is no audio, just a demo of output in action. It runs less than 2 minutes

And, on a side note, here's a pic of where the TechSmith team gathered every night to discuss the events at TechEd - at the fountain in the Lobby with the ducks at the Peabody Hotel! We had a lot of fun staying at the Peabody Hotel. Not a bad place to debrief the day! Here is the history of the Peabody ducks.

Photo by the Peabody

Troy Stein, the Camtasia Studio Product Manager, was recently interviewed by Tom Cone over at Screencast Central. You can check out the interview here. You can hear how Troy uses Camtasia Studio 4 plus get his tips and tricks. You can hear Troy's thoughts on screencasting too.

I'm in the hot seat for an interview next week with Tom about screencasting and SnagIt. Anything you'd like us to cover?

And, if you haven't visited Screencast Central yet, give it a whirl. It's got lots of a great resources to get you started on your screencasting journey.

Remember way back here when I blogged about storyboarding your screencasts?

I was hanging out at a bookstore the other day and found something really fab! I'm addicted to these Moleskine notebooks for many reasons (thick paper, nice pocket, etc). So, I was really happy to see that they now make a storyboard notebook! Plus, it's the perfect size little notebook to jam in your pocket or backpack so you're always ready to scribble down your screencast and movie ideas.

Or, hack a regular Moleskine notebook and add the storyboard frames yourself. There's an article and instructions here. Looks pretty easy and there's a PDF template.

And, if you'd like a free storyboard, I uploaded the storyboard template that we use at work here and here.

I also found a neat video showing how an illustrator uses a Moleskine notebook to storyboard. Wish my storyboards looked that good! See the video below.

What tools have you found to help you with your screencasts?

Ever use Microsoft Paint? Who hasn't? Some people use it much better than others! That is certainly the case with a video I found this week.

I recently used Paint, and, it wasn't pretty. Here's an example of me trying to write my signature using only Paint and my mouse. It is legible enough, but it certainly doesn't match my real signature or look very good.

So, here's the amazing Camtasia video. Somehow the author is able to draw a realistic car using only Paint and a mouse! He's not even using a Tablet PC!

I also like the video because they use a little known feature in Camtasia Studio. Did you know that you can speed up or slow down your clip speed? If you right click on your timeline, you should see the menu below.

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

This is a handy feature. Especially if you'd like to shorten a lengthy video or slow down a clip to add additional audio.

We also had a video about this in our '30 Camtasia Studio Videos in 30 days' series which you can view here.

What amazing Camtasia Studio videos have you seen lately?

Screencast expert Jon Udell recently posted a great screencast here and had a blog post with his screencasting tips here.

I love his point about resizing the application window that you will be recording down to 800x600. It not only helps with file size but it also helps your viewers focus on the action. If you think about it, most of the action on your screen takes place in a very small area. Plus, don't you hate having to use the scroll bars when trying to view a video? The Zoom and Pan feature in Camtasia can be particularly useful when recording a smaller screen. In Camtasia, you can zoom and pan while recording or after you've recorded the screencast during editing. I prefer to zoom and pan during editing - the less I have to do at record time, the better.

I also love his tip about editing. Cut off the extra footage and take the video down to the essentials. The longer the screencast we make, the fewer viewers. I have a hard time keeping our screencasts short, but I'm working on it. I have to learn to shut up! :-)

I also agree with Jon's tip to make screencasts more interactive. I find screencasting with someone is easier and more entertaining. That's how I usually do our screencasts. I prefer not to screencast solo. Plus, you get to hear more than my point of view. I prefer to watch and make interview-style screencasts.

You can read all of Jon's tips here. What tips do you have after watching or creating some screencasts?

One of the things I love about Camtasia Studio is the fact it can be faster to make a video than to write an e-mail or report.

Lately, I've been making screencasts to show new technology to my fellow TechSmithies and friends. I thought I'd share some of the videos with you (if you don't mind). Nick Gorsline, our Senior Web Designer, sat down to make a screencast about Twitter with me.

I'm addicted to Twitter. Basically it's a social broadcast site - you simply sign-up, add friends and post what you're currently doing or thinking (really, anything) from the web, IM, or your phone...in 140 characters or less. Simple! Now I can show the world how boring I really am! :-)

Actually, I like Twitter because it is conversational. At first I was skeptical of it, but you learn a lot about your friends and contacts that you might not learn through e-mail or blog posts. And, all your favorite techies are on Twitter like Robert Scoble of PodTech, Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome, Marc Orchant from ZDNet and Foldera, Jeff Barr from Amazon, Tablet PC MVP James Kendrick and Kevin Tofel and more...

