Social Media Writing for Smart People » Screenshots http://www.ivanwalsh.com Get smart with better social media writing skills Sat, 05 Nov 2011 17:15:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 How to Create Printer Friendly Page | No Coding Skills Required http://www.ivanwalsh.com/business-development/how-to-create-printer-friendly-page-no-coding-skills-required/ http://www.ivanwalsh.com/business-development/how-to-create-printer-friendly-page-no-coding-skills-required/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:00:50 +0000 Ivan http://www.ivanwalsh.com/?p=1841 How to Create Printer Friendly Page | No Coding Skills Required]]>

I’m thinking of updating the site and creating printer friendly pages. This seems like a good idea as we have lots of tutorials and such that people (like you!) might want to print out. So, how do you create printer friendly pages?

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‘Providing separate stylesheets for printing a web page was good idea in theory, but in practice it all falls down.’

The idea here is to involve server-side script (PHP and ASP based systems) which will reload the target page and replace regular CSS file with stylesheet especially suitable for printing an article, entry, post or whatever.

To make stylesheet for printing, decide what parts of your layout are not likely to be printed (like various banners, navigation etc.). The simplest way to hide them is to define them as display: none;. If you are not familiar with stylesheets for print read more about it. Anyway, keep it simple—black text on the white background, with a font-size: 12pt; is a good start. When you’re done with it, continue reading.

Maratz.com seems to have the best solution. Here’s how it works:

Setting up the Query

Now that we have all client-side ingredients in place, we can put it all together. First, we have to add a link somewhere around the article, for example:

<h1>Title of the article</h1>

<p>Lorem ipsum…</p>

<a href=”?q=printme”>printer friendly version</a>

It literally means we are requesting this same page, but with a query q=printme. To make our page recognizes what we are asking it, we have to add somewhere in the <head> section some logic, something like:

“If i’m asked to ‘printme’—i’ll load my printing stylesheet, and if i’m not asked anything—i’ll load my default CSS file.”

Depending of your preferences there are two scripts—PHP and ASP. Backup your HTML file and replace the part where you called your CSS file with one of the following examples.

PHP print script

<?php if ($_GET['q'] == “printme”) { ?>

<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”print.css” />

<?php } else { ?>

<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”default.css” />

<?php } ?>

ASP print script

<% If Request.QueryString(“q”) = “printme” Then %>

<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”print.css” />

<% Else %>

<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”default.css” />

<% End if %>

You can read the full article over here:

http://www.maratz.com/blog/archives/2004/09/21/10-minutes-to-printer-friendly-page/

PS – If you’ve found this article useful, please consider giving us a Digg or StumbleUpon.

Regards,

Ivan

Twitter: @ivanwalsh

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ivanwalsh

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivanwalsh

Templates: http://www.klariti.com

Tips:  http://www.ivanwalsh.com

]]> http://www.ivanwalsh.com/business-development/how-to-create-printer-friendly-page-no-coding-skills-required/feed/ 2 How to Create Printer Friendly Page | No Coding Skills Required http://www.ivanwalsh.com/how-to/how-to-create-printer-friendly-page-no-coding-skills-required-2/ http://www.ivanwalsh.com/how-to/how-to-create-printer-friendly-page-no-coding-skills-required-2/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:00:50 +0000 Ivan Walsh http://www.ivanwalsh.com/?p=1841 How to Create Printer Friendly Page | No Coding Skills Required]]>

I’m thinking of updating the site and creating printer friendly pages. This seems like a good idea as we have lots of tutorials and such that people (like you!) might want to print out. So, how do you create printer friendly pages?

[ad#adc-2]

‘Providing separate stylesheets for printing a web page was good idea in theory, but in practice it all falls down.’

The idea here is to involve server-side script (PHP and ASP based systems) which will reload the target page and replace regular CSS file with stylesheet especially suitable for printing an article, entry, post or whatever.

To make stylesheet for printing, decide what parts of your layout are not likely to be printed (like various banners, navigation etc.). The simplest way to hide them is to define them as display: none;. If you are not familiar with stylesheets for print read more about it. Anyway, keep it simple—black text on the white background, with a font-size: 12pt; is a good start. When you’re done with it, continue reading.

