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!

Click Here to download the Beta…

Really neat new features!!

Excerpt from Microsoft.com:

… By having two types of Windows CALs, you are able to use the model that makes sense for your organization. For example, purchasing a Windows User CAL might make more sense if your company has a need for employees to have roaming access using multiple devices. Windows Device CALs may make more sense if your company has multiple-shift workers who share devices. Similarly, Terminal Server (TS) will offer both device-based and user-based CALs: TS Device CAL and TS User CAL.

In summary, User CAL (Unlimited Device under One User), Device CAL (Unlimited Users under One Device).

As of this posting date, the per CAL MSRP for both types of CAL’s are the same.

I’ve been baffled for the last few weeks as to why ever since I upgraded to Vista, Cisco’s SDM does not properly load.

Each time Cisco’s SDM attempted to load, I an SHTML page would pop up ‘runAPP.shtml’. The SDM would not load any further.

After researching and researching, I finally found a post in a forum that explained the solution… Sorry, I cannot give credit to the person as I cannot find or remember the address to the forum.

Here are the steps to fix that problem!

1. Ensure that you have Java installed. http://www.java.com

2. Install the latest Cisco SDM from Cisco

3. Open Internet Explorer, Tools -> Internet Options. Click the Advanced Tab. Scroll down to the “Security” Section. Make sure that “Allow active content to run in files on My Computer” is checked.

That’s it! Restart IE and try and launch SDM again. The Cisco SDM launch page should load SDM properly.

Interesting!

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/
software/ios124/124mindx/124index.htm