If a picture is worth a thousand words, would a one-minute video be worth 1.8 million words (assuming 30 frames per second)? If you've ever had to explain how something works on a computer to a person who doesn't quite understand computers, you may have wished to be able to record what's on your screen and send a video. You can do that and TechSmith has two applications that are just what you need.
First is SnagIt, an application that allows users to capture video and trim away unwanted parts. The second is Camtasia, which can accept captured video from SnagIt or create its own files. The big difference is what you can do with the video once you have what I'll call the "raw" file.
Maybe you need just a simple video capture to illustrate a process to one person. In this case, you probably won't be too concerned about narration or a professional-looking production, so SnagIt will do everything you need to do. But if you need to create a video that will be seen by a lot of people, perhaps something that will be posted on a corporate intranet, production values will be more important.
Here's an example. Let's say that I needed to explain how to modify a paragraph tag in Word. I might want to do that because I'm often surprised to find that someone hasn't used paragraph tags when I'm given a document to edit and format. Instead of making a single change to a paragraph tag and having it apply to every like paragraph in the document (heading level one, for example), I have to strip the existing formatting away. The problem is that someone spent a great deal of time applying formatting that can't be used, and I then need to spend a small amount of time removing it so that I can re-create the formatting with paragraph styles.
If I wanted to show just one person how to change a paragraph format, I might send a video that looks like the "before" version. I recorded the audio as I created the video. Clearly I was at a loss for words occasionally and the mouse wandered aimlessly around the screen. But for a one-off explanation, it would suffice.
WordParagraph-RAW from Bill Blinn on Vimeo.
But if this needed to be part of a presentation on a corporate website, editing would help a lot. The raw video is nearly a minute and a half long while the finished video (below) is just 1 minute 3 seconds long even with the addition of an 11-second introduction. The mouse cursor is highlighted when appropriate and the random mouse movements have been removed.
WordParagraph-Finished from Bill Blinn on Vimeo.
If you're looking for more than just a video snapshot, you need Camtasia.
After creating a project in Camtasia, the user needs to import media. All I've imported so far is the raw video file. The white things with spikes on Track 2 represent the audio that I mumbled while making the recording. This audio will be removed in the final presentation.
Track 1 is always present and cannot be edited. It simply illustrates the full length of the presentation.
Click any of the smaller images for a full-size view.
Press Esc to dismiss the larger image.
I added a track (3) for the introductory music. The section at the beginning of Track 2 is the produced video title that is one of many that Camtasia provides in a library of downloadable media.
The raw video in Track 2 has been edited to remove areas where I was mumbling or moving the mouse around without any apparent reason.
I've also added highlighting on the mouse cursor, when appropriate, and there's a cross-fade between the produced video title and the main part of the video and a fade out at the end of the video.
Here I've added Track 4, which contains narration.
The audio in Track 3 has been turned down so that the narration can be heard.
When the video is complete, you'll need to create a file that can be shared. In this case, I selected the MP4 format with Smart Player so that the exported file will be created with everything needed to play it.
If you plan to upload the file to Vimeo or YouTube, you can select one of the other options or create your own.
The options are far less varied than you'll find in applications such as Adobe Premiere, but the benefit of this limited list of selections is the reduced chance for confusion.
Next, you'll be asked to create a name for the finished production and to specify a location for it.
When the process is complete, Camtasia will report the results of the export process.
SnagIt is available for both Windows and OSX computers. Camtasia Studio is a Windows application, but TechSmith also offers Camtasia for Mac. There are differences in what each of these applications can do.
SnagIt, whether on a PC or a Mac, can capture and edit images, record and trim video, and import images from smart phones and tablets via Fuse.
Camtasia Studio and Camtasia for Mac cannot capture or edit still images, but both add the ability to edit video. The editing functions vary between PCs and Mac, with the PC version generally offering features that the Mac version lacks.
Windows users can download and install accessories to customize Camtasia Studio. The downloads include music tracks, themes, and produced video titles.
The free TechSmith Fuse mobile app makes it possible to move photos and videos from a mobile device into Camtasia for editing.
If you need to provide video-based training that shows people how something works on a computer, you should take a look at Camtasia. Although you can capture and trim video with SnagIt, Camtasia includes the tools that will allow you to create a more professional presentation.
Camtasia provides powerful features in an interface that's easy to understand. In my example video, I recorded only the part of the screen with Microsoft Word. You can also record the full screen. It's up to you. The recordings are clear so that you can start with high-quality video and the add the highlights, call-outs, and transitions to create a presentation that won't put viewers to sleep.
At $300, Camtasia Studio is considerably more expensive than the $50 SnagIt, but it's money well spent if you need more than just basic video captures.