Maratz.com seems to have the best solution. Here’s how it works:

Setting up the Query

Now that we have all client-side ingredients in place, we can put it all together. First, we have to add a link somewhere around the article, for example:

<h1>Title of the article</h1>

<p>Lorem ipsum…</p>

<a href=”?q=printme”>printer friendly version</a>

It literally means we are requesting this same page, but with a query q=printme. To make our page recognizes what we are asking it, we have to add somewhere in the <head> section some logic, something like:

“If i’m asked to ‘printme’—i’ll load my printing stylesheet, and if i’m not asked anything—i’ll load my default CSS file.”

Depending of your preferences there are two scripts—PHP and ASP. Backup your HTML file and replace the part where you called your CSS file with one of the following examples.

PHP print script

<?php if ($_GET['q'] == “printme”) { ?>

<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”print.css” />

<?php } else { ?>

<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”default.css” />

<?php } ?>

ASP print script

<% If Request.QueryString(“q”) = “printme” Then %>

<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”print.css” />

<% Else %>

<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”default.css” />

<% End if %>

You can read the full article over here:

http://www.maratz.com/blog/archives/2004/09/21/10-minutes-to-printer-friendly-page/

PS – If you’ve found this article useful, please consider giving us a Digg or StumbleUpon.

Regards,

Ivan

Twitter: @ivanwalsh

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ivanwalsh

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivanwalsh

Templates: http://www.klariti.com

Tips:  http://www.ivanwalsh.com

]]> http://www.ivanwalsh.com/how-to/how-to-create-printer-friendly-page-no-coding-skills-required-2/feed/ 0 What’s The Social Technographics Profile Of Your Customers? Forrester Research knows the answer http://www.ivanwalsh.com/business-development/whats-the-social-technographics-profile-of-your-customers-forrester-research-knows-the-answer/ http://www.ivanwalsh.com/business-development/whats-the-social-technographics-profile-of-your-customers-forrester-research-knows-the-answer/#comments Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:30:02 +0000 Ivan http://www.ivanwalsh.com/?p=1797 forresterForrester's Social Technographics classifies consumers into six overlapping levels of participation (see short presentation). Based on its survey data, they can see how participation varies among different groups of consumers, globally.]]>

hat’s The Social Technographics Profile Of Your Customers? Forrester Research knows the answer
Charlene Li and her colleagues at Forrester Research report that companies often approach Social Computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed — ie a random assortment of blogs, communities etc— to achieve a marketing goal. Ms Li argues that “a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for.”
You can use the tool on this page to get started.
Forrester’s Social Technographics classifies consumers into six overlapping levels of participation (see short presentation). Based on its survey data, they can see how participation varies among different groups of consumers, globally.
Some really terrific material over here including free case studies, PDF downloads and extracts from the book.
If you’ve read it, please let me know what you think.
Regards,
Ivan
and you can Twitter me @ivanwalsh

Charlene Li and her colleagues at Forrester Research report that companies often approach Social Computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed — ie a random assortment of blogs, communities etc— to achieve a marketing goal. Ms Li argues that “a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for.”

You can use the tool here to get started. www.forrester.com/Groundswell

forrester

Features of this profile:

• For an explanation of these groups (Creators, Critics, etc.), see a presentation (8 slides)

• Bars indicate the percentage of the selected demographic that are in each Social Technographics group.

• The white marks indicate the same percentages for the whole population of the country selected.

• The index indicates how the demographic compares to the population — a score of 100 means the demographic is the same as the population average.

• The message “No data available” appears when you request a profile for which our survey samples are not large enough to provide a reliable answer. This occurs for age groups in Japan, Metro China, and South Korea. To see profiles in these countries, set the Age to “Not specified”.

Forrester’s Social Technographics classifies consumers into six overlapping levels of participation (see short presentation). Based on its survey data, they can see how participation varies among different groups of consumers, globally.

Some really terrific material over here including free case studies, PDF downloads and extracts from the book.

If you’ve read it, please let me know what you think.

Regards,

Ivan

and you can Twitter me @ivanwalsh

Note: Any use of data and charts generated from this site must include the following citation: Data from Forrester Research Technographics® surveys, 2008. For further details on the Social Technographics profile, see groundswell.forrester.com.

