Lucid Marketing Blog – Plain & Simple Marketing

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I recently discovered an awesome new piece of software recently that costs nothing to download and use, and I’m having sooo much fun with it.

Not that it’s an entertainment device.  It has a myriad of business applications, it’s just that it happens to be a lot of fun to play with.

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Before I tell you what it is and what it does, just a quick reminder that Ewen Chia’s book “How I Made My First Million On The Internet” comes out next week (Thursday).  He’s doing one of those promos whereby if you buy the book when it launches, you can access a special bonus area with some extras.

Obviously it’ll have some optional backend offers, but it’s worth paying attention to because Ewen is trying out a new variation on the traditional OTO that looks pretty smart.

I can’t give anything else away but, even if you’re not interested in the backend offer, this is worth looking at to get some ideas for your own marketing.

I should have the review up by Wednesday, but you can register for the updates now at:

===>  www.thenettle.com/-/EwenChia

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Jing is a software application produced by the company most well know for their screen capture recording software, Camtasia Studio.

Once installed, you can quickly and easily highlight a region of your screen and then either:

- take a picture of it,

or,

- record up to five minutes of screen capture video.

If you choose to snap a picture, you can add captions, highlighting, and arrows.  For example:

If you choose to make a video, activity within the area you’ve highlighted will be recorded.  For example:

(The video sometimes takes a while to appear when I view this page in Firefox, but it works fine in IE.  If you can’t view it in either, try viewing it at http://www.screencast.com/t/MaIqGCrSOKi)

There is also an option to record audio via a microphone while the video is recording.

As a quick way to grab screen images or video, Jing would be useful enough, but the really clever bit comes next.

The Jing Project was actually released back in the summer of 2007, but since that time, the software has developed some impressive ways in which to SHARE your content with others.

With one click, your creation is uploaded to Screencast.com, and you’re given a link to copy and paste into emails, blogs, twitter, facebook, etc.  Alternatively you can get an embed code to show the image or video directly on a webpage.

There are so many ways to use this software I barely know where to start.

One of the main uses for me is adding screen capture images to my WORD documents.  When I’m writing a report and I want to include a screen image, the usual process is:

1)  CTRL + Printscreen.
2)  Open Image Editor.
3)  Paste screen capture into the editor.
4)  Crop the portion I want to keep.
5)  Fiddle about adding text and arrows.
6)  Convert the file format so it’s not so ridiculously big.
7)  Paste into my WORD document.

But using Jing I only have to:

1)  Hit my hotkey (I chose CTRL+J).
2)  Select the exact portion of the screen I want to capture.
3)  Drop in some text and arrows.
4)  Paste into my WORD document.

Did I mention that, as well as uploading your captures to Screencast.com, you can also choose to just copy it to your clipboard, or save it to your hard drive?

Well that’s why the above job now takes a fraction of the time and looks much tidier.

The five minute limitation on the video makes it unsuitable for recording anything substantial, but what it does do is make screen capture video an option for recording a quick demonstration of something, when usually the time required to do this would make it unsuitable.

The latest development with Jing – last month – is a PRO upgrade that lets you record in hi-res MP4 format, upload your videos straight to YouTube and remove the “Jing” branding at the end of the videos.  The extra features come at the impressively low cost of $14.95 per YEAR.

And before you think “Aha, here comes the affiliate link…”, I’m not even sure that Jing has an affiliate program.

Besides which, the regular version of Jing has more than enough features to make this worthy of your attention.

Go to ==>  www.jingproject.com

Try using it to capture some pics or video and then post the links as a comment below.

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