Creating business videos doesn't get much easier than this.From recording the screen and capturing live audio, to adding transitions
and video callouts, to inserting sound effects and background music -- Camtasia covers everything you'll need to do if you want to create an informative instructional video. The program is sufficiently comprehensive without being overwhelming and Windows users can even add embedded quizzes to their videos.
Additional details are available on the TechSmith Camtasia website.
How we obtain news is changing and has been for the past few decades. Thirty years ago, the daily newspaper landed on just about everyone's doorstep, most of us watched one of the big 3 network evening news programs, and we heard periodic radio newscasts during the day -- even on music stations. The Internet has largely supplanted all of these.
News magazines such as Time and Newsweek are mere shadows of their earlier versions. Newsweek tried for a while to exist as an electronic publication, but now it's back in print. The news magazines have traditionally filled an important place in journalism: Because they're published weekly, they have more time than newspapers and electronic media to ponder the meaning of an event and they can provide more time and space for every article than can newspapers, radio, or television.
It seems, though, that the 24-hour news cycle and the Internet have conspired to render news magazines unimportant and now they're facing another challenge in the form of news aggregators that allow users to construct their own "magazines".
Whether this is good or bad remains to be seen. News magazines once had generalized political points of view: US News and World Report tended conservative, Time tended liberal, and Newsweek tended to chart a middle course. When users create their own publications, they generally use information that fits their political world view: Liberals will avoid articles by conservatives and conservatives will avoid articles by liberals. This tends to reduce opportunities for compromise.
Late in 2014, the news aggregator application Flipboard made major changes to its interface and added a huge number of sources. Although Flipboard has a browser-based function, it's really intended to be used on a phone or a tablet (Apple, Android, or Windows). The presentation is the best I've seen.
Some smart phone manufacturers (Samsung and Microsoft, for example) include the new Flipboard app on their phones and Flipboard has worked with some of the larger Internet news publishers to package and monetize their feeds. The app has more than 100 million users and is a popular download at the Apple, Android, and Microsoft app stores.
Flipboard on a Nexus 7 from Bill Blinn on Vimeo.
The user interface resembles a printed magazine with cover stories and content sections. Each article is presented in an abbreviated format that the user can click to read the full article on the source website. I'm reading fewer paper books these days, but I'm reading more books because my Nexus 7 tablet is about the size of a paperback book and can contain hundreds of books. (Yes, I'm one of those people who reads two or more books more of less concurrently.) As a result, a tablet-based news magazine is a natural fit, at least for me.
Following last year's update, Flipboard, which used to summarize stories that were mentioned in the various social networks you follow, now has a much broader base of articles to choose from and, because it allows each user to specify topics to follow, it provides an uncommonly personal experience.
Other news apps exist and Flipboard's creation of what it calls the "Daily Edition" moves it into competition with apps such as the Yahoo News Digest and SmartNews. It exceeds those applications by establishing a "Personal Magazine" that bundles all of the topics you want to follow into a "publication" that can be any size you want it to be.
Flipboard seems to be attempting to bring users back to the application more than once per day. The Daily Edition provides a quick review of top-of-mind events while the Personal Magazine offers more detailed accounts of topics that the user wants to follow.
The Personal Magazine includes stories that social media friends have shared as well as stories from topics you've followed (HDR Photography or Website Design, for example). And the menu is a big one. You'll be able to choose from more than 30,000 topics! This is something that the competing services can't do. At least not yet.
The Daily Edition is "curated" (that seems to be the modern equivalent of "edited") by a team of "curators" (editors). The team is headed by Time's former director of digital editorial development, Josh Quittner. The Daily Edition, delivered each morning, included a quick list of general news stories on topics that includes the usual suspects: breaking news, sports, finance, business, technology, and such.
The Federal Communications Commission will vote on two important topics near the end of the month. On Thursday, the 26th, votes are scheduled on a request from two cities that could allow them to provide high-speed Internet service in violation of Tennessee and North Carolina state laws. The FCC is also expected to vote that day on a proposal to reclassify Internet service as a utility.
Rumors suggest that the FCC will vote to allow Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina, to create their own municipal Internet service providers. Needless to say, the big cable providers are opposed. These companies also spend a lot of money on lobbying and that will get Congress involved.
Currently cities in Tennessee, North Carolina, and many other states are expressly prohibited from providing Internet service as a utility to residents. The state laws that forbid cities from providing the service are ones that were crafted, decades ago, in cooperation with attorneys from cable companies.
The cable companies will be extremely unhappy at the end of the day on the 26th because the FCC is also said to be planning to classify Internet service the way it should have been classified in the beginning, as a utility.