]]> http://www.ivanwalsh.com/business-development/whats-the-social-technographics-profile-of-your-customers-forrester-research-knows-the-answer/feed/ 0 What's The Social Technographics Profile Of Your Customers? Forrester Research knows the answer http://www.ivanwalsh.com/how-to/whats-the-social-technographics-profile-of-your-customers-forrester-research-knows-the-answer-2/ http://www.ivanwalsh.com/how-to/whats-the-social-technographics-profile-of-your-customers-forrester-research-knows-the-answer-2/#comments Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:30:02 +0000 Ivan Walsh http://www.ivanwalsh.com/?p=1797 forresterForrester's Social Technographics classifies consumers into six overlapping levels of participation (see short presentation). Based on its survey data, they can see how participation varies among different groups of consumers, globally.]]>

hat’s The Social Technographics Profile Of Your Customers? Forrester Research knows the answer
Charlene Li and her colleagues at Forrester Research report that companies often approach Social Computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed — ie a random assortment of blogs, communities etc— to achieve a marketing goal. Ms Li argues that “a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for.”
You can use the tool on this page to get started.
Forrester’s Social Technographics classifies consumers into six overlapping levels of participation (see short presentation). Based on its survey data, they can see how participation varies among different groups of consumers, globally.
Some really terrific material over here including free case studies, PDF downloads and extracts from the book.
If you’ve read it, please let me know what you think.
Regards,
Ivan
and you can Twitter me @ivanwalsh

Charlene Li and her colleagues at Forrester Research report that companies often approach Social Computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed — ie a random assortment of blogs, communities etc— to achieve a marketing goal. Ms Li argues that “a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for.”

You can use the tool here to get started. www.forrester.com/Groundswell

forrester

Features of this profile:

• For an explanation of these groups (Creators, Critics, etc.), see a presentation (8 slides)

• Bars indicate the percentage of the selected demographic that are in each Social Technographics group.

• The white marks indicate the same percentages for the whole population of the country selected.

• The index indicates how the demographic compares to the population — a score of 100 means the demographic is the same as the population average.

• The message “No data available” appears when you request a profile for which our survey samples are not large enough to provide a reliable answer. This occurs for age groups in Japan, Metro China, and South Korea. To see profiles in these countries, set the Age to “Not specified”.

Forrester’s Social Technographics classifies consumers into six overlapping levels of participation (see short presentation). Based on its survey data, they can see how participation varies among different groups of consumers, globally.

Some really terrific material over here including free case studies, PDF downloads and extracts from the book.

If you’ve read it, please let me know what you think.

Regards,

Ivan

and you can Twitter me @ivanwalsh

Note: Any use of data and charts generated from this site must include the following citation: Data from Forrester Research Technographics® surveys, 2008. For further details on the Social Technographics profile, see groundswell.forrester.com.

]]> http://www.ivanwalsh.com/how-to/whats-the-social-technographics-profile-of-your-customers-forrester-research-knows-the-answer-2/feed/ 0 How to Improve your Style Guide http://www.ivanwalsh.com/how-to/how-to-improve-your-style-guide/ http://www.ivanwalsh.com/how-to/how-to-improve-your-style-guide/#comments Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:19:48 +0000 Ivan http://www.ivanwalsh.com/?p=1612 Alice in WorderlandHow to Improve your Style Guide. PerfectIt does not require any kind of configuration. Once you install it, you can use it straight away to find mistakes in any MS Word document. This article is for users who want to get even more out of PerfectIt by fine-tuning it to search for particular errors or to enforce a style guide.]]>

Alice in WorderlandWe reviewed PerfectIt last month and were impressed with its ability to edit and test our documents.

Daniel Heuman, the founder of Intelligent Editing Ltd has prepared this tutorial that goes into more detail and show some of the ways you can get more out of this editing product. Here’s Daniel.

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PerfectIt does not require any kind of configuration. Once you install it, you can use it straight away to find mistakes in any MS Word document.

This article is for users who want to get even more out of PerfectIt by fine-tuning it to search for particular errors or to enforce a style guide.

Fine-tuning PerfectIt

You can set your rules for how PerfectIt checks:

  • Hyphenation
  • Common typos
  • Numbers in sentences
  • Spelling variations
  • Keywords left in the body of text
  • Use of capital letters
  • Punctuation of bullets and lists
  • Capitals in bullets and lists

There are two ways to build your rules into PerfectIt, you can add them organically when PerfectIt runs or you can use the configuration screen.

