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!

When Beth Kanter talks, I listen! Beth is wonderful for so many reasons. Beth is very innovative and is a rock star in the Nonprofit world. She teaches Nonprofits to effectively use technology and social media. She also happens to be a Camtasia Studio user. :-)

Beth caught my eye the other day when she posted this on Twitter:
 
  
What a cool use of Camtasia Studio! The UN World Food Programme (WFP) recently launched a video blog called 'On the Road'. Bloggers are using a Flip Video Cam and Camtasia Studio for editing to show what is going on in the field - often by candle light and racing the computer battery before it dies.

The first series was shot in Tanzania with Marcus Prior. Some of the videos shows what life is like in a Masai village, their new irrigation system, and you can even see Marcus sample some goat. Another video follows school kids on their 6km walk to get water for cooking their lunch. Check out several videos made with Camtasia Studio here - 'On the road: Tanzania'. They're quick videos - none of them run longer than 3:30 minutes.

I love these videos - they're gritty and eye opening. I like how fast they can be created and shared. What better way to show the world what life is like in the field? And, these videos tell a story - storytelling is one of the most important parts of interesting and engaging screencasts.

And, if you are bringing your Flip video (MP4) into Camtasia Studio, I've heard a few people are getting a no codec error message. If you run into this, check out this workaround.

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

I was poking around on Twitter the other day and this tweet caught my eye.

Recently Microsoft launched some new technology called Bing. So, Len Charnoff's tweet about Bing caught my eye. I was curious about Bing - It's a new search engine. And, as you know, screencast is a perfect way to show new technology off in action. In addition to reading about new tech, I really like to see the new tech in action.

Len Charnoff has made not one, but three screencasts reviewing some of Bing's new features. Len's screencasts were perfect timing for me so I could see Bing in action before trying it. I also like Len's use of title slides, transitions and callouts.

In his first screencast, Len reviews Bing's free 411 information service (a voice activated information service from Microsoft - 800-246-4411). He shows off how to find a restaurant. Very useful for someone like me who travels a lot and is frequently lost (it gives directions!). :-) You can view the video here.

He also tests out the Weather and Traffic sections of Bing 411 in this screencast here. He has an update to the Traffic portion of the screencast here

You can learn more about Len here.

Congrats Len for being our Screencast of the Week! You have bragging rights! :-)

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? You can even nominate yourself if you like.

A big part of my job is to listen. I am the conduit between you and the company and I need to make sure the different teams at TechSmith hear your feedback. Feedback often comes in through a variety of channels including email, our website, in person at a tradeshow or online in a blog post, on Twitter, and other places.

When I attended Microsoft Mix09 earlier in the year, I noticed they had a cool program running before the keynote presentations that visually showed everything people posted on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Digg and blogs with the conference tag, Mix09.

What if I could do the same thing at TechSmith as a fun way to show off feedback? We have an all-staff Monday Morning Meeting at 8am and all each lunch together on Fridays. I found out they used a little app called Flotzam at Microsoft Mix. So, I loaded Flotzam on the computer in our main conference room and have started running Flotzam during those all-staff events!

It's free and entirely configurable to show your choice of keywords. I like this screencast because Flotzam is easier to understand when you see it in action.

Click the screenshot below to go to the Flotzam website. They have a nice Camtasia Studio screencast on the homepage! It runs just over a minute. My only recommendation is to have a full-screen option of the screencast so we can see Flotzam in all of its glory. Enjoy!

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

I'm sitting in the San Francisco Airport waiting to catch the red-eye flight home to Detroit so I thought I'd sneak in a quick blog post. I was out in California for Social Web FooCamp. I met a lot of amazing people who are shaping the future of the web, social networking, the social graph, and new technologies. Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb showed me one of the coolest (and scariest?) Firefox extensions I've seen in awhile called Identify. Basically, you install the extension and then when you're on a social network or media site, with the press of two keystrokes you can pull up profile information for a person on a wide range of sites they participate on (like Twitter, digg, Flickr, etc). And, in some cases, even phone numbers and mailing addresses! This is a good way for you to see if there is more information about yourself out there than you want to share.

Marshall did a great write-up on the extension here and even included a nice screencast made with Jing so you can see the extension in action. I liked Marshall's screencast because it is a great way to show off new tech. It's quick and to the point.

Time for me to catch my flight! Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week?

This week's Screencast of the Week comes to us from a professional screencaster, Ian Ozsvald of ProCasts!

I liked this screencast for several reasons. Ian made great use of Camtasia Studio's SmartFocus feature - he used it to focus your attention on certain areas of the screen and show greater detail. The audio quality is great on this screencast which is important as viewers are generally intolerant of poor audio. The background audio music was a great touch and added polish to the screencast. And, Ian has a great voice for narration! The screencast runs 1:32 and is short and to the point. Perfect!

Ian gave me some info about how he made the screencast. The video was recorded with Camtasia Studio 5 and audio recorded using his sE2200a mic in Audacity. Visual effects were added using Adobe AfterEffects. Ian mentioned "We went with the screencast-in-monitor effect to give some context to not-so-computer-literate users who might be installing their first plugin for Firefox." Ian also said, "... since Adblock is the top1 (to top3, depends on the week) plugin for Firefox, many first-timers to Firefox try it and have questions, we tried to answer all those questions in this video." Screencasts are a great way to help first time users.

Ian is also publishing a 9-part blog series on how and why to screencast. Check it out here. And, this series formed the basis of a 40 minute podcast interview in Joel Spolsky's Business of Software forums. You can listen to the podcast here and read the discussion here.

You can follow Ian on his blog here or on Twitter here. Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week?

After taking some time off, I think it's time to get back into the Screencast of the Week here on the Visual Lounge...

I was lucky enough to attend Microsoft Mix last week in Las Vegas. While there, I met up with the colaab guys (that's Bob and Jonathan on the left sporting some nice kilts!) who had crossed the pond from Scotland to attend the event.

I found out that colaab had used Camtasia Studio to make some of their demo videos. I picked them as this week's Screencast of the Week for a couple reasons. Not only did I enjoy their videos (Scottish accent makes for great voice overs. :-) ) but also colaab seems like it would be a great tool for people that use TechSmith products.

colaab offers real-time collaboration over a wide range of resources, all through the web browser. That means you could import something like video made with Morae or Camtasia Studio (WMV file) or an image or document made with Snagit (PDF, PNG, JPG, GIF) for easy collaboration with your team.

I uploaded a Camtasia Studio WMV in colaab and was easily able to add comments and annotations at any point on the video timeline. It kind of reminds me of the old VH-1 show, Pop-up Video. I made a quick Jingcast to show how to add comments and annotations on a Camtasia Studio WMV in colaab. You can see it here (note - there is no audio).

With more people needing to work with teams around the world, colaab seems like a great way to collaborate online and cut down travel expense. There is even a free trial.

You can see many of the colaab screencasts here.

There was also a 'Show Off' contest at Mix09. And, Bob made this great screencast with Camtasia Studio to show off a prototype application - DeepZoom Visual Site Search. You can check out the screencast here. And, read more about the project on their blog here.

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? No kilt required, but it is encouraged. :-)

I love it when users share their screencasts with me! This week's Screencast of the Week was submitted by Kanika Jackson, the Business Development and Training Specialist from a software company c360 Solutions.

Kanika recently had to scramble to create several product videos that needed to be updated. She was handed the "Camtasia Studio 4: The Definitive Guide" by Daniel Park (By the way, Daniel is updating this book for Camtasia Studio v6) and had to jump in to creating the screencasts! Kanika made good use of both SmartFocus and call-outs to show better detail. Both are a great way to focus your viewer's attention. Check out her screencast below.

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? Email me or leave a comment. You could be next!

One of the things I love about my job is working with people in a variety of industries. I'm always amazed at who is using our software. And, this week was no different. I have to admit, I was surprised when I heard from Robin Heppell from Funeral Futurist about who he was creating screencasts for - funeral professionals! Robin is a funeral director and consultant! But, he's not your ordinary funeral consultant - he's utilizing technology like no one else in his industry!

I picked Robin's videos for the Screencast of the Week because he's bringing screencasts to a non-traditional industry and bridging the technical divide. Even if you're not in the funeral industry, you can learn from Rob about how he is utilizing technology. Check out some of Robin's screencasts here:

• Relationship Marketing for Funeral Homes
• 5 Fatal Flaws Funeral Directors Make On The Phone
• Funeral Industry Tutorials

Also, check out the quick Q&A that I (BW) did with Robin (RH). Enjoy!

BW: How have videos, images and screenshots changed your own communication for the better?

RH: The funeral industry, like many industries, is a relationship-based industry. Relationships are how funeral directors have created their own businesses, so I can build and strengthen my relationships with my clients (the funeral directors) with videos as they get more familiar with my expertise and personality.

BW: Are your videos, images and screenshots used internally or externally? What is the viewer response to them?

RH: I create a lot of free training or tips for external use as my main form of marketing. If I am recording a demonstration with a client, it usually contains sensitive information so that video is used internally for them. But since I have taken some notes and have an outline for demonstration, I will immediately record a similar, generic video and upload it to be another externally marketing / training piece.

BW: What do you use Camtasia Studio for primarily?

RH: Recording training courses for funeral directors with PowerPoint & Camtasia.

BW: What do you use SnagIt for primarily?

RH: Screen captures of Google results displaying how to dominate those results with online video (many of those videos are produced by Camtasia - kinda full circle eh?)

BW: What are the last three captures in your Open Captures Tray?

RH: Google Results for "Funeral Consulting" , Home page of a funeral home website I created with WordPress, Order form from my online shopping cart.

BW: What was the last video project you worked on about?

RH: "Price Shopper Secrets" training course that teaches funeral directors how to be more effective when talking with price shoppers on the phone.

BW: Is there one feature of Camtasia Studio v6 that has flat-out delighted you? Tell me about it...

RH: YouTube preset. It was the only change that I needed to see to want to upgrade to Version 6!

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

As a kid, I was constantly drawing. As a student, often my notes from class were supplemented with sketches and doodles. And, now as an adult, I often sketch out ideas and concepts for work projects. I like drawing out diagrams, mindmaps and flow charts. I find it can be easier and more effective to plan, share information and concepts with visuals. A picture is worth a thousand words as they say...

I'm out in Banff this week at CanUX. I know, I know. I will try to suffer through it. :-) One of the speakers is Dave Gray from XPLANE (That's him on my right at Lake Louise, Alberta on Sunday). I've had the honor of seeing him speak at the VizThink conferences and he is always interesting and inspiring.

And, it just so happens that Dave uses Camtasia Studio. Check out his video about the basic principles of visual language - Forms, fields and flows.

You can see additional videos and content from Dave here.

