Jing is a Tool You Can Get Addicted To

Apparantely I'm not the only one impressed with this program. PC World has named Jing as number 100 for their best products of 2008. (Whew, just made that one.)

They are also number 15 in the list 25 top tools every Learning Professional should have in their Toolbox. How cool is that?

The best thing about Jing is that it was made to be simple so that anyone can use it. Oh, did I tell you it's FREE! Now that's something worth talking about. :0)

I said before, Jing is easy to use. I'm not a Techie. I know a little bit of HTML and I can edit images. Beyond that, I fudge my way through like most other people.

I don't know if it is just me, but the first image I take with Jing usually captures the whole screen. I just hit delete and from that point on I can get exactly what I want. It's probably something I am doing that causes it but it's a minor problem and I haven't spent the time on their site to see why. (It could be that I need more RAM and get impatient and hit the button again...)

You should be aware that the Jing program uses a PNG file for its images. That was new to me but it seems to be a file sharing format. Squidoo had no trouble using it because the Jing logo and the trophy pictures are Jing screenshots.

If you visit the Jing website you will find some cool ways to use Jing. It can take movies as well as still images. You can add a pointer or text in the picture before you save it. If you are making a video, you can add voice or music. To quote their site,"Jing is designed to be fast-visual communication shared with others in a variety of locations. Capture. Annotate. Share." To that end, you can upload your pictures to Flickr. Are you starting to get some ideas?

Today I was working on a my Sogs lens and needed a screenshot of that lens. Before I would have had to open my PSP program and relearn how to do a screen capture. Then I would have had to work with the image, save it to my computer, return to my Squidoo Workshop and upload it.

With Jing, I activated the Jing program, saved the capture in its PNG format and uploaded it to my lens. I couldn't believe how easy it made the whole process.

There, I did it again :0)