Jing

Jing is a project of TechSmith. It is a screen capture (png format) and video capture (SWF format) program that is currently free. TechSmith is the creators of Snagit and Camtasia. I have been playing with this software and have been very impressed in what it will do. It can be found at http://www.jingproject.com/ it is a free download of about 8 MB. One of the other features is that it will run on Mac as well as a Windows operating system. Snagit and Camtasia will only run on the Windows platform. It took me a little while to realize Jing was running, because it uses a sun instead of opening a program, like you might expect. When you place your mouse over the sun it will provide options, such as capture. You select the region of the screen you wish to capture and select an image or a video. The image in this blog was captured with Jing it is part of my screen. If you select the video window, anything you drag into the window will be part of the video; it also utilizes your computer microphone or headset. You are limited in the length of the video and the number of frames per second. I have been very impressed with this product. The Jing website states that at some point this product may be integrated into other applications and may not always be free.