Click the screenshot below to start the video. It's under 5 minutes.

Twitter has cut down on e-mail for me. I've posted messages on Twitter instead of sending e-mail. And, some of us have been using it for conference meet-ups. I've also met other local techies in Michigan.

If you join Twitter, add me as a friend. You can find me under the Twitter ID, 'Betsy Weber' on Twitter. Original, huh?

To make this video, I used Camtasia Recorder. Then, in Camtasia Studio, I removed a few seconds of the intro and produced it. When listening to the audio during editing, I noticed, I say 'um' or 'cool' a lot. My feature request for the Camtasia Studio team? An 'um' filter, please! I need an automated way to cut all the 'ums' out...or train myself not to say it at all. ;-)

Hardware:

• Dell Latitude D820
• Samson CO3U Microphone

Software:

• Camtasia Studio

I ran into Kathy Jacobs at the APCUG Conference yesterday. You might remember her from this recent OneNote screencast. She sat down with me to do a quick screencast on how she uses SnagIt. She'll teach you new tricks and give you ideas on how to use SnagIt differently than you normally do.

The video is just over 11 minutes. Click the pic below to start the video. In my tests, the screencast ran fine on Internet Explorer, but I had problems with FireFox. I'll try to get this fixed on Monday. For now, please use IE.

To make the screencast, here's what we used:

Hardware:

• Dell Laptop - Latitude D820
• Panasonic MiniDV Camcorder
• 2 Lapel Microphones with a Y-cable/splitter

Software:

• SnagIt
• Internet Explorer
• Camtasia Studio

Plus, one dark and cold conference room at the Riviera Hotel

Does this count toward my new years resolution of a screencast a week?

Way back in September (yes, I'm behind), at PowerPoint Live, Kathy Jacobs sat down with me to show me what's new with OneNote 2007, one of my favorite programs.

Not only is Kathy a PowerPoint MVP, but she is also a OneNote MVP. She's the expert and has even written a book about OneNote.

OneNote is a quick way for me to take, share and organize notes. I usually draft my blog posts, plan projects and write longer emails in it. And, it has a great option for searching all of your notes so you can easily find them. I love love love OneNote! Did I mention that I love OneNote?! I also love that OneNote autosaves your content. As soon as you type it, OneNote saves it so you never have to worry about losing your data if your computer crashes. I use it all the time and often use it instead of Word.

Click the screenshot below to start the screencast. It runs just under 10 minutes. Kathy shows me the new features and some tricks in the new version of OneNote 2007. We recorded this screencast in an uncontrolled environment so we did not have the ideal recording conditions between the audio and lighting, but it should be tolerable.

If you'd like to try out OneNote 2007, you can visit here to give it a try.

Any requests for the next screencast?

The SnagIt Product Manager, Tony Dunckel, and the Lead SnagIt Developer, Paul Middlin, geek out over SnagIt v8.2 in this new screencast.

They'll walked you through all the new features and enhancements of SnagIt v8.2.

Click the screenshot below. The screencast runs about 15 minutes. The video is also available for the iPod or MP3 so you can take them to go. Enjoy!

When planning our screencasts and videos, we'll often storyboard them out. Our storyboards are simply a rough sketch of what we want to cover in the screencast and the content we want to talk about. Our better videos happen when we pre-plan them out. Go figure. Storyboarding helps us organize the content of the video and makes sure we cover all topics we need to incorporate in the video.

For example, here's a pic of the storyboard used in a recent video Kelly Rush made about UserVue.

You can see the video created from the storyboard here. The part from the storyboard is at about 2m:33s into the video (almost the end).

I recently found these storyboard pads of paper at Levenger that I thought some of you might be interested in as well. They're nice to use when planning your screencasts.

Or, if you'd like a free template for a storyboard, download a copy of the ones we use internally here and here.

What have you found useful when planning for your videos?

How do you create a new product from start to finish in 30 days? I'm not sure just quite yet, but Dana Epp from Scorpion Software will show you how with Project Anvil.

Project Anvil is Dana's quest to develop one product, by himself, and make it ready for beta in a month. So, ask me at the end!

He's blogging and screencasting all along the way so you can watch and learn from his journey too. Check out the Project Anvil blog here. It's best to start with the first post here. Dana will show you the development process he goes through as well as all the tools, technologies, and methods he uses to build the software.

Check it out...one month, one man, one project! Oh, and he has some great screencasts made with Camtasia Studio too!

Make sure your microphone is plugged into the microphone jack and not the headphone jack.

<*sigh*>

Am I the only one this happens to? Seriously?

See what happens when techies meet over dinner? You end up screencasting!