And, if you're interested in what's going on at CanUX, Kaleem Khan will be live tweeting the event. Follow his Twitter stream here to see what's going on.

And, in interest of transparency, TechSmith is a sponsor of CanUX.

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

After attending the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) recently, I have to say that I'm excited to see some of the technology they demoed at the conference. Attendees walked away with "the goods" so that they could install and start playing with Windows 7 which is the next version of Windows. I was happy to run into blogger Long Zheng (that's him pictured on the right) at the conference.

After PDC, Long made a quick screencast showing off a new feature in Windows 7. It runs 15 seconds (no audio). You can see the video here. I like this video because its a perfect use of a screencast - it is a quick way to show a new feature in action. It is nice to have full blown longer demos, but small and sweet is nice sometimes too! And, even though Windows 7 won't be available for retail for another few years, we can still see Windows 7 in use with screencasts. Expect more screencasts of Windows 7!

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

Earlier this summer, a longtime friend, Shaan Hurley from Autodesk, stopped by TechSmith for a visit! That's a pic of us on the left in our Shipping Department along with Tony Dunckel, the SnagIt Product Manager. Shaan's been a long time user of SnagIt and Camtasia Studio.

Shaan travels the world showing users how to use Autodesk products. I was reading his blog the other day and noticed this recent post. He had a great screencast in the post which you can see below which is this week's Screencast of the Week.

I picked this as the Screencast of the Week for a couple reasons. First, I liked that it was short and succinct. I love quick tips and tricks. I also liked it because Shaan was sharing his answers to users questions from around the world. What better way to answer a user question than with a video showing exactly where to find the feature in question? And, location no longer matters - Shaan can be anywhere in the world (and usually is) and answer questions with a quick screencast. Perfect use of technology!

TechSmith will be at Autodesk University in December. If you're attending the show or are in Las Vegas, stop by and see us.

And, that reminds me. If you'd like to come visit TechSmith like Shaan did this summer, our doors are open! We love having visitors! Email or call me (+1.517.410.0030) and I'll give you a tour, you can meet the product teams to give them your feedback directly, and I'll even treat you to lunch. Come on in!

Ever dream of being chased up a tower of padded mats closely followed by a muscleman who is trying to throw you over the edge of the mountain toward your impending doom?! Well, Tiffany Florentine was up for the challenge! That's Tiffaney pictured to the left (pic from the NBC American Gladiators website). She recently tried out to be a contestant on American Gladiators.... and made it to the competition with some help from Camtasia Studio! Blog readers, you're in for a treat with the week's Screencast of the Week!

I heard from Robin Moore, one of Tiffaney's co-workers at Deloitte Consulting, about Tiffaney's plight to make the competition of American Gladiator.

Tiffaney had made it through the second and third level trials, but needed to submit a 10 minute video that "sold her story" to the team of judges to make the next level. The kicker? She only had a 48 hour notice to shoot and submit the completed video. Lucky for Tiffaney, Robin had experience with video.

Tiffaney and a friend went out that night to film her. They got some footage of Tiffaney running around Michigan's state capitol in Lansing wearing only her signature spandex in 18 inches of snow! Now that is dedication! It's hard to look tough when you're freezing!

Early the next day, Tiffaney brought Robin the footage on a flash drive to start making the video. There was only about 9 hours left to work on it before it had to be in the overnight mail. To Robin's surprise, she had raw video files straight out of the camera. Not the converted files. After Robin downloaded the files, it took her a while to even find the right codec so she could view the videos. And, Robin wasted another hour looking online for anything that could convert the video into a readable format.

Robin had used Camtasia Studio countless times for software capture (Robin used it extensively. We worked together on Morae training videos several years ago), but never tried it for full-motion video. She decided to give it a shot. And, the good news was that Camtasia Studio was able to import and manipulate all the video files Robin needed. And, they were back on track! Robin and Tiffaney spent the next 6 hours glued to Robin's monitor splicing about 40 video clips together and mixing in some photos, transitions and fun music to complete a 10 minute video. They produced the video, burned it on to a CD and drove, I'm told recklessly, to the latest overnight pickup location they could find. Tiffaney almost tackled the delivery guy who was on his way out of the parking lot. They had made the deadline!

With Camtasia Studio's help, Tiffaney was able to win her contestant role!

Check out Tiffaney's Camtasia video here.

And you can read Tiffaney's bio on NBC's American Gladiator website here.

And, Tiffaney writes of her own experience on the show here.

I think Robin and Tiffaney make quite the team, don't you? If you disagree, Tiffaney may chase you down and tackle you! :-) Thanks Robin and Tiffaney for sharing your fantastic journey and Camtasia Studio video!

As many of you know, I love, love, love Flickr! I have over 7,000 pictures posted there. I use Flickr to show friends and family pics from my travels. I also use it as a photo archive and back-up. And, Flickr has a great community - if I need some inspiration for knitting projects - I just look on Flickr to see what others are doing. Or, if I want a new desktop wallpaper, I look in Flickr Groups. Plus, I also love to send Jing and SnagIt screencaps there as well.

I had lunch with Raymond Kristiansen in Budapest this weekend and he mentioned that he had recently seen a screencast from Flickr made with Camtasia Studio. I had to find out what that was all about!

When I'm on the road, I don't check Flickr every day. So, after lunch, I logged into Flickr and saw that my homepage looked different. Flickr recently went through a big homepage redesign. So, I checked the Flickr blog to see what was going on. And, there it was... a Camtasia Studio screencast showing off all the new design changes for Flickr. You can see the blog post here that details the change and has a link to the screencast.

I picked this as the Screencast of the Week because I liked how they used the power of video to help ease some major changes with their website. The tour helped me be well versed in the new options and now I'm ready to use them. The screencast did a great job showing off the key new features on the homepage in just over 2 minutes! And, the screencast told me where to find more info if I needed it. Perfect - I'm ready to run and explore on my own.

And, if you're curious, I've been putting some snapshots from my recent travels to Berlin, Prague and Budapest here. Enjoy!

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

Audio is king in screencasts as you know. People will not tolerate bad audio. Think if you are wearing headphones... you don't want to hear any buzzing or popping in your ears. I'm always looking for audio tips. Especially for recordings done in uncontrolled environments like tradeshows and outside a sound booth.

So, on that note, this week's Screencast of the Week is about how to replace audio in your Camtasia Studio videos. If you're making a polished screencast, you might even want to hire a voice talent for professional audio narration. I heard from Paul Bridge, the Director of Marketing at NarrateIT. NarrateIt is a team of studio producers and voiceover artists who provide professional recordings. NarrateIt has created a tutorial on how to enhance Camtasia tutorials with improved sound. They also make good use of SmartFocus in the screencast.

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

This week's Screencast of the Week is from Craig Lamb and David Caso of Empire State College. They gave a presentation entitled, 'Infusing Academic Warning into the Online Environment: A Pilot Program'. Click on the screencast below to watch the screencast. It is a longer one that runs a little over 29 minutes.

I liked this screencast for several reasons. Even though I was unable to attend the event in person, I can still watch the screencast and participate. The presenters also make great use of Camtasia Studio's side by side video option. That way I can not only view the slides, but I can also see and hear the presenters. This is a great way to archive an event!

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

As a student, I always had to work harder at math and science to get a good grade. It just didn't come naturally to me at a certain point in my schooling. I would often get so wrapped in taking notes that I would not process what we were being taught. What I would have given to have access to the teacher walking through the math or science problems again when I was at home for review. That brings me to this week's Screencasts of the Week - they allow you to just that. Bring home the teacher in the form of a screencast!

Now you've heard of me talk about mathcasting before with the pioneer, Tim Fahlberg. Tim introduced me to Graeme MacNeil who contributes to Tim's mathcast wiki. In addition to mathcasts, Graeme also creates 'phicasts'. What's a phicast? Well, it is a physics lesson that incorporates screencaptures and screencasts. Graeme uses classroom response system (clickers), a tablet, ExamView software, plus Jing or Camtasia Studio to record his phicasts. Click on the pic to the left to watch an example of a phicast - it is about Newton's Second Law of Motion. Remember that law? If not, watch the phicast to re-learn it! You'll see in the screencast the use of the classroom response system when the students have to participate and give their answers to the problems. You can see additional phicasts here.

And, since we're talking math and science, I thought I'd give you an update on Tim's mathcast project. His wiki continues to grow which you can see here. He's working on creating a library of 500 screencasts for K-7 math using many student and educator voices! Another expert mathcaster, Colleen King of Math Playground is also participating in the K-7 Mathcasts 500 Project. Graeme also contributes many mathcasts to the wiki.

And, math must run in the family. Tim's sister, Linda Fahlberg-Stojanovska (pictured on the left) is a Professor of Mathematics and Computer Sciences at the University "St. Clement of Ohrid". She not only contributes to Tim's Math247 wiki, but also has a mathcast wiki here complete with mathcasts in Macedonian and Albanian! Linda has created 100s of calculus mathcasts. And, be sure to check out some the videos she created wtih Graeme here. What makes these screencasts cool is that they relate both physics and math!

Graeme and Tim also have an interesting twist on mathcasts - they have the students create them as well. Here is Graeme's write-up on why this is a good idea (hint: it engages students, they like to show off what they can do, it is different...).

What's also interesting is that Tim is in the USA, Graeme is in Australia and Linda is in Macedonia. They don't let the physical distance separate them - they colloborate online using Skype to work together and make mathcasts and phicasts.

Hats off to you Tim, Graeme, Linda and Colleen for making math and science easier for students to learn. I am in awe. This is a service that benefits all of us. And, they're making these screencasts available for free to everyone! Do you like what you see? Please be sure to thank Tim, Graeme, Linda and all the other screencasters who are helping students learn.

What can you do with a screencast? Who can you help or inspire? Share your knowledge and pass it on.

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Blue Reference. They've been using Camtasia Studio to show off their software, Inference.

I like their screencasts for several reasons. They use Camtasia Studio to do 2 minute overviews showing off their software. You can watch one of their screencasts by clicking the screenshot to the left. Or, visit their homepage here or here to see other examples. These are great - a 2 mintue video fits in my schedule and I can get an idea about their software solutions in quickly.

I also like how Blue Reference uses Camtasia Studio to create compelling case studies that not only tell, but also show their software solutions. You can see see examples of these screencasts by visiting the homepage of their products here.

And, to top it all off, they have lots of training screencasts that are even built right into the software! Screencasts where you need them and when you need them!

Have you seen any great screencasts? Have you created your own screencasts? Nominate them for next week's Screencast of the Week! E-mail me!

I got an email recently with the subject, 'Screencasting like whoa'. That got my attention! It was from Laurence Favrot at SmartDraw. Laurence mentioned how they recently started using screencasts on their blog to improve the quality of their articles. Plus, the screencasts help them connect better with their audience. Laurence said that once they started making these screencasts, they started getting lots of great feedback too!

