I am a long time user of TechSmith’s excellent SnagIt and Camtasia products.  The products work flawlessly.  I’ve long believed SnagIt should be built into the O/S.

Enter Vista. 

It includes the amazingly simple and easy Snipping Tool, along side the Calculator and Notepad (two other essentials), and it works great.

Because the Snipping Tool is available in Vista, I have never needed TO load SnagIt (which says it works fine in Vista).  For what I need, the Snipping Tool does everything I need.  Always felt a ting guilty about that fact.

Since Vista has been my primary O/S only a few months now (since I got my hands on SP1 actually), I didn’t need Camtasia on Vista either.

Enter Jing.

Jing is produced by the same amazing folks at TechSmith - except this product (is currently) FREE!

What it does:

1. Capture images - Snap a picture of anything on your desktop
2. Record video - Record video of what you do, or what you see
3. Share online - Instantly uploaded.  Share in email, IM, or Blogs.
4. Runs on PC or Mac

So it’s basically the “greatest-hits” version of SnagIt and Camtasia combined!

From their FAQ:

What is the Jing Project?

Is Jing a product? Not exactly. Is Jing a “beta”? Well, it’s not exactly that either. Jing is a concept that we’re evaluating to see if it can improve everyday conversations. Determining if Jing will be a product is what we are trying to do by gathering feedback from people like you. We think it’s a great way to improve daily conversations via email, IM chats and blog posts.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. 

Here is a video from TechSmith which explains Jing in 2 minutes.  A must watch for anyone who wants to communicate better using your computer!

If you need to edit your images or videos, you’ll need to get the full versions of SnagIt and/or Camtasia.  But I don’t edit, because I don’t make mistakes ;)  I’m a one-take kinda guy, what can I say….

I’ve run Jing for a while now, on all of my primary systems, and the only thing wrong with the previous versions is it tended to use a LOT of memory - too much in fact for something that just sits in the background at least 95% of the time for me.  They acknowledged this on their blog which was refreshing to see.

But all of my main computers have at least 2gb, so it didn’t really bother me too much, and if it did, I just stopped Jing.

I use Jing for all of my screen capture and personal video recorder needs, and its just awesome!  If you need or want these capabilities I cannot recommend it enough. 

I’ve run it on all my XP SP2 and Vista systems, with the memory issue being my only concern.  My current Mac is so old that I’m sure it won’t run it, so I can’t vouch for the Mac experience.

The UI for the product is very unique for the standard Windows user, and honestly, it took me a little getting used to.  Guess I’ve been a Windows user too long, or I’m getting old, or both ;)  No matter, I got the hang of it easily enough.

It blends into the background easily without ending up being YAIIMST (Yet Another Icon In My System Tray).  Elegantly out of the way, neat!

(question for TechSmith - how are PC and Mac code sets managed?  are they two independently developed products?  one team or two?  any common code across platforms?  or do you have a better way?  inquiring minds want to know!)

I have not tried to deploy this via Group Policy yet, but if that works, I am going to push this and/or provide it to anyone who’ll let me.  Of course I’ll have to experiment on my own office first

The new 1.6 version was recently released, which I hope fixes the memory issue I mentioned.  Plus it adds Save and Copy buttons, which I’m really glad to see.

I have no idea how long it will remain free, but I will happily pay for it when they decide its time!

My highest rating - FIVE OUT OF FIVE JALAPENOS!

Latest build of Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 is available from here. 

This update fixes the following issues:

951870 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951870/) Event IDs 8239 and 8206 are logged when you schedule and then cancel a meeting in Communicator 2007

949498 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949498/) Error message when a Communicator 2007 user sends a message that contains only Japanese characters to Communicator 2005 users: “<Username> cannot receive message in the format you used”

951871 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951871/) The presence status changes to Away for all Terminal Server users when an administrator locks the desktop or lets the screen saver run in Communicator 2007

951868 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951868/) Registry settings for certain protocols are overwritten, and Communicator 2007 becomes the default application for these protocols when you log on to Communicator 2007

Note This update now enforces HTTPS in High Security mode. Some services that previously worked by using HTTP will now be required to use HTTPS when they are in High Security mode. These services include the address book service, the custom tabs service, and the custom presence service.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=951662