Do you get the vibe?

First of all, thanks to Sue Waters for posting an introduction of everyone that’s participating in the 31 Day Blogging Challenge created by Darren Rowse. It’s a great way to find out about everyone involved.

Sue, I think you’ve really started something with this netvibes Vs GoogleReader thing with the comments on your post;

“Alex from Miller’s Spin (Australia) may well cause me to be banned from Google forever. Her great screencast of how she uses Netvibes to subscribe to blogs has convinced a lot of bloggers not only to try Netvibes but also to give Jing a go. Which I did – and here is my quick screecast of how I use Google Reader to subscribe to blogs!” Sue Waters

I liked the jing movie you created and have linked to above, it was very informative. I love that GoogleReader let’s you view the blog posts on that one page, that makes life easy! As RSS feed readers go, both netvibes and Google Reader actually do very similar things (I also use iGoogle), but I do find netvibes a little prettier (much like Mac vs Windows) and has more ‘theme’ customisation options. I also love that you can drag pods over the tabs to drop them into different pages.

It’s also good to see everyone getting into jing.

Also, thanks to Kate Quinn from Waxlyrical (Australia) (also loving Netvibes) for setting up a netvibes page to follow our 31 Day Blog challenges. I updated this yesterday – click the button to add this to your Netvibes page.

Facebook Meet Netvibes: Netvibes Introduces the Facebook Widget

With Jing , you can create effective media-rich learning material, provide instruction, demonstrate how to use a web site or a software application, record everything you do and pass it along AND it couldn’t be easier to use!

Capture audio and screen movements easily with Jing!

Thanks to Joanna Kay from the Illawara Institute, I have been playing with a really cool, free Web2.0 tool called Jing.

So what exactly is Jing?

Jing is a free program that allows you to capture what’s on your screen (for all the visual learners out there). You can very easily add arrows and text boxes to highlight points of interest and provide instruction to learners. You can even capture screen movements and audio, which are outputted as a little video/ flash files (you’ll need a microphone/ headset), you can then save these to your computer, or if you sign up for an account, it will automatically upload to their server and give you the URL (link), which you can then email or IM to learners.

Sound like Adobe Captivate?

Yes, it’s a bit like Adobe Captivate, but it’s free. It doesn’t have as many features as Captivate, nor does it offer you the same level of editing ability. It does keep a history of the files you create and it allows you to store them somewhere else (which is great if you’re using the same account at home and at work) AND if that’s not enough, Jing has a Mac OSX version, yay Jing!

What does Jing look like?

Well, it’s a cute little yellow program that sites on your desktop like in the image below.

It’s easy to use. – Just watch this video tour.

Have a look at my first attempt – My first attempt was pretty ordinary, you can take a peek here.

Hints & Tips
* Keep your recordings short and sweet
* Script what you are going to say because you can’t edit it
* Keep your screen to a minimum size so everyone can see it!