They even have a 'Camtasia Room' that is set up to record their screencasts!

Since I'm a big fan of storyboarding, I picked this screencast here about creating more effective presentations with storyboards as the 'Screencast of the Week'. They also make great use of SmartFocus.

Any nominations for next week?

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Paul Nielsen - he is a SQL Server rockstar!

I like Paul's screencasts for several reasons. First of all, he includes his all of his tutorials in one handy place - in a MediaRoll. You can see his MediaRoll to the left or on his homepage here. It's nice to have all of his screencasts in one place and I can subscribe to an RSS feed so I am alerted whenever Paul adds a new one. I also like that one of Paul's screencasts is a recorded presentation. Even though I was unable to attend his presentation live, I can still watch it because he recorded it with Camtasia Studio.

Want to learn more about the MediaRoll? You can find a nice write-up about it complete with a tutorial video here on the Screencast.com blog.

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

I thought we'd have a little fun this week with the 'Screencast of the Week'. I am continually fascinated with the speed painting videos. What better way to showcase your talent than to make a screencast showing it off? A digital portfolio of sorts. As always, I am inspired!

I've shown off speed painting videos before. Remember this great one of Jennifer Love Hewitt here?

If you'd like to make your own speed recording, here's how you speed up your Camtasia Studio screencast. When editing your screencast in Camtasia Studio, right click your video on the timeline. You should see the menu below.

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

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

After a few weeks on hiatus, I thought it was time to bring back the Screencast of the Week. I was digging through the TechSmith website and came across a cool story. What do you think your company would for you do if you saved them $20 million dollars? I think you'd be called a hero for starters. Roxio (you know, they make popular software like Easy Media Creator) is using Camtasia Studio to make online support videos and has saved millions of dollars in the process! I think that's worthly of hero status!

You can read more here about the cool things Roxio is doing with Camtasia Studio. And, you can click on the screenshot to the left to launch one of their support videos. I like it because the video is short and concise. And, they use Callouts and Zoom and Pan nicely.

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? Who else should have hero status?

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from one of the coolest people I know. I met Beth Goza way back when she was trekking around the country showing off PocketPCs for Microsoft. Now she's at Zumobi!

Here is one of the screencasts Beth made.

Beth made 11 screencasts for the top 11 things to know about Zumobi which you can view here. Why 11? As Beth puts it, "... you know, because 11 is better than 10"!

I love these screencasts because rather than point a camera at a phone and film, Beth used a phone emulator on her computer to show off Zumobi's mobile widget app and recorded it using Camtasia Studio. By doing this, the quailty of the video is better - you can easily see what's on the cell phone screen.

How did I learn about Beth's new screencasts? Via Twitter!

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

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Mike Beltzner, the User Experience Lead at Mozilla. You know, Mozilla. The people that make the Web browser called Firefox! Mike made a great Jing screencast showing off the upcoming release of Firefox 3. You can click the screenshot below to watch the video. It runs less than 4 minutes.

I asked Mike more about his screencast. He mentioned that he made the screencast to help people see the new features of Firefox 3 in action.

Mike said, "Software is all about interactions with the user, and it can be hard to convey the same feeling and experience with screenshots and text alone. Jing made it really easy to do - I just picked my window, pressed a button, did my think, and then had a video that I could share with anyone. I used the built in microphone in my laptop (that's why you can hear me typing and clicking) and didn't really script anything; if I made a mistake, I could click "Restart" and start again. It took me about 20 "takes" to get it right."

You can see Mike's blog post about the Jing video here.

I'm glad Mike made a screencast about what's coming in Firefox 3! Now I'm really excited and ready to download when it's released!

In my spare time, I like to destress by doing some hard core knitting, photography and other crafts. I'm always looking for something new to learn and try. Recently I've been looking at paper crafts. I found a blog about scrapbooking and stamps, Scrappin and Stampin. And, the best part? The author, Savitri Wilder, had some Camtasia Studio screencasts! I love it when I find Camtasia Studio screencasts in unexpected places!

This tutorial is about using Photoshop's, 'Color Selection, Action, B&W, and Sepia'. You can read Savitri's blog post about the screencast here.

This tutorial is about, 'How to Add Keywords to a Gallery Upload'. You can read Savitri's blog post about the video here.

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

This week's Screencast(s) of the Week are out of this world...and from Second Life! TechSmith Newsletter writer, Daniel Foster recently interviewed Torley Linden, who is a Second Life rock star. Torley is a prolific screencaster with over 100 videos!

Torley also recently published his "13 rules to making good video tutorials". One of the reasons I like Torley's videos is because of his third rule: "Bugs must be left in". It is like you're looking over Torley's shoulder which is a good way to learn. Torley also makes good use of text and callouts.

And, I also like that he has lots of videos of his quick tips. For example, the quick tip tutorial below is under 2 minutes. I don't always have 20 minutes to spare to watch a screencast, but I almost always have time for a 2 minute one.

You can find lots of Torley's videos here. And, you can find the full interview in the Camtasia Studio newsletter interview here.

I love the quote on Torley's website too - "I amplify your awesome." This is a great motto!

Have you seen any great screencasts lately?

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Jason Calacanis, the CEO of Mahalo.com. I like his screencast for a couple reasons. Jason used a screencast in a perfect way - to show off and explain some new features and changes they've implemented at Mahalo.com. What better way to give a tour and see a site in action than with a screencast?

Click here to see Jason's blog post and screencast. It is a quick screencast that runs under 4 minutes.

And, just like the screencast, I'll keep my blog post short too! Have you seen any interesting screencasts lately? Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week?

What can you do in 20 hours? Could you develop and deliver a product? Well, several developers did just that the other day. And, they made screencasts demoing what they made! So, with that in mind, several screencasts share the title of 'Screencast of the Week' this week!

Recently Telligent Systems hosted a Community Server Hack-A-Thon (HAT) event to show off their new web services API. The challenge was simple - developers had 20 hours to develop and deliver a product! And, even though I could not attend the event, I'm still able to see the highlights since they used Jing to make screencasts of the top ranked submissions.

You can see the details of the event along with the screencast demos of the top ranked submissions here. It's exciting to see what people can develop in less than 24 hours!

Big thanks to Scott Watermasyk who alerted me via Twitter about the videos!

Any nominations for next week Screencast of the Week?

I don't know about you, but whenever I travel somewhere and I'm not a native speaker, I always end up thinking about usability. When you're not able to read or understand what people are saying to you, you better hope they've put some thought into usability with whatever you're interacting with.

Take for instance the task of purchasing train tickets or even using an elevator. Even these routine tasks can be difficult tasks unless someone takes into consideration that a user may not be able to read or hear the instructions. Hopefully they have observed someone interacting with the machine. It can be pretty frustrating sometimes, but I'm always amazed at the kindness of strangers (and grateful too)!

And, on that note, I am in Paris this week for a conference and to meet-up with anyone who uses Camtasia Studio, SnagIt, Jing, Morae, and UserVue. And, yes, I had to buy a ticket to the Paris Metro off a machine like the one pictured to the above. And, no, I did not see an English option, but I managed to get my ticket nonetheless. :-)

So, with that in mind, this week's Screencast of the Week is about usability. It's done by Todd Follansbee of Web Marketing Resources. He made the video with Camtasia Studio but the testing was shot using Morae. Click the pic to the left to see Todd's video about website usablity. It's a quick one that runs less than 3 minutes.

If you're in Paris and would like to meet-up, please feel free to e-mail, call or text me (+1.517.410.0030). I'd love to meet-up!

Don't you love it when someone figures out a great trick and then shares that knowledge? This week's Screencast of the Week does just that! It comes from Alec Couros, a Professor at the University of Regina. He's done a Jing screencast with step by step instructions about setting up sub Gmail accounts for all of his students. After a little research, he was able to figure out how to do this and made a great Jing screencast to share it. The screencast runs just over 3 minutes. You can click the screenshot on the left to watch it.

And, I learned about this screencast from a post referencing Alec Couros on Twitter! If you're on Twitter feel free to add me as a friend - @betsyweber. I have also set up a Twitter feed for @techsmith for TechSmith news.

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

As a frequent traveler, I often have problems remembering and organizing travel details. Hotels look the same, airports start to blur together, and cab rides are crazy in any city. What dates am I traveling? How am I getting there? Where am I?!

I also need to share my travel itinerary with my fellow team members, friends and family. Sometimes when I travel, other people are booking my information. I have little bits and pieces of my travel plans all over - email, airline and hotel websites, and even scraps of paper.

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from one of my favorite sites, TripIt. I quickly fell in love with TripIt for organizing my travel in one place and giving me a single, master itinerary. I can invite fellow travelers to my trip so we can meet-up on the road. I can colloborate with our Tradeshow Manager and she can add travel information which she books for me in my itinerary. And, I can easily share my info with others. TripIt makes my life easier. And, then when I saw they were using Camtasia Studio, I was really hooked!

You can see several TripIt screencasts here. I like these screencasts from TripIt because they are short, concise and the audio sounds great! They even make great use of a large arrow so you can easily follow their cursor and they do a fab job zooming and panning.

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

Ever have one of the those days where you look up at the clock and the day is over? That's what happened to me yesterday. I was having so much fun in Chicago going to the Art Institute of Chicago (they have a great art exhibit on Edward Hopper and Winslow Homer, by the way), Millennium Park, walking on the Magnificent Mile, riding on the "L"...and, you see where I'm going. I ran out of time to post the Screencast of the Week yesterday. My apologies...

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Dr. Brian Friedlander. Dr. Friedlander is using Jing to answer students questions! Recently one of his students was stuck on a software project and needed help. Instead of writing a long email with step by step instructions to answer his students questions, Dr. Frieedlander just made a quick screecast with Jing and emailed it to his student. His student got the individual attention she needed plus she not only got to hear what she needed to do, but she also got see what she needed to do.

You can read Dr. Friedlander's blog post about how he's using Jing in the classroom here. To see the screencast, click on the screenshot above. It is a short video that runs just over a minute long.

And, best of all, in addition to saving himself time, check out his student's response to his screencast!

What have you screencasted lately?

One of the nice things about working at a tech company is that there is never a shortage of computers. I often like to try out new and different machines. I've recently started using a MacBook Pro in addition to my PC. On a typical day, I bounce between the two computers depending on what I'm working on. Then, I end up shuffling documents and files back and forth between the machines and the network. This wastes a lot of time plus every week I lose a file and end up shouting in anger at both computers. Shouting doesn't fix anything, by the way!

I was so happy to see this article in the New York Times from one of my favorite tech columnists, David Pogue. David tests out a product called SugarSync that will sync your PC, Mac and phone together! And, even better was when I went to take the product tour, it was made with...you guessed it...Camtasia Studio! So, it's the Screencast of the Week!

