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Jing is free to download,  http://www.jingproject.com,  available for Mac and Windows computers, and (if you register to share your Jing screencasts) comes with a free account on Screencast.com. I was impressed to see that the free account did not expire in 60 days (as it would if you just went to Screencast.com and registered for a free account) but did not expire until 2015). The free account comes with 200MB of storage and 1GB of bandwidth, which seemed generous enough.

If users find they are using Jing to the degree it exceeds the monthly limits, offering up increases in account storage and bandwidth for a fee are necessary to offer this free to everyone.  Offers to upgrade my bandwidth, for a fee  - $21.95 for 100GB. If you choose not to pay, the screencast is just no longer available until the next month’s cycle starts.

I do not blame Techsmith for needing to fund the service, but this should be a caution for anyone hoping to use Jing as a completely free screencast option. If your screencast is large and/or even moderately well viewed, you are likely to need pay the price for the appropriate level of hosting. Do remember that Jing is in beta and Techsmith may well change the terms or provide other alternatives. At this point, if you want to use Jing, another option is to plan on hosting the screencast on your own Web site.

Unfortunately, the ease of using Jing to produce and share a screencast gets lost if you want to try this approach. It is still easy to record and save, but Jing just saves a single .swf Flash file. While you can just upload the .swf and point to it with a link, it gets more difficult to embed it on a page with a site’s navigation features, branding, commentary, and other content. One solution, which may not work in all browsers, was to build a page and then use the following code to embed the .swf:

<object classid=“clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000? width=“627? height=“391?>
  <param name=“movie” value=“FILENAME.swf”>
  <param name=“quality” value=“high”>
  <param name=“bgcolor” value=“#FFFFFF”>
  <embed src=“FILENAME.swf” quality=“high” bgcolor=“#FFFFFF”

width=“627? height=“391? type=“application/x-shockwave-flash”></embed></object>

Note that the width and height elements need to be set in two places, and you need to know what those dimensions are.  You can see this backup version hosted on this site, but producing a page like this took much more time than using Camtasia Studio, Captive, Wink, or other screencasting software that produces both an .swf and the HTML page container.

Screencast.com is the ideal hosting solution for Jing because it’s designed specifically for high-fidelity screen content and won’t distort your media when being viewed. That being said, we also have learned that sharing has a broader definition. We have started work on extending our sharing options outside of just Screencast.com. With those additional sharing options, you’ll be able to get the URL or embed code returned as well - making everything you described above dead simple to do with Jing.

How To Use Jing:

“Think of Jing as a supplement to all your chat discussions, email threads, forum posts and blog entries. It sits nicely on your desktop, ready to capture and share your stuff at a moment’s notice. Simply select an area of your screen, capture it as an image or record it as a video, and then click Share. Jing conveniently places a URL to your content on your clipboard ready for you to paste the URL into any of your conversations.”

“Your content is hosted on Screencast.com, for which we are providing a complimentary account to all participants during this project. Users have 200MB of space for storing screenshots and screencasts and 1 GB of bandwidth that renews monthly. The Screencast.com account will remain available to you for the duration of the project.”
Screencast.com? What is that?

Screencast.com is a web hosting service from TechSmith Corporation. It’s a premier hosting service specifically made for screen video content. It does not change or diminish the resolution of your content. It provides detailed permissions that you can administer so you control who can access your media and you retain ownership of the media you upload. Screencast.com serves as the web hosting backend to the Jing Project, enabling TechSmith to provide you with instant hosting and sharing of your content.
Who can participate?

Anyone may use Jing.

And It’s free for now!

Here’s the deal; Jing isn’t a product right now—it’s a project to figure out whether it fills a need or provides a useful service. They're asking for both your participation and feedback on this concept. As they learn what you want from this, they’ll have a better idea what the pricing and business model might look like in the future.

Uses of Jing

Jing on Flickr
Jing on Skype
Jing for Tech Support and Forums
Jing and Product Demos

I think many schools would have a good use of Jing to write instructions, explanations and tutorials.  Many students might be able to use Jing to enhance their reports.

Here's the link to Jing again:  http://www.jingproject.com

Angela Wickenberg

One of my favorite books is "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". Like so many of the books I have read throughout the years, I passionately read and accepted Franklin Covey's teachnings and practices, but then after a time, lost focus and went on to the next thing in my life.

