Let’s say you’re talking on the phone to someone. They are having difficulty setting a filter in their email program. They have called you for help.
You can get frustrated trying to explain what to do over the phone…you can spend 15 minutes typing detailed instructions by email…or you can send them a short video that shows them exactly what to do.
Of the three, sending a video is the no-brainer best option. You simply record yourself demonstrating exactly what to do on your own screen…and then the other person can just watch the video and duplicate what you’ve done. Problem solved.
But the drawbacks to making videos like these include; screen recording software is expensive, after recording your video, it will have to be converted to a format viewable on the web, it will have to be embedded into a web page, you’ll have to get that web page on a server…and then…you can finally tell the person where to go and watch the video.
While screen recording software is fantastic for demonstrating “how to do things on your computer”, it’s not necessarily ideal for producing quick, on-the-fly tutorials that you can make available to the world in under 2 minutes.
Enter something called the Jing Project. This is a service that was started about a year ago by TechSmith (the makers of the popular Camtasia screen recording software). With Jing, you can quickly and easily make short screen recordings on your computer screen (up to 5 minutes) and then immediately have a link to the video that you can send to whoever you want.
Click record, click done, send a link. That’s all you have to do.
Jing is available to both Mac and Windows users (it is software you have to download). And for now (at least), it’s 100% free (please note: having a service to host your Jing videos may not be free).
Jing is a great “quick and dirty” solution for producing simple video tutorials in a hurry. Does it replace traditional screen recording software? No, not even close…but it’s not supposed to. It’s just there for those moments when you need to make a video screen demonstration…but don’t have a lot of time to spare.
To learn more…and try Jing out for yourself…visit the Jing Project here.