I love this screencast because they show split screens with the PC and Mac in the screencast which is a great way to illustrate the product. The audio sounds great. And, they make good use of SmartFocus.

Click the screenshot below to launch the screencast. It runs just over 3 minutes long.

Thanks David Pogue and SugarSync for keeping me sane and synched!

It's Sunday so you know what that means...It's time for the Screencast of the Week!

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from StyleFeeder. You can watch this week's Screencast of the Week by clicking the pic on the left. I picked this as the Screencast of the Week because I love the use of SmartFocus, Callouts, and the short length. Plus, they have several screencasts available on their site - you can see several here!

It think it is often harder to make shorter videos - I always have a goal target length when I make a screencast, but usually end up doubling it! It is easy to start talking and rambling. I don't know about you, but I definitely prefer shorter videos right now. My attention span is short and lately I rarely have time to sit uninterrupted to watch longer videos. Is it just me?

This week's Screencast of the Week was sent to me by Amit Agarwal from Digital Inspiration blog! You can see the blog post and screencast here.

I liked this screencast for several reasons. In the blog post the author, David Tucker, mentioned that talking about Aviary wasn't enough. You really need to see it in action. This screencast does a nice job showing off the features and functionality in Aviary without being too long and David makes good use of panning the screen too. You get too see all of the app, without having a large video. And, in addition to giving you a tour of the app, David shows you how to use some of the functionality too.

Also, you may notice that when the screencast is loading, David changed the preloader in Camtasia Studio to show his own logo (see image on left). It's a great way to show off your own brand in your screencast while your viewers wait for the video to load. If you'd like to learn how to do that too, check out this tutorial here.

Thanks for sending this screencast, Amit! Anyone have a nomination for next week's Screencast of the Week?

Josh Holmes, a RIA Architect Evangelist from Microsoft, stopped in our offices recently and told me about how he did some remote screencasting with Camtasia Studio! Since Josh is doing something different and new, he's the Screencast of the Week!

How'd he do it? Well, Josh's interviewee records what they're doing with Camtasia Studio on their end and also shares their screen with Josh via Live Meeting. Josh uses this nifty little phone recorder which he plugs into the microphone input jack on his computer. Then Josh uses Audacity to record the audio. Note that the phone recorder does not have a level indicator so you need to watch the levels when recording. Then, Josh gets the screencast from his interviewee and in Camtasia Studio, he merges the video with audio.

Want to see the screencast he created? Check out the episode of Code To Live on Channel9 here.

I'm looking forward to seeing Josh at Microsoft Mix this week where he'll be helping out in the Open Spaces area. Did you have any questions for him? I'm happy to ask him when I see him.

And, I've ordered one of the phone recorders too. Any volunteers to try remote screencasting with me to share your story?

This week's Screencast of the Week goes to Tom Johnson of the blog, I'd Rather Be Writing. Check out his blog post here complete with not one, but three Jing screencasts!

I love Tom's addition of a few quick Jing screencasts to not just tell, but also show his ideas and examples in his blog post. It's often easier for me to understand feedback or a bug if someone makes a screencast that walks me through what they are explaining. It's like video voicemail!

And, in effort to be transparent, it looks like our Advertising team is sponsoring this site.

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? And, you're free to nominate yourself!

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Kevin Robinson and the CAD Geek team. That's Kevin and I pictured on the left at Autodesk University.

The CAD Geeks have a great blog, Ask the INCAT CAD Geeks, and just about every post has a screencast in it. What better way to learn CAD than to see it in action? Plus it looks like they're using several of Camtasia Studio v5.0's new features like SmartFocus which you can see on one of their recent screencasts here.

Bonus points for using Screencast.com's MediaRoll on their blog - I like that I can find all their screencasts in one spot.

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

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Gunnar Bartels at PhraseExpress. I picked this video for a few reasons. For one, it shows how you can use Camtasia Studio's SmartFocus so your video can still be readable even at smaller resolutions. Perfect if you're putting your video on your blog. And, also, Gunnar mentioned that this screencast is his main selling tool. I love that a screencast can be a 'salesperson' 24/7, even when you're not around to demo your product or answer questions.

You can find out more about PhraseExpress here. I haven't tried it out yet, but after watching the screencast, it looks like something I need!

Seen any cool screencasts lately?

Thanks to Greg Davis as he tipped me off to this great screencast from the fine folks over at 37signals. It's a tour of their product Highrise. Click here to view the screencast on their homepage.

I love this screencast because they did a great job using some of Camtasia's features like SmartFocus and ExpressShow. And, I like that they kept their product demo to just over one minute - no easy task!

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? Feel free to nominate your own screencasts too.

Something exciting is in the air...Tony Dunckel, the SnagIt and Jing Product Manager, and I are out in San Francisco at the VizThink conference. And, we're surrounded by the rock stars in the visual world. I can't wait to hear talks led by Cliff Atkinson (he's a SnagIt user!), Nancy Duarte, Kevin Cheng and Christine Martell (remember, she made the 'Bethcast'?). I'm sure Tony and I will be learning a lot this week.

And, our booth at VizThink is next to MindJet, the makers of MindManager software! As you know, I'm a big fan of mindmapping, and often use MindManager to plan a variety of things from blog posts, to project planning, and everything in between. I have to admit, something I never thought to use it for was vacation planning. And, that leads me to this week's Screencast of the Week. GottaBeMobile has a great 'inkcast' that shows how to do just that - plan your vacation using MindManager from start to finish! You can see the blog post and screencast here. And, there's even some singing in this screencast!

And, in the interest of being transparent, I should mention that MindJet sent me a copy of latest version of MindManager (I have purchased several copies in the past) and we do sponsor GottaBeMobile (I've been a long time fan too).

Have you seen any creative screencasts lately?

Screencast guru, Beth Kanter recently celebrated her birthday with a challenge for her blog readers to raise money for the Sharing Foundation. You can read the challenge and blog post here.

And, Christine Martell responded with a "Bethcast" for Beth's birthday! What better way to celebrate to celebrate a birthday than with charitable donations and a screencast?! You can see Christine's Bethcast here.

What I love about this Bethcast is that it is creative and different. I love the content too - Christine talks about the power of using images which is something that we care about at TechSmith.

Happy Birthday Beth! I hope you get your birthday wish and your challenge is met. And, I hope we see many more screencasts from Christine.

Have you given a screencast for a gift? What did the recipient think?

PS - Here's my shameless plea...My birthday is June 30th - you know what I want, right?! ;-)

I wasn't looking for this week's Screencast of the Week when I found it. Actually, I like to think that the screencast found me while I was wallowing on the couch, reading music blogs trying to recover from my cold.

I was reading the Puddlegum blog and noticed in the comments that someone had posted a link to a Camtasia Studio screencast! I loved that! So, I had to check it out - it was a screencast showing off all the cool things about Songbird. Click the screenshot below to launch the video.

Plus, I think the Songbird logo is cute. Or, maybe that's the cold medicine talking. ;-) (probably not though, it is pretty darn cute)

And, regular blogging should resume tomorrow, hopefully! Someone please pass the tissues...

It's time for the Screencast of Week! This week is your lucky week - you get several screencasts! This summer I attended Ignite Seattle. I was enjoying the presentations and was so excited when I heard one of the presenters, Deepak Singh, say...'screencast'!

Turns out that Deepak is involved in a whole community of science screencasters, called Bioscreencast. This is a great resource - not only can you contribute your science screencasts here, but you can also request a screencast as well. Where was this when I was in high school or college?!

Remember Jean-Claude Bradley from Drexel University? He has posted some of his screencasts here on Bioscreencast.

And, if you're interested, check out Deepak's Ignite talk below.

Do you sudoku? I have to admit that I'm a bit addicted to it. It is the perfect way to pass time on those long flights and when I'm standing in line anywhere. And, I feel like I'm exercising my brain by doing the math in the game.

Daniel Foster, TechSmith's new Newsletter writer, sent me a link for a sudoku screencast. I like it because the screencast is about a fun subject! Not all screencasts have to be about how to use software or a website. Click the screenshot below to watch the screencast. It runs just under 4 minutes.

And, Patty makes more screencasts! Check out Patty's other mathcasts here.

And, on a side note, if you'd like another option to share your screencasts, try Screencast.com. It does not scale your screencasts so your videos retain their original quality. There is a free trial for anyone who'd like to try it out here.

Any nominations for the next Screencast of the Week? I'm looking for some screencasts about the holidays. Have you seen any?

Last week, I was in Las Vegas for Autodesk University. I had a great time at the show seeing people like SnagIt and Camtasia Studio experts Shaan Hurley and Robin Capper. And, of course, any trip to Las Vegas would not be complete without walking through all of the hotels. I always like to go to the Paris Hotel. Next week I'm off to the real Paris to attend BarCampParis15 and attend LeWeb3. I have a sneaking suspicion it will be nothing like the Las Vegas version of Paris. ;-)

I thought it would be nice to highlight some French screencasts! This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Emob, a French comapny that sells video trianing online. They have over 400 videos on their site...all made with Camtasia Studio!

Check out this great example of a Camtasia Studio screencast here on their blog in this post about PhotoShop. Or, click the image below for a direct link to one of their Camtasia Studio screencasts.

Any travel advice for me while I'm in Paris? What do I need to see? Where should I go eat? Any advice you have would be helpful. If you're attending the conference or live in Paris, I'd love to meet-up. Drop me an e-mail or give me a call on my cell (+1.517.410.0030 in the US or +1.517.974.2528 in Paris).

Do you think they'll let me screencast on top of the Eiffel Tower?

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?

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?

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.

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 have to apologize. I was having such a fine time in New Orleans with Twitter friend and New Orleans blogger, Alan Gutierrez that I missed posting the Screencast of the Week last night! Alan kept me out too late last night in the Big Easy giving me a history lesson about the city and a nice tour of where the locals go to hang out. The music was wonderful! That's Alan to the left from a pic I snapped last night. So, as an apology you'll get a bonus screencast!

So, on to the Screencasts of the Week! I hope you like them...and keep your suggestions coming for upcoming Screencasts of the Week. I appreciate it!

Our first Screencast of the Week is over on Microsoft's Channel9 website by Josh Holmes, Steve Loethen and Jennifer Marsman. That's Josh and I pictured to the left at the Halo 3 launch event in Detroit. Josh is an Architect Evangelist for Microsoft Corporation and a fellow Michigander. You can check out all of the Code to Live videos here. I like their videos because Josh and Steve talk about a topic and sometimes interview other people on camera. Then Jennifer makes a screencast on her computer to show you how to do what they're talking about. And, would you guess that Jennifer just started making videos and screencasts?