But recently, I have been faced with incredible challenges, some might even say "unspeakable"… and this has led me into a paradigm shift in my way of seeing things and the way I think…  I didn't actually think I would go through yet another paradigm shift  this year, but it happened.

It wasn't planned; it was just a flash of awareness that came up on me today,  but when looking back, I can see how this has gradually come into being throughout the last few months.  The situation I had been enduring suddenly lost all meaning - I finally realized that. And I relaxed all my efforts in that direction.

Steven Covey says that many people experience a similar fundamental shift in thinking when they face a life-threatening crises and suddenly see their priorities in a different light, or when they suddenly step into a new role… if we want to make relatively minor changes, we can focus on our attitudes and behaviors, but if we want "significant quantum change", we need to work on our basic paradigms.

But this doesn't happen in an instant.  It is intimiately associated with who we are - with our character.  If we want to change our lives, we have to change development our character, the perspective through which we view things and people and situations. Sometimes we create situations in which we are simply forced to develop character, or perish.  Always looking for shortcuts in life, trying to skip vital steps in order to save time and effort and still reap the desired results. But when we shortcut natural processes in our growth and development, we end up becoming very disappointed with ourselves, and disppointing everyone else around us.

We have heard it all before, but never want to listen; we have to take baby steps before we start to run. Many of our failures are due to this one thing - this one defect - our refusal to accept the fact that  "A thousand mile journey begins with a single step"…

…and must be taken one step at a time…

 

To You Online Success,

Angela Wickenberg

I've been taking a look at some of the free material being given out by some of the biggest and most successful marketers online at this time. Some weeks ago, Arman Morin, who has reportedly sold products and services over the Internet during the past ten years or so for over $43,000,000 (USD), and is the founder of Big Seminar and mentor of many of the most successful and serious marketers online, started sharing lots of videos on his blog.

I was very pleasantly surprised to see just how much value this marketer is willing to give away in his launch build-up over the past few weeks.  He now has 10 instructional videos and a downloadable .pdf file available at http://internetmarketingexplained.com/blog.

In his report, he dispells many myths that are prevalent concerning online marketing and shows in his videos exactly what he is talking about.

So what's so special about his giveaways?  Almost any marketer worthy of the name is giving away things to build-up trust and relationships before launching the product that the giveaways are related to, but here is where the comparison stops.

His videos are very informative and actually tell some of the "secrets" that many marketers have sold in courses and in PAID memberships.  I kid you not!  One example is in the video called massive traffic where he reveals things that I paid for in no less than TWO COURSES on Adwords and PPC marketing.

Head on over there right away and watch that video.  In fact, watch them all!

http://internetmarketingexplained.com/blog/massive-traffic/

On other videos, he reveals virtually EVERYTHING you need to know about how to create products and sell them.  These are the kinds of videos I would have available on my site for my readers!

As I mentioned before, there are no less than 10 videos available there to watch - they are not downloadable.

Thank you, Armand Morin, for showing us how to give real value and for sharing all of this.  Even those who can't afford to purchase any of his courses will benefit greatly from the information available for a limited time on his blog:

