Free Friday: Screencasting Software
High on my list of helpful software to have on hand is a screencasting program, which allows me to easily capture or record anything that's happening on my computer and save it or send it to others. Screencasting is particularly useful for creating trainings, ad hoc tutorials and how-tos, but it's also great for reporting bugs and capturing usability issues if you work on development projects. Here are a few free screencasting software options to consider:
- Jing Project: Jing allows you to capture images or record video of your screen and then upload it (for free) and share it with others online. It's a project of TechSmith, makers of Camtasia Studio and SnagIt, and the folks behind screencast.com. I use all of these products and am a big fan of TechSmith's clean, user-friendly approach to software design. (Windows, Mac)
- Wink: Wink is another great free (but not open source) screencasting program. While it doesn't include free online storage or sharing functionality, Wink is more full-featured than Jing and supports exports to PDF, HTML, and SWF (Flash) formats. (Windows, Linux)
- CamStudio: A final contender in the free and open source category is CamStudio, which outputs AVI files and allows you to convert them to SWFs. The only limitation to CamStudio is that the current version doesn't play well with Firefox when you try to view the converted SWF files. (Windows only) -M