Classifying the Internet as a utility would give the FCC the power to ensure that Internet service providers cannot throttle speeds arbitrarily, that they cannot block access to websites that might compete with services the Internet service providers own, and that they cannot create "fast lanes" for services that are willing to pay a ransom for such services.
The FCC's actions won't be the last word, though. Congress will get involved and the big Internet service providers are certain to file suit.
In reporting the rumors, the New York Times characterized the utility decision as "widely expected" and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler eliminated all surprise during the week by writing an article for Wired Magazine. In the article, Wheeler reminded us all that the telephone system itself was once a closed and tightly guarded monopoly. "The Internet wouldn’t have emerged as it did, for instance, if the FCC hadn’t mandated open access for network equipment in the late 1960s. Before then, AT&T prohibited anyone from attaching non-AT&T equipment to the network. The modems that enabled the Internet were usable only because the FCC required the network to be open."
The date will also bring unwelcome news for wireless providers because the decision is expected to include providers of wireless Internet service in the same group with those that provide wired service. Verizon and AT&T have paid millions over the years to maintain their ability to do what they want to do regardless of what their customers want.
Congress deregulated the cellphone industry 22 years ago to allow new carriers to enter the market. The industry has grown considerably since then and things have changed radically. Cell phones are used more for data communications now than for voice communications, but they are still regulated as phones. According to the FCC, more than half of all Internet traffic now comes from smart phones and tablets.
To quote Bob Dylan, "Your old road is rapidly agin’. Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand."
You might expect Facebook, Google, and Apple to be at the top of their game on social media, but a communications company says it hasn't worked out that way. Investis reviewed the use of social media by 500 major companies and named Cisco and HP first and second.
Social media giant Facebook ranked 242nd in the company's analysis. Apple was all the way down at position 416 and even mighty Google was well out of the top 10 at position 62. Ford, on the other hand was in 22nd spot, General Electric at 14th, and UPS at 21st.
Investis analyzed and scored the use of 8 leading social media channels. Given that Facebook doesn't make much use services other than Facebook, maybe it's no surprise that it scored near the bottom of the list. Investis looked at how companies use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and other popular social media, and then ranked them on several criteria, including the range of content that they publish, their success in attracting an audience, and engagement with their followers.
The study says that Apple makes little effort to engage with its corporate audience on social media and achieved a score of 9% overall, compared to the 86% score earned by Cisco.
Facebook doesn't use other sites, but even on its own platform, Facebook's investor relations page "fell well short of best practice" the report said. For example, it doesn't use videos or hashtags and it doesn't appear to have responded to any of posts left by users.
That, in fact, is one of the major shortcomings of many companies. How many social media sites have you visited where questions have been asked 2 or 3 years ago and never answered? I noticed this the other day when I visited one of Adobe's own websites where users of applications can comment. Apparently nobody from the company is watching and a question asked 3 years ago had never been addressed by anyone from the company.
Investis says that Google maintains a presence across most of the key social media channels, even those that compete with Google, as well as on YouTube and Google Plus. Google has two and a half million followers on LinkedIn and 19 million likes on Facebook. But it performed poorly in terms of providing corporate content and information about investor relations or corporate social responsibility.
Marcus Fergusson, research director at Investis, notes that business sectors that have faced challenges are making a notable effort with social media. As an example, he listed the oil and gas industry. Banking was the scored second-highest overall behind technology, with Citigroup performing best.
Cisco received the highest score overall and Ford received high marks for its inventive use of Twitter. About a quarter of the top 100 Nasdaq-listed companies don't even maintain a corporate Twitter account.
Raspberry Pi 2 Model B is now available from its worldwide distributors. You've probably heard of the credit-card-size single-board computers developed in the UK and used to teach basic computer science in schools. They're also very popular with hobbyists. Would you pay $35 for a computer?
The Raspberry Pi and now the Raspberry Pi 2 are manufactured in several board configurations by various manufacturers such as RS Components, Premier Farnell, and Egoman. Egoman produces a version for distribution only China and Taiwan. In the US, you can obtain one from Allied Electronics for $35.
The fly-out large image is far more than life size!
The new model builds on the success of the first generation Raspberry Pi and it is intended for consumers, businesses, and educators as a result of its upgraded capabilities. These include a faster processor and twice as much internal memory -- 1GB.
The Broadcom BCM2836 application processor contains an ARM Cortex-A7 quad-core CPU that runs at 900MHz. The processing speed and available memory are a tiny faction of what you'll find in a standard PC, but the new model is more than 6 times more powerful than the first generation Raspberry Pi Model B+.
The board layout, multimedia subsystem, and peripherals from the earlier model are compatible with the new version. The device has a 40-pin general purpose input output (GPIO) connector, 4 USB ports, and a switching power supply.
You'll find more information about the Raspberry Pi Foundation on the organization's website.
