ScreenToaster – Online Screen Recorder

In the last post we test drove an application called Cropper that takes static screen shots of your desktop (full screen or partial). This time we’ll extend it a bit further and look at ways to record screens to produce screencasts. I’m sure all of you have gone to sites such as youtube and seen lots of "how to" videos that had recordings of someones desktop as they walk you through some operation with a monotone voice in the back dictating what they are doing…

Well in this case, we’ll have a look at an application that allows us to create such videos. Now, I’m NOT going to do the monotone voice thing.. however, I will endeavor to get some form of recording going to show you how its done.

The application is called ScreenToaster and it meets my criteria of being free and functional! ScreenToaster is a web-based screen recorder designed to capture your screencasts, do some minimal post-recording activities (such as adding sub-titles, audio etc) and then either stream them directly from their site or download as a video file.

So lets start shall we?

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Cropper – Capture your Screens easily!

There are many applications out there that can capture all or part of your screens. The more notable ones include SnagIt and via Microsoft Office One Note. Unfortunately most of these cost to use. Cropper has been around for a while now and is one of the best free screen capture applications out there.

Written by Brian Scott and available for both Windows 32bit and 64bit operating system, it offers an easy, intuitive and configurable means to capture ones desktop.

Lets go through its main features first before we take it for a test drive….

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Adobe Buzzword Beta

Recently i looked at Microsoft SkyDrive as online storage mechanism and actively use Google Docs to hold a lot of my documents. Adobe is coming out with a similar offering in terms of online document storage and collaboration.

Main Features

• Its an online word processor
• It allows you to store and access your documents from anywhere (internet access permitting)
• Its got an excellent collaboration functionality – allows multiple authors to make changes to the same document
• Key to any collaboration tool is tracking changes, versioning and reviewing edits. It comes with an tools to do all these things.
• Ability to add comments to the document inline as well as controlling access to documents/functions through roles.
• It supports image imbedding and formatting words around these images.

Right.. so lets take this for a quick test drive…

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Windows Live SkyDrive – 25 gigs of space for free!

One of the more popular online storage providers out there currently is Google with their GoogleDocs application. This is a pretty cool application that allows you to upload and share all manner of documents.

Microsoft has done it one better with their latest offering called Microsoft Skydrive. Similar in concept, it’s one of the services provided by Windows Live that gives you your very own online drive where you can store just about anything.

More impressively, the space you are allowed to store is a mind boggling 25gigs! Thats a whole lot of space :)

So what would you store in these 25 gigs? Here is an idea.. practically everyone out there now has a digital camera of their own (my four year old has her very own.. in pink). And how many people out there keep back ups of their photos? I bet a lot of folks out there have no back up strategy and dump all their photos on their local hard drive only to lose it in the next boom-event (ie, virus, hard drive failure, accidentally formatting your hard drive while trying to install Linux on a separate drive – yeah.. that happens too ;) ).

So how do you get access to this free space and use it as an alternative to Google Docs and other sharing systems (such as Picasa and/or Flickr, etc)?

Right.. lets start shall we? 

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How to use SecureShare in GBridge

As part of a series of how to articles for GBridge, lets look at how to share files across your sessions. There are many ways to keep files stored in a central server (such as Google Docs) to access whenever you wish to, however, this method is slightly different. For newbies like me, its an easy way to get access to your documents stored on one of your computers from another. For example, if you have some nice mp3’s stored at home, instead of putting them onto a USB drive and bringing them into work, you can share your mp3 folder on your home machine and listen to them on the fly at work :)

The types of files that can be accessible is varied and includes popular media files such as mp3, flash video, images and even provides functionality to show the images as a slideshow :) The cool thing about this method of sharing is that because the files are not stored in a central server, you are accessing them directly from your shared PC. This means that your documents/files never stored on machines unless you authorize them :)

Right, so lets begin by creating a simple share that can be accessed from your “work” machine.

Assumptions

1. You have already set up two connections (follow my earlier guide if you need a refresher).
2. You have a folder on your home pc which contains the files you wish to access from work.

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Internet Explorer 8 is now out..

Microsoft just released a new version of it’s web browser today. Packed with features and add-on’s, its trying hard to retain its user base. A lot of people prefer Firefox as their browser, but the fact remains that with the advent of technology such as Ajax etc, a lot of developers out there are trying to provide a richer user experience and sometimes, providing this level of interactivity results in issues when rendering the pages in any browser other than IE.

It will be interesting to see if this new version is smaller, faster and more secure than the previous versions. I thought I’d upgrade my work machine just to see how easy it is to upgrade and see if there are any major differences in browsing experiences.

I’m assuming at this point that most people out there are now on IE7, so this will be an upgrade.

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New Version of Google Chrome out

For those who may not know, Google Chrome is Google’s version of a web browser. Currently the market is dominated by clients such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc.

Chrome is Googles’ attempt to create a light and fast browser first released around 6 months ago.

While its still a relatively new application and subject to little quirks, I’ve very quickly made it my primary browser in terms of general use :)

Note: The latest version of Chrome may not play nice with Windows 7 (read: slow), so please be aware of that if you are interested in installing the latest version and you are running Windows 7 beta.

We will write up a quick article on how to download, install and configure Google Chrome soon, but for now, here is the news item regarding its latest version:

From Reuters (Mar 18):

Google released a new version of its Chrome Web browser on Tuesday, as the search giant continues its efforts to get a foothold in a market dominated by Microsoft Corp.

Small Basic Introduction

I stumbled across Small Basic on DevLabs. And its catch phrase caught my attention: “Small Basic is a project that’s aimed at bringing ‘fun’ back to programming.” I wasn’t a believer at first, and I simply had to try it.

It turns out that its simplicity is captivating. Sure the functionality is limited, but it was simple enough that almost anybody can use it. Start coding, then click Run, and you get instant results. I think this is the perfect tool to get somebody to be interested in programming. One of our colleagues was looking for something to get his kid started in programming, and there is no need for him to look further :)

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Managing your time with ManicTime

When browsing on makeuseof I came across a gem of an application that showed me what the hell i was doing all day long at work :)

The original article that got me started is here.

We all get caught up in all manner of activities during the day and frequently, we never get a chance to do what we planned to do because we keep "running out of time". This tool allowed me to identify activities that is not in my role and responsibilities and focus on organising my time better.

With ManicTime installed, all my computer activities are logged and recorded and it allows me to tag my activities so that i get a nice little chart at the end that tells me what I’ve been spending time on.

It takes all of 5 minutes at the end of the day to go through your activities and "tag" blocks to general categories.. as an example, here is one of my days:

 
Once you have your activities tagged, reports and statistics are very easy to generate. It has shown me where the bulk of my time goes.

Sitting quietly in my taskbar, I found ManicTime to be quite robust and non-interfering with my daily work. I know most of you will think of this as invasive etc, but frankly its a tool to help me be a better person. This information is not for anyone else as its all stored locally.

One thing it doesn’t seem to have (and perhaps i haven’t tested it enough) is profile independence. IE, if someone else logs onto your machine, can they see what you’ve been doing? I’m not too sure on that…

Anyways, if you want, give it a go for a week or so.. it may tell you a lot about your computer habits :)