Techsmith, known for their excellent screen capture application, SnagIt and their screencast tool, Camtasia, have developed a hybrid product in Jing. This project makes capturing videos and images on your screen a simple, one click action and allows you to share them online with your friends.
The Jing interface itself, in its bubbly shape, almost feels like a web application instead of a real program. The Jing menu sits discreetly on the side of your screen and can be called up anytime. Capturing elements can be a bit confusing at first. Jing brings up a set of crosshairs that you will have to focus on the area of the screen you wish to capture. After that you can choose if you want a video or an image capture. The application features some limited editing tools like text, color or arrows, but these will often be sufficient.
The history feature in Jing is pretty cool and shows your recent captures as little thumbnails that you open up by double clicking. As to sharing captures online, you'll have to be logged in to screencast.com to make it work.
While Jing does tend to lag every now and then, it's set to be the perfect desktop companion for anyone looking to produce basic screencasts and captures.
