I discover a very interesting application few days ago, so interesting that I decided jump queue and have it to come live on Monday (we all know readership drops a little over weekend). On daily basis, I explain a lot of stuff, explaining how stuff works, give guides and exchange ideas with friends and readers. It’s easier when they are next to you because you can grab their head over to your notebook and say, “nah, like this”, but over internet, we do tedious printscreens and typed a lot.

JingProject of TechSmith really helps a lot. In a nutshell, this is a free tool to do freestyle print screen. Yes, there is a lot of free tool out there with same functionality but Jing does it a lot easier. Jing also do video guides. Here’s how Jing works.

Image Printscreens with Jing

1. Launch it – After installation Jing tree-branch 3 little button. Click on the first one to start screen capturing.
   
2. Define area – Drag the scale to define the area you want to include in the printscreen.
   
3. Choose Image – We want to send an screen shot over, so we choose image here.
   
4. Add Explanation – Conveniently add some text explanation if your screen shot doesn’t tell the thousand words.
   
5. Here comes the interesting part, upon satisfied and ready, here’s 2 options to share the image.

• Save and send manually

  Quite self-explanatory, save as image (.PNG format) and send later via emails, IM, etc.

• Share via Screencast

  With you clicked on share, image will be uploaded to Screencast server (you’ll need a user account, registration is free) and you will be returned an url of the image. Don’t bother doing the copy url thing, its automatically saved to your clipboard. All you need to do is Ctrl + V to paste the URL to the receiver.

Video Recording with Jing

Doing video guide is exactly the same, draw your margin and click record. Perform your actions and click stop. Share by either uploading to Screencast or save is as a flash video and send it later. Audio supported.

Here’s a sample video done with Jing - http://www.screencast.com/t/RPeAwYmRK3

Download JingProject