Our other Screencast of the Week came to me from Amit Agarwal. He sent me this link for a screencast tour of Xpenser. As a frequent traveler, I'm often scribbling my cash expenses and hoping I don't lose them. Thanks, Amit, you made my life easier!

I looked for screencasts about New Orleans or jazz, but couldn't find any. I was hoping to find one about the history of the city or jazz. Has anyone seen any?

This week's Screencast of the Week is from Bob Jones of CookBookPlus.

It's not your typical screencast - this one is all about kayaking! I like this screencast because Bob does a great job using many of Camtasia Studio's features like SmartFocus and callouts. I also like how in Chapter 1, Bob gives viewers a great introduction to the screencast - he tells viewers not only how to navigate the screencast but also what they can expect to see in the video.

Click the screenshot below to watch the video. It runs 27 minutes so get comfortable!

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

Do you remember what you were doing when you were 14 years old? I can tell you what I wasn't doing. I didn't have my own computer show for one thing.

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from a 14 year old just doing that. Meet Vince Bognot, the host of 'Vince's Computer Show' also known as VCS.

I chatted with Vince to find out how he got started in screencasting. He mentioned that he got broadband cable in March 2007 and started getting interested in wireless networking. Vince searched the internet about wireless networking and came up with a LabRats video. He watched all of their episodes and saw some video screencapture and found out they used Camtasia Studio. Vince downloaded the trial of Camtasia Studio and from there, VCS was started!

And, Vince is already on Season Two! Check out one of his screencasts below. He even uses zoom and call-outs.

Vince is also holding a contest. If you leave Vince a video message, you could win a copy of Camtasia Studio v5. Details are in the video below or on his website here.

And, you can check out Vince's channel on YouTube here.

Thanks for inspiring us, Vince! You made my day! Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week?

I was digging around looking at screencasts last week and stumbled upon this mashup contest by the Sunlight Foundation. To enter the contest, you had to submit a screencast showing off your mashup!

There were several great Camtasia Studio screencasts entered in the contest which you can view here. Click the image below to watch the winning entry. It's a short screencast running less than 2 minutes. And, the winners won $2,000 for their mashup and screencast!

What great screencasts have you seen lately?

This week's Screencast of the Week is from Fog Creek Software!

Fog Creek made a screencast showing off their new release of FogBugz. What I like about this screencast is that it is not your typical serious, dry product demo. I really like the dynamic of having two narrators. Fog Creek's CEO and founder, Joel Spolsky and Babak Ghahremanpour, from their technical staff, narrated the screencast. Having two narrators is nice as it makes the demo interesting and conversational. The audio, which was recorded in a studio, is really high quaility too.

Click the screenshot below to watch the screencast. It runs close to 13 minutes.

Congrats to Fog Creek on the new release of FogBugz Version 6!

I don't know about you, but I use Excel a couple times a month. I don't use it enough to always remember how to do everything I need to do. So, every time I use it, I waste time digging around the internet looking for tips and tricks.

I was happy to hear from Bill Jelen, also known as Mr. Excel, this week. That's him pictured to the left. He has a comprehensive website all about Excel, complete with a video podcast.

Check out his blog with all the video podcasts here.

What I like about his videos is that they're 2 minutes long and he creates them daily! I have 2 minutes to spare every day to improve my Excel skills. Also, he makes his videos for the video iPod. So, I can subscribe to his feed in iTunes and take his screencasts with me wherever I go. You can read more about subscribing to his videos here.

Thanks Bill for helping to improve my Excel skills! I appreciate it!

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

One of the ways I love to use Camtasia Studio is to combine still shots with narration and background music. I've even been known to use these types of videos as gifts for friends and family members. What a great way to show off a recent trip or highlights from a family gathering, celebration or holiday.

I was happy to see this Camtasia video from Chris Austin about his trip to China this year. By using Camtasia Studio, his still shots, some narration and background music, he was able to create a fantastic video. You can view the video and read all about it here. He'll even tell you how he created it here!

Chris has a blog that is full of great Camtasia Studio tips and tricks. Start digging through it here. And, he offers Camtasia Studio training here as well.

Who do you nominate for next week's Camtasia Studio Screencast of the Week?

One of the funniest presentations I've ever seen at a conference was by Laura Chappell. In the presentation, she displayed passwords and Instant Messages she had captured from other conference attendees (all identities were kept confidential, of course). You would not believe the things people picked for passwords or conversations they were having at the conference! Laura is an expert at network analysis, network forensics, and security so she was demonstrating some vulnerabilities in the security and network.

That brings us to the Screencast of the Week. Among other things, Laura makes 'animated articles' with Camtasia for Novell. You can check out her articles on a variety of subjects here. I like these monthly animated articles versus your typical text newsletter. As you know, sometimes text is not enough.

Laura also has an Internet Safety for Kids course that she has created Camtasia Studio videos to supplement the training materials. You can view the course materials here (click the screenshots on the left hand side to view the Camtasia Studio videos. Best of all, it's free! Note: the content is created for adults to protect kids and is not safe for work. It is also not for kids to view due to subject matter.

You can learn more about Laura here or here. Thanks for making our networks safer and the world a better place, Laura!

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

Backup, backup, BACKUP! Save, save, SAVE! I know, I know, I don't always take my own advice and I have been burned. Who hasn't had some sort of system failure or lock-up and lost that masterpiece screencast they were working on?

I heard from Darrell Icenogle recently. He shared with me an issue for screencasters that is rarely talked about. He thinks that backup is an issue for screencasters:  And, I have to say, I agree!

You've invested a lot of time and effort into a screencast, right? Well, then shouldn't proecting and saving all the video, audio, graphics and metadata assets be important too?

Darrell searched for remote, automated backup services and found two that are either free ( for up to 2 gigabytes of storage) or cheap ($4.95/month unlimited).  And, one service he looked at, Mozy, was just named one of Time Magazine's Top 50 Websites of 2007. 

Darrell's done all the work for you - he researched the services, used them, and made screencasts about them. You can watch his screencast about Mozy here. And, his IDrive-E screencast here.

Darrell also wrote some in-depth blog posts on the subject here and here.

Be sure to thank Darrell and start backup those screencasts!

Another week, another late Screencast of the Week. My apologies. I was unfortunately delayed and stuck at the airport so I was unable to blog last night, but it gave me time to think.

So, along the flight theme, this week's Screencast of the Week is a Camtasia Studio recording of a Flight Simulator game.

Now what I really like about this is the idea of recording a live event in order to learn from it. You could play the game, crash the plane and not realize what you did to make the mistake. Or, you could play the game, record it, crash the plane, and watch the Camtasia recording and learn from your mistakes to improve your skills.

And, isn't that better? Practice, watch the screencast and learn from your mistakes...on the flight simulator...not on my flight. ;-)

Have I got a treat for you! Remember Mario Brothers? Pit Fall and Frogger? I would spend hours playing these games as a kid! OK, I admit it - I still play them sometimes...This week's Screencast of the Week will take you back to some of those fun video games!

Last year I attended the PodCast and New Media Expo and I was very fortunate to meet Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jahchan. They make a highly entertaining and original videocast, Galacticast.

And, they even used Camtasia Studio in some of their episodes. Check out 'Knights of Arcadia'.. They used Camtasia to capture old school video game emulators off their computer screen.

Check out the 'Knights of Arcadia' video below. It runs just over 4 minutes.

Galacticast shows are quick watch and made me laugh out loud. I know you'll like them too. Check all of them out here. A very creative use of Camtasia Studio!

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

This week you get two Screencasts of the Week. I missed last week! This week is all about Camtasia and Silverlight.

First up is Michael Scherotter's screencast and tutorial. Michael is a developer evangelist at Microsoft. Michael's screencast shows a way of integrating Groove with Virtual Earth and then broadcasting it with Silverlight. Michael used Camtasia Studio to capture the screen activity. You can watch the video and read his blog post about it here.

Michael also did a great tutorial about how he made the screencast here.

I also heard from Carl Franklin. He makes a great screencast, dnrTV and podcast, .NET Rocks.

Carl made a tutorial about using Camtasia Studio with Silverlight for a recent episode of dnrTV. You can read all about it and watch the screencast here.

On a side note, you may need to install the Silverlight player. There should be a prompt for the player on the blog posts above or you can install it from here.

Thanks Michael and Carl for sharing your Silverlight videos and tutorials! Have you seen any other good uses of Camtasia Studio with Silverlight?

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?

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?

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? :-)

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.

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Paul Pival, also known as the Distance Librarian.

Paul recently uploaded one of his screencasts made with Camtasia Studio to Viddler which is a site where you can upload and share your videos. There are some cool features in Viddler, like the ability to tag specific spots within your video. So, I can send someone to the exact spot I want them to start watching in a video - this way they don't have to watch the entire video or try to find the time I tell them to start watching it at. I also love that you can post comments on Viddler at specific spots in the video and everyone can see or respond to them. It's like community screencasting!

You can click play on the video below to watch Paul's screencast. If you'd like to read Paul's blog post about Viddler, click here.

Viddler will take the following formats: .mov, .mpg, .mpeg, .wmv, .aviSo, you have several choices for your Camtasia Studio screencasts since Camtasia will creat .mov, .wmv and .avi videos. And, it looks like Viddler will scale your videos down to 540 x 360 so that can change the quality and clarity of your screencast. But you can switch to a full screen mode so you can watch your video at the original dimensions.

And, I love the subject of Paul's screencast - Meebo. If you look on the right hand side of the Visual Lounge, you'll notice that there is a little widget that you can Instant Message me directly. Try out Meebo on your own site or blog - it's great!

Anyone else using their Camtasia Studio videos on Viddler? What's your experience been?

This week's Screencast of the Week is from Molly McDonald of DemoGirl.com. Molly has done over 200 screencasts! If that's not a record, it has to be close!

In this screencast, Molly goes over Google Calendar. Molly does a nice job with the title and credit screens and transitions. I also like the screencast because it is short and to the point.

Click on the screenshot below to watch the video. It runs just over 2:30 minutes.

You'll also notice that Molly uses a different 'preloader' (the screen that shows while your video is loading) for her Camtasia Studio screencasts than the normal, stock preloader. If you'd like to customize your Camtasia Studio screencast preloader for your brand or company, check out a screencast from our Senior Flash Developer, Brooks Andrus. Details are here.

And, did you see the tagline on Molly's title screen? 'Screenshots suck. Screencasts rulio!' That made me laugh! I have to agree that Screencasts rule, but I do love screenshots and SnagIt. :-)

If you'd like to share calendars, click the button below to access my Google Calendar.

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Paul Colton and Aptana. Aptana is a free, open source developer environment for building Ajax applications.

Click the screenshot below to view several screencasts.

I like the screencasts, but I also like the following:

• You'll notice on their home page, Aptana is using a very interesting and creative header (or see the animated GIF below that I created with Camtasia Studio). I really, really like this.