Brooks Andrus, our senior Flash developer, and I went out to dinner last night. We were talking about all the new screencasts popping up and how it's exciting to see videos become more prevalent online. With the news from the VloggerCon about Robert Scoble leaving Microsoft and going to PodTech.net, it's only increasing the visibility of podcasting, video blogs (vlogging) and screencasts. Great news, in my opinion.

So, part of the way into our conversation, we decided we should be screencasting about it. I ran out to my car and grabbed my laptop, webcam, and microphone. Even though it was pretty noisy and dark at PF Chang's, we gave it a shot.

Granted, dark restaurants don't make for the best 'studio' in terms of sound and lighting, but it will do. It was a spur of the moment thing. That's one of the positives of screencasting - you can do it anywhere!

So, click the screenshot below to start our screencast. We ramble on for 9:26 minutes and discuss Robert Scoble, RocketBoom, equipment to get you started screencasting, LabRats.tv and GottaBeMobile and more... plus at the end, you can hear our fortunes from our fortune cookies.

On the last day during the last hour of the expo, I was able to get a quick screencast with Tablet PC MVP Craig Pringle.

You remember him, right? I blogged about him earlier in the week. I also have one correction to that post - I mentioned Craig showed me his Ultra Mobile PC, (UMPC, also known as Origami Project), and that was incorrect. He has a Tablet PC which happens to be pretty darn small.

So, Craig did an obviously much-needed screencast to teach me the difference between a Tablet PC and a UMPC.

I learned something and I think you will too! Click the screenshot below to watch the screencast. It runs 4 minutes.

And, here's a side by side comparison of Craig's Tablet (left) and the UMPC (right).

For more information on the UMPC, visit here.

To learn more about the ultra-cool Tablet PCs, visit here.

Plus, Craig has several recent posts on the subject which you can read here and here.

Did I get everything right this time? : - )

It's been an exciting week for Camtasia Studio and screencasting!

Jeremy Wagstaff, a Wall Street Journal columnist, has a great directory of screencasting resources on his site, the LOOSE wire blog.

Jeremy also wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal about screencasting which you can read here. Read it quick, this reprint will be posted for only a month!

I recently found some Google SketchUp screencasts. They're a perfect example of what Jeremy writes about in his Wall Street Journal column and blog post. Click the screenshot below to watch a Google SketchUp screencast.

Try explaining that Google SketchUp video with only text. Not only would it take a long time to write...but it wouldn't paint the clearest picture.

And, if you know who made this video, let me know. I'm trying to contact the creator!

Outside of the rain, I'm having a fine time in New York City. What's not to enjoy? I spent Monday at Fog Creek's offices in the Fashion District of Manhattan visiting with Joel Spolsky and Sumana Harihareswara. Tuesday and today have been spent at the Syndicate conference. And, I have ventured down to Greenwich Village and Little Itay for dinner with friends.

So, back to Fog Creek Software. They have just come out with a new version of their bug tracking software, FogBugz, which is a project management system we use here at TechSmith in a variety of departments.

Babak Ghahremanpour and Sumana Harihareswara of Fog Creek made a great Camtasia video for the launch of their latest version of FogBugz 5.0. What I like about this video is that it's a great blend of showing the people behind Fog Creek and showing what's new in a product. Click the screenshot below to watch their video. It's a quick video that runs about 2:30 minutes.

I had a few minutes to sit down with Sumana, one of the employees in the video above. She's in Fog Creek's Software Management Training Program - you can read more about it here. Hey TechSmith - Maybe we should look at doing something similar?!

Sumana talked with me about the program and professional development, plus the Camtasia Studio video they recently made. Click the screenshot below to watch our screencast. It runs almost six minutes.

And, check out their reading list! It's impressive - lots of good books for people to read in any industry.

Recently, Presenters University asked me to write an article for them. I knew I wanted to write it about screencasting, but as I worked on it, I knew it would be even better if I asked screencasting experts for their top tips.

You can visit the article here: http://www.presentersuniversity.com/visuals_screencasting.php

I got input from a diverse group, including:

• Andy Walker of Lab Rats TV and Cyberwalker fame
• Rob Howard over at Telligent
• Thom Robbins from Microsoft
• Bill Myers from Bill Myers Online
• Anthony Garcia from Future Now
• Jean-Claude Bradley at Drexel University
• Yoz Grahame at Ning
• Will Richardson at Hunterdon Central Regional High School
• Troy Chollar from TLC Creative and PowerPoint MVP
• Hans Mestrum from Tulip Computers
• Mathcasting team of Tim Fahlberg, Graeme MacNeil and Linda Fahlberg-Stoljanovaska

The article is full of links, great ideas, and even a screencast!

