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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Of the three, sending a video is the no-brainer best option<\/strong>. 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.<\/p>\n But the drawbacks to making videos like these include;<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Enter something called the Jing Project<\/strong>. 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.<\/p>\n Click record, click done, send a link. That’s all you have to do.<\/p>\n 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<\/em>: having a service to host your Jing videos may not be free).<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n