  

  The header consists of multiple screenshots put into a Flash slideshow. You could do something similar by using Camtasia Studio's 'Save Frame As' feature to save frames from your Camtasia Studio videos as a BMP, JPG, GIF or PNG (Find this in Camtasia Studio at: File>Save Frame As... or shortcut key Ctrl+F). Looks like they used Monoslideshow to make the header. I'll have to try this out with some SnagIt screen captures and other pics.
• Aptana purchased the .tv domain for a nice repository for all of their screencasts. If you're making lots of screencasts, you might want to consider purchasing the .tv domain for your site. Which reminds me...get someone to purchase TechSmith.tv.

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

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?

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.

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?

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!

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?

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.

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?

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.

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?

Beth Kanter takes this week's Screencast of the Week award.

I love Beth's screencast about tagging which you can read about here. The content is wonderful and the production is great! I think Beth used just about every feature in Camtasia Studio! I love the organization and visuals she used in the screencast. There's a graphic below from her screencast about tagging.

Click the screenshot below to launch the screencast.

Beth has assembled a great list of screencasts which you can see here.

And, check out Beth's Screencasting Primer here. The Screencast Primer will take you through an intro to screencasting and how to get started. Really, it has everything you need to get up and running.

You can read more about Beth here.

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

Richard Campbell...where were you when I was taking accounting?

I was never good with numbers... It was always more work for me to get average grades in accounting. It just didn't come naturally to me. It's no wonder why my checkbook is always a little off (never in my favor!). But, I like to think there's still hope! I'm seeing more math screencasts crop up lately so that gives me a chance to review and learn from them.

I was excited to see Richard Campbell's screencast. It's about how he uses gotomeeting.com in his internet accounting class.

You can see this week's Screencast of the Week here.

If you visit Richard's homepage here, you'll notice he has a tagline at the top that says, "Bringing the Excitement of Accounting to Multimedia". I love that!

What have you learned from a screencast lately?

There are so many great screencasts cropping up out there its hard to decide on just one 'Screencast of the Week'.

This week's honors go to CAD guru, Robin Capper. He did a screencast about an app I can't live without, MindManager by MindJet. He made the video to share with IT about how he documents the design related applications. You can read more here. Check out the video below.

I love to use MindManager to plan big projects and brainstorming. Plus it works well with Tablet PCs and Wacom Tablets. It helps me communicate more clearly and visually. Plus, it works great with SnagIt. There is a SnagIt Output accessory for MindManager which lets you add your screencaptures to your maps in a single click. You can download and learn more about the SnagIt Output here.

And, I had the honor of meeting Robin at Autodesk University last year. Remember? He used Camtasia Studio to win a free trip from New Zealand to attend the conference!

In interest of full disclosure, I was given the latest version of MindManager, but in the past I have purchased my copies.

Bill Meyers has been busy. And, I mean busy! He's been making lots of screencasts!

I got an email from his this week about some of his recent screencasts. The screencasts are useful so I thought I'd share them with you!

Bill has a lot of experinece in the video world. And, you can tell!

Here are some of his recent screencasts:

• Add background audio track to your Camtasia Studio screencasts. Click here.
• Video Tip of the week - using Sizer to automatically size window when recording screencasts. Click here.
• Green Screen Magic - a two minute guide to chromakey with Sony Studio. Click here.
• A quick guide to getting the most out of YouTube. Click here.

Bill also posted the quick guide to getting the most out of YouTube screencast...to YouTube. You can view it below.

A while ago, Bill also sent a video with his top tips for screencasting which you view here.

Thanks Bill for sharing your knowledge with us. If you'd like to learn more about Bill, visit his site here or here for a case study about him.

I'll add these videos to our del.icio.us bookmarks here so you can find them later.

Your lucky day! You get two 'Screencast of the Week' this week since it looks like I didn't have one last week.

I recently heard from Tom Cone about his site, Screencast Central. There you'll find many screencasts and articles - many free to the public. There is premium content on the site as well.

I like Tom's screencast here about screencasting and it's history. I also like how he notes that it is quicker to make a screencast than to type a document or blog post!

What other resources have you found for screencasting?

Check out this Camtasia Studio screencast about Yugma. Click the screenshot below.

The reason I like this screencast? Simple...it is a great demo of new technology. I can watch the video and learn about the service without having to try it first. No risk involved.

And, speaking of which, Yugma looks like interesting technology. Free web conferencing?! Has anyone tried it? Anyone want to try it with me? We could schedule a web conference and connect. Let me know if you're interested.

It's the Screencast of the Week time again! Drop everything and check this out...

I was delighted to get the Cyberwalker.com newsletter this week that was all about Microsoft's new operating system, Vista. But, this wasn't any old ordinary newsletter. It was a video newsletter complete with a Camtasia Studio screencast!

Click the screenshot below to check out the newsletter and video.

You might notice that Cyberwalker.com's editor-in-chief, Andy Walker, also used Camtasia's Zoom and Pan in this screencast. It's a nice effect to bring out more attention to details .

Andy is also half of the LabRats. You remember me talking about them here, here and here, right?

Any nominations for the next Screencast of the Week?

I was digging around on the O'Reilly website, signing up to attend their Emerging Technology Conference and noticed they had a section called, "The Missing Manual Screencasts". That caught my attention!

Look what I found there! Several Camtasia Studio screencasts to go with some of the new O'Reilly books.

I like this screencast showing off Word 2007's new Ribbon from Chris Grover. This screencast goes along with his Word 2007: The Missing Manual book. I emailed him after finding the screencasts. He told me that this was his first screencast! I'm impressed! Click the screenshot below to start the screencast.

You can find additional videos related to Word 2007 from Chris here.

Chris also mentioned that he's working on more screencasts for Word 2007. I can't wait to see them!

Chris has also penned other books, Digital Photography The Missing Manual and the two Word 2007 books. He mentioned he used SnagIt to create the screenshots for his books!

I haven't made the switch to Word 2007 just yet, but when I do, I'm sure these screencasts and books by Chris will come in handy!

Have you upgraded to Office 2007 or Vista? Found any good screencasts that help with the transition?

This week's Screencast of the Week is about a product I love, Netflix.

I met Mike Kaltschnee at Gnomedex last year. He told me about his blog all about Netflix called, Hacking Netflix. He said he started the blog as an experiment in company and community relations. This is the blog for the breaking Netflix news and information.

Last week Netflix debuted a new "Watch Now" movie download feature. What better way to show off this new feature than with a Camtasia screencast? Click the player below to watch the screencast.

To read Mike's post about the video, visit here.

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

It's time to get the 'Screencast of the Week' back on track for 2007...

This one is a good one! It's a screencast from Pierre Gorissen about how to create a navigation bar for your Camtasia Studio screencasts! You can view the screencast here.

And, as a bonus, Pierre created a Camtasia marker conversion tool! You can check it out here. It's nice because it allows you to create a table of contents for your QuickTime Camtasia Studio videos.

Time to go catch my flight!

I've said it before, I'll say it again...A Tablet, together with Camtasia Studio, is magic!

I was poking around on YouTube and found Sycra, who has made several interesting screencasts using a Wacom Tablet and Camtasia Studio for drawing tutorials. I found myself actually sketching along with the screencast. Click on the video below to launch a recent screencast from Sycra.

I wouldn't be surprised if you find yourself sketching along to the screencast too!

I've been trying to learn more about video in general. Since I travel so much, I never have time to take classes so I've been scouring the net to find screencasts and tutorials.

Recently, I found Aanarav Sareen's (see pic below) screencasts at Creative Cow. Aanarav has created some Camtasia Studio screencasts with amazing tips and tricks about Premiere Pro. Aanarav has worked with CNN and other major broadcasters so he knows what he is talking about. Check out his screencasts here.

You read an interview with Aanarav here and read his bio here.

Any nominations for next week's screencast of the week? I wonder if anyone will send me a holiday screencast (hint, hint!)?

Many years ago I attended a great workshop all about blogs hosted by the AMA in Chicago. At that conferece I met Stepahn Spencer (pictured below), from Netconcepts. We chatted after the conference at a group dinner and he taught me so much in that short time about blogging and search engine optimization (SEO).

This week's Camtasia Studio screencast of the week comes from Stephan Spencer. Stephan recorded a 1 hour screencast all about optimizing your blog and RSS feeds for search engine optimization (SEO), which many of you will find useful. I learned a lot after watching it and have a list of changes for the Visual Lounge Blog and RSS feed after watching it.

Click the screenshot below to start to screencast. The video runs about an hour.

To learn more about Stephan, visit here.

In honor of Autodesk University, this week's screencast of the week is from Robin Capper!

Every year Shaan Hurley's team at Autodesk offers a full paid 'scholoarship' to attend Autodesk University. Robin Capper was one of the winners with this great Camtasia video! He designs a paper aircraft in AutoCAD. And, his video is very creative and funny!

You can read more about Robin's video on his blog here. I'll be on the look out for Robin at Autodesk University next week.

Are you going to Autodesk University? Let's meet up in Las Vegas! Call me on my cell - 517.410.0030.

Your lucky day - I couldn't decide which videos I liked better, so this week you get multiple 'Screencasts of the Week'.

Today's Screencasts of the Week come from two of my fave people, Tom Green and Jim Babbage. They both contribute to CommunityMX which is a great resource if you use Dreamweaver, ColdFusion, Flash, Fireworks or Freehand.

Up first is Jim's video. He put together a tutorial for creating a digital photo frame in Photoshop. Jim demo'd the tutorial live in one of his labs and was asked by several student if it was included in their hand-out. So, he made a Camtaisa Studio for them. Jim told me that the tutorial is based on a tutorial from Scott Kelby's book, 'Photoshop CS2 for Digital Photographers'.

I like the video because Jim also took advantage of some new features in Camtasia Studio 4 - not only did he make the video, but he also made a MP3 and iPod version.

Click here to watch Jim's video.

You can read more about Jim here. I love Jim's motto,"Walk softly and wear a loud shirt."

Up next are some videos from all around nice guy, Tom Green (see his pic below from Flash in the Can). Tom teaches interactive multimedia at Humber College. I often see him speaking at Flash shows and he's written several great books on Flash.

I was e-mailing Jim and Tom, and I mentioned I that I was that I was going to blog Jim's video. Tom replied back that he could "Out Camtasia" Jim with his eyes closed! Those are fighting words!

Tom sent me some great videos too. Even I might be able to use Flash after watching Tom's videos. He makes it seem easy!