If you've never visited Presenters University, check them out. It's a site dedicated to helping you make your next presentation the best it can be. It's sponsored by the good people at InFocus, the projector company.

Interested in collaborating with me on an article? E-mail me, and let me know the topic!

My teachers always said I worked well with others...

I thought some of you might be interested in what Brooks Andrus, our Senior Flash Developer, presented on at Flash in the Can. So, we made a screencast late last night about his presentation and accompanying screencasts.

So, with that, watch the screencast and you can see me pretend to understand what Brooks is talking about! Actually, his presentation had a little bit of something for everyone - whether you're a Camtasia Studio beginner or Flash Expert.

Click the screenshot below to watch the screencast. It runs just under 10 minutes - 9:58 minutes.

You can find more screencasts on his blog, Cogito Ergo Flammeus.

Ok, Brooks - you've been holding out on me. This is a really cool screencast. Why didn't you show me how do this before?!

Is this kind of stuff helpful for you? Do you want more screencasts like this? Let me know...

When I go to trade shows, I'm always asked to send a daily report back to work. (They want to make sure I'm on my best behavior.) So, instead of typing up a long report, I thought I'd do a screencast.

Brooks Andrus, our Flash guru, and I did a screencast from the show floor at Flash in the Can on Sunday.

Not much to say about this one...You'll just have to watch it. It's pretty funny. Click on the screenshot below to play - it's a little over 10 minutes so get comfortable.

My pics from the show are on Flickr here.

Wish you were here!

I'm hearing a lot of terms thrown around for videos, and I'm getting confused. Am I the only one?

Jon Udell coined the term 'screencast' which I'm partial to. Since you're 'broadcasting your screen' on your blog or Web site, it seems logical. That's how I usually refer to Camtasia Studio video online.

I've also been hearing videos referred to as Vodcasts, Vidcasts, and Video Podcasts. The Tablet PC bloggers over at GottaBeMobile.com are calling Camtasia Studio videos on the Tablet PC...Ink Shows. Ink Show makes sense to me - I definitely like it for Tablet PC Camtasia Studio videos.

Chris Henley over at Microsoft is calling them Podcasts on his Blue Blog.

Tim Fahlberg at CoolSchoolTools.com is calling his Camtasia math videos: MathCasts.

Paul Pival, the Distant Librarian is calling them Librarycasting.

Anyone hear other terms? What do you think Camtasia Studio video on blogs should be called?

On a side note, I found this nice article online about the seven things you need to know about screencasting. It has an education focus, but the information is useful. Check it out here.

I had an amazing time at the O'Reilly Emerging Tech Show! I have jet lag, but it's well worth it. At the show, I met up with some cool people like Yoz Grahame from Ning at our booth.

Yoz made an amazing Camtasia Studio screencast, plus he detailed the creation process on his blog. If you're interested in screencasting, he has a lot of great tips and tricks and mentions some 'gotchas' to avoid. You can read some of his screencasting tips here.

Click the screenshot below to see his screencast!

I didn't know much about Ning before I saw the screencast, but now I know more - Ning gives you a way to create your own Social Web App in just a few steps. It's easy - check it out here.

There's even an alternate screencast. He used the same Camtasia Studio video screen capture, except he just replaced the audio. Trust me, you want to spend the extra six minutes to hear his alternate version. It's like a Monty Python screencast! Truly brilliant! Click here to view the alternate screencast.

I can't wait to see what Yoz comes up with next.

I spoke on Tuesday with Joel Spolksy about Project Aardvark, now known as Copilot, and usability. Part of the talk was based off of this PDF white paper about User Experience - UX 2.0.

If anyone is interested, I can upload the PowerPoint slides. Let me know.

Click here for some pics from our trip out to San Diego for the O'Reilly show.

Hat tip to Jon Udell for posting the Ning screencast on his blog.

I'm sitting in Detroit Metro Airport after catching the redeye home from the FlashForward Conference in Seattle - and I decided to spring for the overly expensive wifi because I've found something so exciting!

I found a great Camtasia Studio screencast that I can't wait to show off - finally! I've been hoping to see how the next Windows OS, Vista, works beyond the screenshots I've seen posted.

Chris Henley at Microsoft has posted a Camtasia Studio screencast about Vista's Speech Recognition on his blog, Blue. You can read his post about the screencast here.

If you're curious to see Vista in action, check out the video. I may be a little biased (OK, a lot), but I think this video of Vista is much more compelling than the basic screenshots I've seen in the past.

Click the screenshot below to launch the video podcast.

