Jing: A Perfect Storm is Brewing

Jing is absolutely my favorite piece of software made by TechSmith. It’s a quick and simple recipe for broadcasting images and video of your mac or pc that I believe has the potential to redefine how we think of screen capture / recording. It also has the opportunity to have a profound impact on how we communicate with and learn from each other whether its across the world or a few cubes down.

For the first time, rapid visual communication of our virtual desktops is possible. There’s no clunky workflow, no special knowledge of codecs and compression, no convoluted delivery choices — you don’t even need to have web space or know how to upload anything. Jing makes rich screen media creation and distribution accessible and even downright pleasurable.

There’s also some wicked cool science at play here. You see, Jing’s rich media delivery takes advantage of what’s called the picture superiority effect. Research indicates people learn better from images than they do from text. This effect is even more powerful, as Garr Reynold’s notes, when the consumer is casually exposed to the information.

Jing’s raison d’être is to quickly capture and share visual information with others via hyperlinks. You take a snapshot or record a short video, get the url back immediately in your clipboard and slam it in an IM chat window or email. The url is then shared casually with consumers (this isn’t rigid delivery like a classroom lecture). Hell, the lack of editing and spartan recording workflow within Jing means the decision to record is often impromptu — it’s quick, dirty and natural, just as our day to day visual experiences are in the real world.

Video. Let’s face it folks, we live in a world dominated by video. So much so that some interesting movements are afoot amongst progressive thinkers and educators. Michael Rosenblum argues we no longer “live in a print driven culture…we live in a video driven culture” as he makes his case for video literacy. He’s not alone in this sentiment. Apple recently profiled Maria Lovett’s “Writing with Video” class which riffs on the same idea and emphasizes the potential of video literacy for students who traditionally struggle with the written word.

Now I’m not trying to kill traditional literacy — I personally love words. I’m just looking for patterns and attempting to connect the dots. Prevalent broadband, web video momentum, easy screen recording and sharing, the picture superiority effect, video literacy, the ascendancy of the first web generation. When you add it all together its hard not to be excited by Jing.

So that’s my pitch on Jing. It’s free. Hosting is free (free basic screencast account) or you can put it on your own server if you’d like. There’s no excuse — check it out.