Common Errors in English Usage

Organic fine-tuning

The easiest way to add rules for checking is to teach PerfectIt your preferences as you use it. When PerfectIt finds an error, just click the “Customise Test” menu to either exclude that from future searches or build a rule for checking it.

For example, if PerfectIt states that an abbreviation appears in two forms: “NASA” and “N.A.S.A.”, you can use the menus to specify that “NASA” is always preferred. After that, PerfectIt will prompt for any instance of “N.A.S.A.” with any document you test.

Fine-tuning with the configuration screen

You can specify an even wider set of rules by using the configuration screen. To load the configuration screen, select “Advanced…” from the “Customise Test” menu. This will provide options for setting your own checking rules. For example, to specify that semi-colons are the preferred punctuation for short bullet points, choose “Settings for Lists, Numbers and Compounds”, then choose “Punctuate Short Items”, then select “A Semi-Colon” from the drop down menu. Save your changes and PerfectIt will notify you if it finds any bullet points with other types of punctuation.

Bullets and lists

The advantage of customised versions of PerfectIt

It is possible to share configurations between computers – just copy the files ‘CustomExclusionLists’ and ‘CustomFindLists’ from one computer to another. However, for organisations, the best way to ensure that rules are standardised across computers is to have Intelligent Editing prepare a customised version for you. Intelligent Editing will scan your library for inconsistencies and review those with you. Then we’ll build a version of PerfectIt that is custom-designed for your organisation. We’ll include all of your preferences and supply you with a version that is built for the specifics of your style guide.

Conclusion

Style guides are important documents that all too often go ignored. With PerfectIt, you can quickly and easily check that reports, articles, contracts and proposals are all aligned with your style guide. You can build in the checking that is most important to you and ensure that documents are reviewed completely for the mistakes that matter most. To try PerfectIt for free, download it now.

About the Author

Daniel Heuman, Founder, Intelligent Editing Ltd.

Intelligent Editing Ltd specializes in software solutions that deliver faster, more accurate editing for professionals. http://intelligentediting.com

]]> http://www.ivanwalsh.com/how-to/how-to-improve-your-style-guide/feed/ 0 Groundswell – How Social Media Technoloiges Really Work http://www.ivanwalsh.com/business-development/groundswell-how-social-media-technoloiges-really-work/ http://www.ivanwalsh.com/business-development/groundswell-how-social-media-technoloiges-really-work/#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 04:28:01 +0000 Ivan http://www.ivanwalsh.com/?p=1793 I’ve been reading this book most of the weekend. It’s a terrific exploration of social media and how social media technologies are effecting corporations and companies from a business perspective. I thought you might want look at these links as these are the footnotes to the book and provide some very interesting material. Worth a [...]]]>

I’ve been reading this book most of the weekend. It’s a terrific exploration of social media and how social media technologies are effecting corporations and companies from a business perspective. I thought you might want look at these links as these are the footnotes to the book and provide some very interesting material. Worth a look if you’re trying to get a handle on how twitter, facebook and the rest will impact your profit margin.