http://internetmarketingexplained.com/blog

Angela Wickenberg

Creating, discovering, searching, sharing, storing etc for videos

1. BigContact : social podcasting/videocasting (#,a-b)
2. blinkx : tv / video / podcast search (#,a-b)
3. blip.tv : video/podcasting sharing service (#,a-b)
4. Bolt : video/photo/music sharing service (#,a-b)
5. Boltfolio : video sharing service (#,a-b)
6. BroadbandSports.com : sports video portal (#,a-b)
7. BroadSnatch : podcasts/v-logs (#,a-b)
8. Castpost : social video hosting / sharing (c-d)
9. Clipshack : social video sharing (c-d)
10. Dailymotion : video sharing (c-d)
11. DiviCast : social podcasting/videocasting (c-d)
12. Dropshots : social video sharing (c-d)
13. EveryBit : search multimedia web content (e-f)
14. EyeSpot : simple video mixing and sharing (e-f)
15. FireAnt.tv : social video sharing (e-f)
16. Flukiest : music/photo/video sharing (e-f)
17. Freevlog : video logging tutorial (e-f)
18. GetDemocracy : internet television (g-h)
19. GlideDigital : social photo/music/video/file/etc sharing (g-h)
20. Grinvi : social video sharing (spanish) (g-h)
21. Grouper : social video sharing (g-h)
22. Kolablog : multimedia blogging service; free (k-l)
23. LifeBlogger : free blogging service (k-l)
24. Loomia : podcast/video search engine (k-l)
25. Magnoto : free modular blogging service (m-n)
26. MediaMax : online media / file storage ; free (25 gb) and paid accounts (m-n)
27. MediaTurner : rich media player service (m-n)
28. mefeedia : social video sharing (m-n)
29. MetaCafe : social video sharing (m-n)
30. MyVideoKaraoke : social karaoke video sharing (m-n)
31. Openvlog : video recording and sharing (o-p)
32. Orb : secure access to media (music/photo/video) (o-p)
33. Ourmedia : online storage (o-p)
34. Phanfare : social photo / video sharing (o-p)
35. PicPix : photo/video sharing/tag/organization application (o-p)
36. PiXPO : video sharing service (o-p)
37. poddater : video personals with tags (o-p)
38. Podesk : video podcast/blog software (o-p)
39. Pooxi : video search engine (french) (o-p)
40. Popcast : social video braodcasting (o-p)
41. Revver : social video sharing (q-r)
42. SelfCastTV : social video sharing (s-t)
43. SevenLoad : social video sharing (s-t)
44. Sharkle : social video sharing (s-t)
45. ShoZu : social photo / video / text mobile sharing (s-t)
46. Stickam : social media sharing (s-t)
47. Stridr / swapzies : social media storage (s-t)
48. Strmz : videos from TV channels (s-t)
49. Trueveo : video search engine (s-t)
50. TurnHere : film of the day (s-t)
51. VideoBomb : social video hosting / sharing (u-v)
52. VideoEgg : video publishing (u-v)
53. VideoSift : social video sharing (u-v)
54. VidiLife : social video sharing (u-v)
55. Vimeo : social video sharing (u-v)
56. vlogmap : video blogs on google maps (u-v)
57. vMix : social video sharing (u-v)
58. Vongo : high-quality full screen video plugin software (u-v)
59. vSocial : social video sharing (u-v)
60. woomu : social video sharing with user tags and votes (w-x)
61. YouTube : social video sharing (y-z)
62. Zippyvideos : social video sharing (y-z)

Strategy Calls! - The Strategic Alliance of Online Businesses - is a new group on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=54338290656&ref=mf 

formed for the purpose of being a forum of opportunity for online businesses to network with each other, and to offer tele-seminars, courses and conferences that may be of interest to the online business owner.

In online marketing, this is known as the JV or joint venture.

As was recently pointed out in the astute online marketer, Rich Schefren's recent article on the subject,
http://www.strategicprofits.com/blog/1-plus-1-equals-3/, many marketers have treated the JV as an email campaign, but a joint venture relationship, or a strategic alliance, is what you make it to be.

Traditionally, the ability of a firm to price higher than competitors is called differentiation. A product or a service which offers something unique,or is or greater value than the competition, could then merit a sustainable higher price.

But a firm may also choose to offer a differentiated product or service at a similar price to competitors in order to increase market share and volume.

It is, of course, of no value in achieving competitive advantage unless it is of value to the user, so that the user has preference for those products or services over those of competitors. Focused differentiation through strategic alliances lead to a perceived added value to a particular product or segment, which may also warrant a price premium.

The aim with strategic alliances is to achieve higher market share, and therefore higher volume, than competitors by offering better products or services at the same price; or enhanced margins by pricing slightly higher.

It is much more difficult for a competitor to imitate a basis of differentiation linked to a mix of activities or features rather than just a product or a service, if the mix is a good one, then this is highly likely to benefit many of the businesses online.

Strategy Calls! - The Strategic Alliance of Online Businesses - encourages businesses of all kinds to join this group to

*network
*find possible partners to form strategic alliances or enhanced joint ventures with
*receive information on the subject
*listen to experts being interview from the comfort of your home or office
*receive information on upcoming networking conferences and seminars.

The Strategy Calls!  website, to be located at http://StrategyCalling.com,  is under construction and a schedule of calls is forthcoming and will be available very soon.