Check out Tom's videos:

• Create Weather in Flash
• Warping Video in a Flash
• Doing an iPod ad using After Effects 7 and Flash

What do Jim and Tom have in common outside of CommunityMX? They're both located in the Toronto area! I'll be up in Toronto next week visiting them and watching the LabRats shoot some new episodes. If you'd like to meet up in Toronto next week, let me know. I'll be in town Monday through Thursday. Please don't make me go to the Hockey Hall of Fame alone - drop me a line (517.410.0030 - cell)

In a past life, I designed jewelry on a CAD based system. I loved working on the computer to design the jewelry. It was thrilling to see the piece of jewelry go from a design on the computer to a wearable piece of art. I miss working on CAD sometimes. I've been chatting with Shaan Hurley over at Autodesk lately and he's been telling me all about the cool ways they've been using Camtasia Studio at Autodesk lately.

Unfortunately with our 30 videos in 30 days series, the 'Screencast of the Week' went on hiatus. It's time for me to get that going again. So, with that in mind, here are some great CAD screencasts.

I love Autodesk's 'Ask Amy' screencasts. I think we need to have something like this for our products, don't you? You'd use them, right? Click the screenshot below to view them.

Autodesk also used Camtasia videos in the launch of a new product, Impression. Click here to see a Camtasia screencast for Impression.

Also, check out Lynn Allen's amazing AutoCAD Tips and Tricks screencast here. It is one of the best screencasts I've seen lately - really high quality.

Have you seen any great screencasts you'd like to nominate as the 'Screencast of the Week?

Also, I'll be attending Autodesk University in Las Vegas November 28 - December 1. So, if you're attending the event or are in the area and want to meet-up, drop me an e-mail or give me a call on my cell, 517.410.0030. Click the screenshot below if you'd like more info on Autodesk University.

How many of you read the popular webcomic, Player vs Player, also known as PvP? I've been a fan for a long time. PvP chronicles the life of a fictitious video game magazine company and its employees.

So, I was really excited to see a Camtasia Studio screencast made by the author, Scott Kurtz. Scott used Camtasia Studio to make a video while he did the digital coloring of the artwork for the cover of PvP! You can read his blog post about it complete with a link to the video here.

It was fascinating to see how Scott does the digital coloring. I know you'll like this screencast.

You can learn more about Player Vs. Player here or here.

I also added this screencast to our del.icio.us bookmarks. So, feel free to check out other screencasts we've bookmarked lately here http://del.icio.us/techsmith. If you've seen other interesting screencasts, tutorials, or articles about TechSmith products, please e-mail us and we'll add the bookmarks to share with everyone.

I'm always amazed at what our users create. And, this week's screencast of the week is no different.

Remember me talking about John Hartman last week? He and his partner, Alex Williams, at Feedia have created this fab mixed reality video all about launching the Toyota Scion in Second Life! So, you'll see some real life footage of the Scion on the streets of San Francisco, as well as the virtual Scion in Second Life. They recorded the virtual Scion in Second Life using Camtasia Studio.

Read all about it and watch the video here.

What a cool way to launch a new product!

I recently read a blog post here on Robert Scoble's blog, Scobleizer, about John Hartman using videos created in Second Life (some recorded with Camtasia) and using them for corporate training!

If you're not familiar with Second Life it is an online society within a 3D world, where "users can explore, build, socialize, and participate in their own economy." Find out more it here at Wikipedia or here at the Linden Lab site.

This piqued my curiosity about Second Life, so I took the plunge and signed up! It was fascinating. So, I started looking for other Camtasia Studio videos of Second Life (videos are also called Machinima). So, that brings me to our Screencasts of the Week...

I found Andy Dunn's website, Taunt, that had not only Second Life Camtasia Studio video tutorials, but also tutorials on PhotoShop and other apps.

Here's a pic of Andy in his first life and in Second Life!

Andy doesn't play Second Life socially, he has a business in Second Life that makes money! His business is basically "hair design" so you can buy hair he's designed for your avatar. He mentioned since 90% of the hair market is for women, it's easier for his Second Life character to be a female. He makes Camtasia Studio video tutorials to support his business!

Check out his website here. His tutorials are listed on the left hand side.

What's the best of Second Life for me? I finally get to have that pink hair I always wanted! It's not as permanent as dying my hair in my first life, but just as satisfying.

How many of you out there play Second Life? Anyone recording videos in there with Camtasia Studio or taking screenshots with SnagIt?

Anyone want to meet-up in Second Life? Maybe we can script and shoot some videos. Check me out - I'm the one with pink hair!

I love it when people do something different! Camtasia Studio users never cease to amaze me!

Here's a new one...The Scene is a series of fictitious dramatic videos released weekly on the Web.

The story is about member of a pirate group called CPX. One of the characters is forced to sell the pre-release films to commercial pirates in Asia.

Each episode is filmed using Camtasia Studio to record the instant messaging, e-mail and other computer activity, and the actors on screen are filmed separately.

You can view the videos here. And, to read more about the warez scene (in other words, the pirate network communities), visit the wikipedia entry here.

Season Two came out in July 2006 and it's completely addictive! I can't wait to see what happens this week!

So, for that reason, The Scene is the screencast of the week!

30 Camtasia demos in 30 days! How cool is that?! Check out what Nick Hodges at Delphi is up to. He's doing just that - making a screencast a day with Camtasia Studio! You can see the screencasts here!

Nick's the product manager at Delphi''s "DevCo," the spin-off of Borland's languages division.

And for that, Nick, you're our screencast of the week! Or, should it be the screencast of the day...every day?

I can't wait to show you this week's Camtasia Studio screencast of the week!

Long Zheng has made an awesome video showing off the voice recognition in Windows Vista! Contrary to some reports, it works... and the proof is in his Camtasia Studio screencast! Click the screenshot below to read Long's blog post about the video and to view it.

Interested in what the next release of Word will look like? Check out this screencast Long recently created. Not only is it funny, but it also shows off Microsoft Office Word 2007's interface quite well.

Word and Vista are so visual that text isn't enough. That's one reason why I love these screencasts!

Long's screencasting has gotten him quite a bit of attention - so much that some people at Microsoft saw his Vista screencast and now he's speaking at TechEd Australia!

Long is giving away a few copies of Camtasia Studio here. If you're interested in standing out from the crowd by screencasting but haven't taken the leap, maybe you can win a copy from him. Enter here. And, if you win, be sure to share your screencasts with me so I can show them off.

And on a final note, check out these words of wisdom that Long wrote while e-mailing me: "They say a picture is a thousand words. A video is 24 pictures per second. You've got to be typing awfully fast to explain to someone what you're doing."

Plus, I should mention he's an 18-year-old college student. And if a teenager can do it...

Brooks Andrus, our Senior Flash Developer, and I met John Grden from BLITZ Agency at Flash in the Can earlier this year. You can see us pictured below at the show (John's the one in the middle)

John told us about some amazing things he was creating. He has used Camtasia Studio to make a lot of video tutorials for his open source ActionScript debugger, Xray. Basically Xray lets you ... x-ray your Flash files. (How cool is that?!) You can see the tutorials here.

John also made a Camtasia Studio video about Xray which was just listed as a finalist for the FlashForward Austin Awards! You'll see the video listed here under Technical Merit. Or, here's the direct link to the video.

You can even vote for your favorite video in the people's choice category. Good luck, John!

Beta 2 of Vista came out recently. How many of you are running it? I'm not yet, but I'm curious to see what it looks like and how it functions. It's easy for me to do some pre-research - I'm finding more Vista screencasts made with Camtasia Studio, and I wanted to share them with you.

Sit back, grab some popcorn and watch the screencasts of the week.

Blogcast Repository has numerous Vista videos made with Camtasia. Seems like more and more videos are being added every day. Here's one on Media Center and the Parental Controls.

There are a bunch of great Camtasia Studio screencasts on this blog. These screencasts show off Aero, Windows Sidebar, TabletPC Functionality and more. Plus, it's kind of funny that the Vista videos are in QuickTime.

Here's a funny Vista Preview video podcast from Andy Walker and Sean Carruthers at Labrats.tv. Oh, and it's educational too.

Lastly, here's a great screencast about what it's like for a typical user to prep for Vista.

We've heard about some issues running Camtasia Studio on Vista Beta 2 and we're looking into them. Let me know if you've had any issues.

What Vista screencasts have you seen that I missed?

I've been bad at posting the Screencast of the Week lately. My apologies. But hey, the fewer I post, the greater the honor, right?

Well ... I found a great screencast that might just be the screencast of the year!

Dan Bricklin, THE creator of spreadsheets (VisiCalc) has created a new program called WikiCalc and he used Camtasia Studio to create a screencast of it!

You can view the Camtasia Studio screencast here.

If you'd like to learn more about Dan, his story was picked up by Forbes. And of course, by us as well. Thanks, Dan!

I was glad to be 'back to reality' in Michigan after a week in Las Vegas...although my pockets are a little lighter. So, it's time to get back to our regularly scheduled 'program' - the screencast of the week. Check out this screencast from our Senior Flash Developer, Brooks Andrus, about creating rules in Outlook. Judging from the state of my inbox, I need to follow Brooks advice to help organize email.

Click the screenshot below to watch the video. It's only 3:30 minutes long.

If you're looking to get started screencasting, Patrick Fitzgerald, a web content and user interface developer at BarelyFitz Designs, recently posted some of his tips for screencasting. Check them out here.

I'm in New York City this week to attend the Syndicate Conference. Anyone want to meet up? Call me on my cell phone - 517.410.0030. Maybe we could make a screencast on the subway or at the bar. I've seen stranger things in New York.

Any nominations for the next screencast of the week?

When I talked to Professor Ed Doering at Rose-Hulman about screencasting, I told him: Don't fear the webcam. And he didn't! Ed made a great video about how he uses Camtasia Studio and SnagIt for his students and in the classroom. For that reason, he's our screencast of the week!

I really like his use of the webcam - he even does a neat trick where he turns the webcam around to show his Wacom Cintiq 17SX interactive pen display. So, you can see him writing and then you can see what's going on the screen at the same time.

Also, I recently heard about another event - Higher Ed Blog Con - which is a fully Web-based event. Dan Karleen made a fascinating screencast showing some resources for those interested in new media.

Want to learn more? Check out his blog post and watch his screencast.

Check out Dan's blog here too.

Don't you wish you had all this when you were in school?

Edited May 10th, 2006

Bill Myers is my hero. I recently asked him to e-mail his top tips for screencasting for an article I'm working on. He decided to answer my questions not with an e-mail, but with a screencast!

You can read and watch Bill Myers' top tips for screencasting here.

What are your tips?

In a week, we're off to Flash in the Can in Toronto. The conference thanked us by sending a bunch of Red Bull to the office which was great! But, I don't think I should be allowed to drink Red Bull and post to the blog. So, since I'm on my 2nd Red Bull of the afternoon, I'm just going to cut to the chase...

Here's your Camtasia Studio Screencast of the week. Click the screenshot below to watch it.