site1-1 BusinessWeek article on Digg’s Kevin Rose
site1-2 Rudd-O’s blog post on HD-DVD code
site1-4 Digg blog explains why HD-DVD link was removed
site1-5 Google Blogsearch
site1-6 YouTube musical video of HD-DVD code
site1-7 Digg member Grant Robertson on the HD-DVD incident
site1-8 Digg blog on defying lawsuit, restoring HD-DVD code links
site1-10 Church of the Customer
site1-11 Mike Masnick’s post on the Streisand Effect
site1-12 YouTube video of sleeping Comcast technician
site1-13 Snakes on a Plane fan blog, Snakes on a Blog
site1-14 The Lactivist blog post on the National Pork Board’s legal letter
site1-15 Blog coverage of The Lactivist blog post
site1-16 Korean blogger on unsanitary conditions at Dunkin’ Donuts
site1-17 The Korea Times article on Korean blogger
site1-18 Forrester report introduces Social Computing
site1-19 Forrester report with US online penetration statistics
site1-20 Forrester data chart with European online penetration statistics
site1-21 Wired interview with Mary Modahl
site1-22 Forrester report with projections of US online advertising
site1-23 Forrester report with projections of European online advertising
site1-25 Guy Kawasaki’s blog post on starting Truemors.com
site1-26 Chris Anderson’s blog The Long Tail
site1-27 GM FastLane Blog post comment on Pontiac GTO
site1-28 GM FastLane Blog post on Bob Lutz writing a blog
site2-2 Forrester Groundswell blog post on the word “user”
site2-3 Martin Lindstrom’s video blog
site2-5a YouTube video of Wayfarer sunglasses
site2-5b Youtube videos in Ray-Ban’s “Never Hide” campaign
site2-6 Second Life membership statistics page
site2-8 Netcraft page tracking Web server market share
site2-9 W3Counter page tracking browser market share
site2-10 Alexa tracks site traffic
site2-11 Forrester report on dealing with Wikipedia
site2-12 ExpoTV features video product reviews
site2-13 Amazon review page for Harry Potter book
site2-14 David Weinberger’s Web site
site2-15 Thomas Vander Wal’s blog post about “folksonomy”
site2-16 Wal-Mart’s blog tagged on del.icio.us
site2-17 Common Craft’s video explaining RSS
site2-18 Comscore’s press release about widget viewing
site2-19 UPS’ online widget
site2-20 Discovery Channel’s Shark Week widget
site2-21 3spots blog’s list of Digg-like sites and applications
site2-22 Twitter application for Olin College laundry room
site3-2 Forrester report on Social Technographics
site3-3 USA Today article about alpha moms
site3-5 YouTube video of Fujitsu commercial (in Japanese)
site3-6 Forrester report on online dating
site4-1 Forrester report on the POST method
site5-2 US News and World Report rankings of cancer centers
site5-3 Medical News Today article about M.D. Anderson’s therapy center
site5-5 Honomichl article on research companies
site5-10 J.D. Power and Associates site ranks vehicle satisfaction
site5-11 Forrester report about brand monitoring vendors
site6-1 Engadget blog post about blending the iPhone
site6-4 Forrester report on a new marketing metric: engagement
site6-5 Forrester report about consumer trust in advertising
site6-6 YouTube video about SOA by TIBCO
site6-8 Ernst & Young’s careers page on Facebook
site6-9 MySpace’s page on the report “Never Ending Friending”
site6-10 Washington Post article about Barack Obama’s MySpace page
site6-11 HP’s Vince Ferraro’s blog post on Vista printing problems.
site6-12 Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz’s blog post on acquiring HP’s founders’ images
site6-13 HP’s Eric Kintz’s blog post responding to Jonathan Schwartz
site6-14a Forrester report on the ROI of blogging
site6-14b Forrester report on blogging ROI case study
site6-14c Hugh McLeod’s blog post on the ROI of blogging
site6-15 Unica’s Carol Meyers’ blog post on ending its blog
site6-16 Direct2Dell blog post about the flaming notebook
site6-17 Procter & Gamble’s beinggirl.com post about an embarassing story
site6-18 Procter & Gamble’s beinggirl.com post with advice from Iris
site7-1 Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s page on WOM 101
site7-2 Fred Reichheld’s blog
site7-4 BzzAgent’s site
site7-5 eBags’ page on the weekender convertible bag
site7-6 Forrester report on consumers’ use of online reviews
site7-7 Shop.org’s report on sites’ attitudes about ratings and reviews
site7-8 Bazaarvoice’s case study on PETCO
site7-9 Forrester report on online reviews
site7-10 Constant Contact’s community site
site7-11 Constant Contact’s IPO filing
site7-12 Constant Contact posting about spam
site7-13 Wired article about LEGO working with its best customers
site8-2 Kaiser Family Foundation research on cancer attitudes
site8-3a Forrester report on American jobs going overseas
site8-3b Forrester report on European jobs going overseas
site8-4 Dell community forum post on DVD drive problems
site8-6 The New York Times article on Flickr’s Caterina Fake
site8-7 University of North Carolina’s definition of “psychic income”
site8-8 Henry Jenkins’ site
site8-9 Nuts Online story about Jericho fans
site8-10 CBS Jericho page about un-cancelling the show
site8-14 The New York Times article about Naver
site8-17 Yahoo! page for Kellogg’s Special K community
site8-18 TiVo community site page listing most frequent posters
site9-2 Eric Von Hippel’s page
site9-3 Patricia Seybold’s blog
site9-4 Wikinomics page
site9-6 Ideas.salesforce.com post requesting the end of Sawbanners
site9-7 Dell Ideastorm post about a Linux PC
site9-8 The New York Times article on crowd-sourced ads
site9-9 Crowd-sourcing site for Doritos Super Bowl ad
site10-1 The New York Times article on Rob Master’s wedding
site10-2 YouTube video “Dove Evolution”
site10-3 Alexa site traffic measurement for Dove’s site
site10-5 YouTube video trailer for dovenight.com
site10-6 American Customer Satisfaction Index scores for Dell
site10-7 BuzzMachine blog post on Dell problems
site10-8 BuzzMachine blog post on Dell hell
site10-9 The Inquirer article about Dell computer catching fire
site10-10 Direct2Dell blog post about the flaming notebook
site11-1 Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation (entering requires membership)
site11-4 Forrester report about Microsoft’s acquisition of aQuantive
site11-5 InfoWorld article about Intelpedia
site11-6 ConnectIT article about Bell Canada’s ID-ah!
]]> http://www.ivanwalsh.com/business-development/groundswell-how-social-media-technoloiges-really-work/feed/ 2 Screenshot Tips – How to create special effects with Snagit http://www.ivanwalsh.com/how-to/screenshot-tips-%e2%80%93-how-to-create-special-effects-with-snagit/ http://www.ivanwalsh.com/how-to/screenshot-tips-%e2%80%93-how-to-create-special-effects-with-snagit/#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:06:26 +0000 Ivan http://www.ivanwalsh.com/?p=1780 bpr10Screenshot Tips – How to create special effects with Snagit]]>