Strategy Calls! Please join us!

Angela Wickenberg
Founder

Gmail has a bunch of lesser-known feature that can end up being very useful once you get to know them. The product manager at Gmail put together last year a list of his top 10 favorite features that you may or may not be familiar with.   Here's his list, which was very helpful to me in becoming more productive with Gmail and learning to use it's many features.

10. Custom "from" Most people end up managing more than one email account — some are personal, others might be for work or school. When I graduated from college, I wanted to keep my .edu address for alumni-related things, but made Gmail my primary personal address. My university made it easy to forward my .edu mail to my Gmail address, so I could read all my mail from my within my Gmail account. I was happy to find out that Gmail would actually let me send mail "as" my .edu address, so I could continue to keep that identity, while managing all my email from one place. Here's how to set that up.

9. Open attachments in Google Docs & Spreadsheets, or view as slideshow If you are sending a Word document or Excel file as an attachment, Gmail lets you easily open it in Google Docs & Spreadsheets. (In case you're not familiar with Google Docs & Spreadsheets, it's our online word processor and spreadsheet application, which lets you store and access documents online and collaborate on them with anyone.) Since other people are working on many of the docs I receive as attachments collaboratively, it's really easy to just open them in Docs & Spreadsheets and create a single document to work from, rather than constantly sending versions of documents back and forth. If the attachment is a PowerPoint presentation, Gmail will recognize this and give you a link to"View as a slideshow." This will open a window with a Flash preview of the slides. This is great for quickly reviewing slides in the browser.

8. Gmail gadget for iGoogle I use iGoogle to bring together a lot of the information I care about on the web (feeds, my Google Calendar, YouTube videos, etc). I use it as a dashboard at the start of my day to get an overview of what's going on in the world. I've added the Gmail gadget to my page to get a preview of my Inbox, which is great because it's one of the first things I'm interested in seeing.

7. Reply by chat Most people know that you can chat with your contacts in Gmail if they're using Gmail too. But there are some subtle features that make chat particularly useful in the context of using your email, like replying by chat. If you've received an email and notice that the sender is online (by seeing the little green dot next to his or her name in the conversation), you can click the button "reply by chat." What's particularly convenient about this is that the chat will be archived as part of the email thread to which you replied. I like this most because it means when I search for anything related to that thread, I find the chat transcript alongside all the relevant email messages.

6. Gmail for mobile application It wasn't that long ago that my cellphone could barely handle sending text messages. I didn't used to think of it as being an efficient place to access my email. That's changed — big time. Email has become one of my primary forms of communication when on the go. Unfortunately, on a lot of phones, dealing with email can still be a pretty annoying experience, especially if you're not using a device like a PDA. Enter Gmail for mobile. It's fast, it syncs with your online account, and it gives you virtually all of the same Gmail functionality like search, filters, and access to your whole archive of mail.

Two other little known features to get greater control over your inbox:

Here are some little-known ways to use your Gmail address that can give you greater control over your inbox and save you some time and headache. When you choose a Gmail address, you actually get more than just "yourusername@gmail.com." Here are two different ways you can modify your Gmail address and still get your mail:

• Append a plus ("+") sign and any combination of words or numbers after your email address. For example, if your name was hikingfan@gmail.com, you could send mail to hikingfan+friends@gmail.com or hikingfan+mailinglists@gmail.com.

 

• Insert one or several dots (".") anywhere in your email address. Gmail doesn't recognize periods as characters in addresses — we just ignore them. For example, you could tell people your address was hikingfan@gmail.com, hiking.fan@gmail.com or hi.kin.g.fan@gmail.com. (We understand that there has been some confusion about this in the past, but to settle it once and for all, you can indeed receive mail at all the variations with dots.)

For me, the real value in being able to manipulate your email address is that it makes it really easy to filter on those variants. For example you could use hikingfan+bank@gmail.com when you sign up for online banking and then set up a filter to automatically star, archive or label emails addressed to hikingfan+bank. You can also use this when you register for a service and think they might share your information. For example, I added "+donation" when I gave money to a political organization once, and now when I see emails from other groups to that address, I know how they got it. Solution: filtered to auto-delete. ive it)."

Tags: GmailGmail_features Top_10_gmail_features