Chris says he has more Vista screencasts planned. Can't wait to see what he shows us in his next video podcast!

I'm starting a new slang word...Camtacular! Feel free to use it whenever you see a 'spectacular Camtasia Studio' screencast or video.

We were having a little fun here at the office with the other day with Camtasia Studio 3.1's new side-by-side video display and ended up with camtacular results.

Watch our Digital Media Designer, Ann Dack, take on Google Earth with a globe. Anyone want to bet who wins?

Click the screenshot below to watch the 4 minute and 40 second video.

I think you'll find this video camtacular as well! Let me know if you've seen any other camtacular videos or screencasts...or have your own slang to describe them.

I wanted to go more in depth about the new features in Camtasia Studio 3.1 for you.

So, I asked the Camtasia Studio developers to make screencasts of the features they worked on. Who better to tell you about the ins and outs of the new features than the person that actually made them?!

So let me introduce developer Marty Gardner! His screencast focuses on captioning - one of the new main features of 3.1. He gives great tips on making it easier to add captions to your video.

Click on the screenshot below to start the screencast!

What's the next feature you'd like to see a screencast for?

To get to the Elvis impersonator on the other side!

We're having a great time out here at CES! It's been a long time since I've been to a huge show like this - the last time was for Comdex - and I nearly forgot how impressive they are.

It's so exciting to see all the new and upcoming technology. I'm seeing lots of mobile devices I want to try out with my Camtasia Studio videos. (Are any of you putting your Camtasia Studio videos on a PocketPC, Palm or other mobile devices? If so, I'd love to get your feedback.)

I also found a few small Tablet PCs I want to investigate more. I'm looking to do more screencasts when I'm on the go and while my Dell laptop is great, it's not conducive to carrying around a show floor...and these Tablet PCs look like they need a home.

I also saw some huge monitors! Do you think anyone would notice if I brought one of those back to the office?

Skype is at CES, giving out headsets and program CDs. So, I finally got around to getting Skype - I think I'm the last one! Skype me at: BetsyWeber

I have a big day on Friday. I'll be meeting up with the Microsoft Tablet PC MVPs to see and hear how they're using SnagIt and Camtasia Studio, and I'll also ask their advice on which Tablets to check out on the show floor. I'll also be heading out to a geek/blogger dinner with Robert Scoble, Chris Pirillo and Jake Ludington and other blogger celebrities. I'm looking forward to some great conversations, because it's always interesting to meet people in person after you read their blogs for so long.

Anything you want me to check out for you? E-mail me or post in the comments, and I'll try to do my best to be your roving reporter. And if you want any more pictures with impersonators, I think I saw Marilyn Monroe around here somewhere...

I've posted my pics from day one at show here. Enjoy!

This week I was lucky that Carla Wardin, our marketing writer, was in the office. Normally she telecommutes from Connecticut.

With her in the office, I took the opportunity to make a quick screencast. Yep, that's right - we made a screencast about screencasts!

We found some great Camtasia Studio screencasts - one screencast about using Google Maps, another made up of vacation pictures, and a cute video about a birthday. Click on the screenshot below to start the screencast.

So, we hope these inspire you to make your own Camtasia Studio videos to preserve the memories and fun along the way...and of course, to get going in the right direction in the first place.

Happy New Year!

After I posted the screencast about the new features in Morae, I had a few questions for viewers about what Morae does ... and even what it is.

So, I sat down with the Morae Product Manager, Shane Lovellette, for a quick Morae 101 screencast. In the screencast, Shane will demonstrate what Morae is, when you would use it in your organization, and how it will help you. Click the screenshot below to start the video.

Feel free to submit more questions by either e-mailing me or posting in our blog comments, and we'll try to answer them in a screencast. Let us know what you want the next screencast to cover!

If you haven't noticed already, we like to do things a little differently around TechSmith, and today's Secret Santa luncheon was no exception. Instead of the normal Secret Santa gift exchanges, we added a little twist - you have to get your gifts off of eBay! It makes for some fun and interesting gifts, ranging from vintage cookbooks to Napoleon Dynamite lunchboxes. And of course, the stories of the searching, bidding, and winning are the best part.

Well, despite the magic of eBay, not all the gifts made it through the mail on time. The gift I was gave didn't come on time either, so I just wrapped up a printout of the auction I won and presented that at the lunch.

However, Brian Lesperance from Sales had a much more creative way to give me my gift that didn't come on time. He made a Camtasia Studio screencast!

Thank you, Brian - you made my day! He is one technologically-advanced Secret Santa. This video is almost as good as the gift. Watch for yourself! Click the screenshot below to watch.

I posted a few pics from our luncheon here.