This morning I’ve been putting the finishing touches on some Process Design Template. The final step is the packaging, including the product shots and other marketing materials. Something I thought I’d share with you is how I take screenshots and especially tricks I use to add some nice effects.
The first image is the standard screenshot.

bpr10

In the next I used Techsmith’s Snagit to modify the image so that it has this nice effect.

bpr11

And then I flip it around in the other direction.

bpr23

Let me know how you take screenshots and what tricks you’ve found to be most effective.

Regards,
Ivan
Twitter @ivanwalsh

]]> http://www.ivanwalsh.com/how-to/screenshot-tips-%e2%80%93-how-to-create-special-effects-with-snagit/feed/ 0 Review Jing Pro – Record HD-quality Videos for YouTube http://www.ivanwalsh.com/how-to/review-jing-pro-%e2%80%93-record-hd-quality-videos-for-youtube/ http://www.ivanwalsh.com/how-to/review-jing-pro-%e2%80%93-record-hd-quality-videos-for-youtube/#comments Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:33:04 +0000 Ivan http://www.ivanwalsh.com/?p=1303 jingJing Pro Review - This review looks at the new features in the professional version and how it compares against the free product. We liked everything except for 1 thing - and it wasn't the price.]]>

jingJing Pro lets you take a screenshot or create a HD quality  screen recording of what you see on your PC.

You can then share it by pasting a link to the content in your email, post it on forums, tweet it on Twitter, publish to Facebook, Flickr, or YouTube.

This review looks at the new features in the professional version and how it compares against the free product. We liked everything except for 1 thing – and it wasn’t the price.
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Price

$15 per year

Pro v Free

There are 2 versions of Jing – Free and Pro. Today, we’re looking at the new Pro version which costs $15 per year.

jingpro1

What can you do with Jing Pro?

Tony Dunckel at Techsmith describes the differences between the Free and professional version, “you can provide a quick “in person” intro to your videos, send “video postcards” to your kids away at school, or even show off your latest big purchase to your friends by recording with your webcam.”

He then provides some interesting tips on how to use Jing.

Easy Region Selection

Hold down the Ctrl or Shift while selecting the area to record and the selector will maintain standard aspect ratios of 4:3 or 16:9 for widescreen.

This ‘easy region selection’ lets you choose any dimension you want while locked to the set aspect ratio. Or you can snap to a standard present dimension such as 320×240 or 640×480, etc.

Share to Different Screencast.com Folders

You can setup new folders on Screencast.com and create new buttons for each different folder (Jing allows up to 8 unique buttons). This helps organize your work and maintain projects in different folders.

Output to Snagit & Camtasia Studio

Use Jing Pro to take the screenshot and then send the image/video to Snagit or Camtasia Studio where you can edit it.

Aspect Ratio

You can stop wasting time resizing images. Instead Jing screen captures can be configured to automatically fit into your blog, website. Nice time-saving tool.