Watch it, you'll like it! That's all I'm going to say! Off to find more Red Bull...

I was digging around the blogosphere to find a screencast to show off, and I came across a different way to use Camtasia Studio.

Art historians Beth Harris, Steve Zucker, and Eric Feinblatt from the Fashion Institute of Technology made a great screencast about a Picasso painting.

Click on the screenshot below to view the screencast.

What I like about this screencast is that they are art history experts, and this screencast is like having my own personal art historian. I would never have known much about that Picasso painting if not for their screencast.

One of my favorite things to do when I visit New York is to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art - I could spend days there. So, I was really happy to see their podcasts from the Met! I'm working my way through listening to all of these in preparation for my next trip: http://www3.fitnyc.edu/historyofart/smarthistory.htm

Visit their blog. I hear they've even produced some Camtasia videos small enough to play on a video iPod - think about the possibilities of that! You could download a screencast onto your video iPod and walk around a museum and hear an art historian talk about different pieces! What a great way to experience a museum.

Can't get to the Met? Start listening to and watching their screencasts and podcasts. It's the next best thing. Actually, it might be better since the little placards at the Met don't even give you as much of the history as you're getting here!

Any nominations for next week's screencast of the week? Post them here or e-mail me.

Jay Bailey at Answers.com sent me this Camtasia Studio video - I was enthralled!

Click the screenshot below to launch the screencast:

Want to make your own screencast like this? Jay said it took 200 PowerPoint slides to create this type of screencast recording. The PowerPoint slides had very little automatic animation because he needed control over the timing.

He told me, "It's almost impossible to do it perfectly from beginning to end. So I actually did in lots of pieces, so that if I screwed up a specific element, I could weave in a cleaned up copy."

I asked Jay for his tips in making a presentation like this and he sent me the following tips and tricks:

1. Don't even attempt to record it all in one go. Camtasia makes it simple to record in sections that you can patch together (auto-name so you can quickly F10 and get to the next section without changing your voice tone, volume, etc.)
2. Use selected images repetitively to allow to watcher brain to "rest" with a familiar image. Otherwise, it can be a lot to absorb. Also, don't use a lot of PowerPoint's animation, except to make elements appear and vanish. This style is sort of the answer to all that over-used PPT stuff.
3. In product demos in general (and this one in particular), make sure to modulate your voice often, changing speed and tone. The goal is to achieve ongoing variety in both the images and the sound. Unless viewers have a real vested interest, many will drop off in the middle unless they feel like it's a conversational experience rather than a speech.
4. Use your keyboard to advance slides in PPT, not the mouse. I found that the sharp mouse click tended to get picked up over the mic.

For more information about using Camtasia Studio and PowerPoint together, visit here.

Good luck making your screencasts! E-mail me or post links to them here. I'd love to show them off.

Fog Creek Software makes a project management system called FogBugz, which we use here in a variety of departments.

For instance, if I want create a new page on the site, I simply e-mail our webstaff the specs and it's automatically entered into FogBugz. In turn, I get an e-mail back with a URL to track the project status. That's just one of the many ways we use it - FogBugz has helped us with our project management in ways never before possible!

So, when I saw Andy over at Structured Solutions had created a SnagIt and FogBugz mashup that takes SnagIt's screen captures and posts them directly to FogBugz, I was so excited! Screenshots are an essential part of many of our projects, so it makes sense to add them in FogBugz. Andy's SnagIt and FogBugz mashup makes it even easier than before.

You can read more about what Andy did here. And, he even made a great Camtasia Studio screencast. You can view it here.

So, what's this SnagIt COM-Server thingy? Well, SnagIt's COM Server allows any programming language that supports COM access to SnagIt's image and text capture features. Basically, you can now embed and control SnagIt directly in your applications.

You can read more about SnagIt's COM Server option here.

Andy - since you combined two of my favorite apps together, SnagIt and FogBugz, you're our screencast of the week!

Camtasia Studio videos made with a Tablet PC are wonderful! They just go together like peanut butter and jelly!

The Microsoft Tablet PC MVPs have been making some great screencasts lately. There were so many great videos, I couldn't settle on just one for the Screencast of the Week. So, this week you get three screencasts - it's a Camtasia Studio Tablet PC Screencast triple threat!

So, Screencast of the Week #1

Rob Bushway's screencast - Rob made a video on his Tablet PC with Camtasia Studio about one of my new favorite programs, ActiveWords. Note - you don't have to have a Tablet PC to use ActiveWords. I use it on my laptop now and am completely addicted to it!

Screencast of the Week #2

jkOnTheRun's screencast - This is a great screencast! JK demos all the things he does regularly on his Tablet PC. Since he's an expert on a Tablet PC, it was helpful to see how he uses the Tablet PC with his favorite software. I have a lot to learn from him.

Isn't this a better way to learn - instead of reading a big long post about it?

Screencast of the Week #3

Craig Pringle's screencast - here Craig shows off a feature in Infopath in a nice example of a quick demo video. This type of video would be useful to many companies in marketing their products.

Bonus Screencast of the Week:

Warner Crocker's screencast - Warner submitted this screencast for the contest, and even though he didn't win with this submission, he's still a winner in my book. Warner - I hope I never end up in your 'Grey' folder!

Now, I just need to find a Tablet PC and jump on the bandwagon... but I think I need to work on my penmanship first!

OK, blog readers...you're in trouble! I forgot to post the Screencast of the Week last week and you let me get away with it! That's all right, I still love you...

So, for my mistake you get two screencasts this week! Lucky you!

This first screencast was sent to me from Len Charnoff. He told me that he made this screencast in response to a friend from New York's question about how he was coping with all the rain they're getting in the Pacific Northwest.

So, Len made a Camtasia Studio 3.1 screencast and posted it to his blog to get the message out. Watch his screencast here. He also tried to use all the features of the new product. And, I really like how he included a MPG file for playback on the video iPod!

Here's a picture of Len when the weather was better.

Our second screencast of the week comes from Rob Howard over at Telligent. Telligent makes Community Server which is a platform to enable online communities with tools like forums, blogs, newsgroups and more.

You can watch Rob's screencast here. I like his video because he gives tips and tricks for blogging by e-mail. Rob is very straightforward and goes step-by-step on how to blog by e-mail - no questions here after watching the screencast. He has a whole video blog, complete with Camtasia Studio videos. His goal is to have 2 - 3 new videos a week!

Now, here's the amazing part to me...Rob just started using Camtasia Studio last week and already he has a blog with several screencasts. Bravo Rob!

And, it gets better...Rob's Instant Message Away Message says, "WHOA Camtasia videoblogging"! That makes me so happy!

So, Len Charnoff and Rob Howard - thanks for screencasting...And for those about to screencast, I salute you!

Any nominations for next week's screencast of the week? E-mail me!

I found the perfect Camtasia Studio screencast of the week. It's about how to subscribe to blogs and podcasts from LearnOutLoud.com.

Not only does it tell how to subscribe, but it starts with the basics - it gives the definition of a blog and explains reasons why you'd want to subscribe to one. For instance, you're immediately notified when there's updated content, all your blogs are kept in one place, and it's much easier to read on mobile devices.

Now, instead of trying to tell my mom over the phone how to subscribe to this blog, I can just forward her this screencast, and she'll never miss any of my posts.

After she sets up the RSS subscription, she can even monitor me to make sure I'm behaving. Some things never change...

Enjoy the screencast! Click the screenshot below to watch it.

It's that time of the week again!

Jean-Claude Bradley is a chemistry professor from Drexel University. He's inspiring, amazing, and on the cutting edge of technology! He makes me want to go back to school.

I was impressed with his Camtasia Studio videos. Check them out - I think you'll find them interesting as well.

I like this screencast from the Villanova WebCT conference entitled, 'Augmenting WebCT courses using Podcasting, Screencasting, Blogs and Games'. Even though I missed the conference, I'm still able to hear and see the presentation since he recorded it with Camtasia Studio - just as if I were there. Hey - I don't even need to go back to school!

He records quite a few of his lectures with Camtasia Studio. If you have iTunes, go to the Apple Store and search on "Jean-Claude Bradley" or "Drexel". Or, you can visit his blog here.

If you're curious about screencasts, podcasts, RSS, iTunes, wikis or other new emerging technologies, check out his screencast. He'll answer many of your questions and show you new ways to use technology in the classroom.

Jean-Claude also has a nice showcase of Camtasia Studio videos at his screencast website which you can visit here. And, he has some nice class blogs complete with screencast lectures which you can view at: http://chem241.blogspot.com or http://chem243.blogspot.com

Enjoy!

Don't you wish the holiday season could last longer? Well, it is - because we're going to celebrate a little longer!

That's because Jack Zimmer from CADCourse Architectural Services just sent me his holiday 'card' made with Camtasia Studio! So, now, anytime I want to revive that holiday spirit, I can watch this holiday video.

Click the screenshot below to watch the screencast. You'll be impressed by its creativity and attractiveness, I know...

Jack mentioned that it was his first attempt at this type of presentation.

Jack said he used Camtasia Studio as an experiment to present 3D CAD Architectural work. The card is specifically meant to represent phases of development of a 3D model. As work progressed, renderings were saved and then transitioned in Camtasia Studio.

Jack also used a feature in Camtasia Studio to add a hotspot with a hyperlink (see tutorial here) leading to their CADCourse Architectural Services page. That way, the card also acts as an inventive promotional tool.

At CADCourse, they use Camtasia Studio in a variety of ways, including recording WebEx and incorporating Camtasia Studio videos into their training products. They previously provided printed books, but they are now switching to 100% Camtasia Studio training materials to reduce cost and allow for material downloads.

I hope you enjoyed the Camtasia Studio screencast 'card' as much as I did!

It's that time again for the screencast of the week!

Thom Robbins is a developer evangelist with Microsoft. He recently started the Visual Studio 2005 Fast Tips newsletter. Every other week they make a screencast - made with Camtasia Studio - for the newsletter. A week after the newsletter goes out, Thom posts the screencast on Channel9.

This week's screencast looks at the ReportViewer Control in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. You can view the screencast here.

I like this newsletter because every issue has a screencast and because not only do they show the new features, but they show exactly how to use them.

If you'd like to sign up for the Visual Studio 2005 Fast Tips newsletter, visit here.

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

I thought I'd do a weekly showing of interesting or fun Camtasia Studio screencasts. Feel free to e-mail yours or nominate one you see.

So, here's the screencast of the week! Ever wanted to get started in podcasting, but just didn't know where to start? Alex Bellinger made this great 'how to' screencast about podcasting. I like the use of Camtasia Studio's Picture-in-Picture, so he can show off the hardware you need to podcast.

Click here the screenshot below to view it.

Please enter your nominations in the comments below...what will be the next screencast of the week?