New folders in Screencast.com

After you have taken the video, you can save it on Screencast.com. This is what generates the URL that you then share with your colleagues

It now lets you organize things a bit better with online folders.

MPEG-4/H.264 format

Jing Pro uses MPEG-4/H.264 format, which should improve the quality of your videos on sites YouTube, Vimeo and Viddler.

Publish to YouTube

You can now automatically send your videos to YouTube.

No more Jing logos

Jing logos are no longer displayed at the start and end of videos.

Webcam

Add an introduction or show the object you’re discussing by switching between webcam and screen recording. The webcam feature is now available in Jing Pro 2.1

jingpro2

Othere Key features

• Screenshots directly to Snagit where you can edit the image.

• Publish it Screencast.com where you can store, file, organize and track the videos.

• Edit Jing created screencasts in Camtasia Studio. You can also combine multiple videos into a single video, or string several together with a table of contents.

• Create different Jing folders on Screencast.com, by topic/project/client.

• Adjust the video’s size to fit your blog or website.

• Centralize conversations and comments with the new commenting feature.

• Annotate captured images with arrows, callouts, text and highlights to add emphasis

• Narrate Jing-recorded screencast videos for even greater clarity before sharing

• Generate HTML code to so you can embed it on your blog or website

• Customize the sharing buttons so those they use most are only a click away.

• Screencasts are delivered in HD-quality video for the Web

• Jing logos and links are removed from the start and end of newly-recorded videos.

• Publish directly to YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler and MSN Video, Flickr

• Jing Pro produces MPEG-4 AVC video files for Flash delivery with H.264+AAC compression.

System Requirements

Windows – XP or Vista; Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0; 3.0GHz Pentium 4 processor; 1GB RAM

Mac – Mac OS X 10.4.11, or 10.5.5+; QuickTime 7.5.5+; 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor; 2GB RAM

Jing Pro comes with a free Screencast.com account that provides 2 GB of storage and 2 GB of bandwidth transfer monthly.

Limitations

There are some limitation and restrictions on Jing Pro.

Here’s a few to start with.

• It doesn’t let you edit proxy settings within the JING application. So, if you are behind a firewall or need to reconfigure on the road, it may get tricky.

• You can’t use it as a standalone app without connecting to Screencast.com.

• You need to be online as it’s web-based. Fine at work but not much good when you don’t have web access or if the web goes down.

• When it does go down, you need to re-enter your username and password again. This became such a pain for me that I stopped using it and went back to SnagIt.

• There is still a 5 minute limitation. So, if you’ve video is more than this, you’re out of luck.

The Pro version is fine if you don’t want to upgrade to Camtasia Studio but want an easy-to-use video-capturing software, for sharing videos on YouTube/Facebook.

Jing is very good at what it does and for $15 per year is not so expensive.

For light-weight users, the Free version should be fine. You can take nice screenshots, small videos and upload to Screencast.com which also offers 2 GB of storage space.

On the downside, the Free version support only SWF format while Jing Pro supports SWF ands MPEG-4 video, which is required for YouTube HD.

If you really want a powerful video-editing app, maybe look at Camtasia instead. This is the industry standard in video capturing and worth the money.

If this is all new to you, sign up for the free version and play around. If you still like it – and use it after a few months – then consider upgrading.

The bottom line – Should I buy the Pro version?

No.

Of all the limitations the 5 minute restriction is the biggest barrier. Actually, this is the main reason I have not signed up. If this was raised to 15 minutes, then yes, I’d signup. But 5 minutes is too short!

Simon makes this point on the blog:

“In the above “94 Comments” 5 min is mentioned over 50 times … I think that you should listen to the user group and as I stated before: “drop the time limit on the Pro version and you will make conversions of people from free version to Pro version, and at the end of the day some $$$”

Matt adds “great job with the Jing project. The idea for allowing users to cut down videos to 5 minutes is a good alternative. The problem you may face is losing the beauty of simplicity that Jing offers and still leaves the 5 minute constraint.”

Tony Dunckel and his team have done a terrific job on this application. Most all products from Techsmith are exceptional – Jing Pro is no different.

But the bottom line is that the 5 minute time limitation is a show-stopper.

Don’t take my word for it.

Read the Jing Project blog , watch the Jing screencast or buy it here www.jingproject.com

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