Do You Jing or Twitter?
by Gloria McConnell, Managing Editor
Web 2.0
Web 2.0 has brought an almost ridiculous explosion of online tools for producing and sharing content on the Web – with one or as many people as you like. This should not come as a surprise, because that’s what Web 2.0 is about, after all – users creating web content and sharing it. For a more thorough discussion, refer to the Web 2.0 article on Wikipedia.
Among the latest tools/sites available are Twitter and Jing. Not familiar with them? Following is a brief introduction.
Twittering
Twitter is for microblogging. That’s right – micro = tiny, blogging = sharing your thoughts. It’s a free service that allows users to send small text-based messages (up to 140 characters) using any of several means:
- the Twitter website,
- cell phone text messaging (or any device that uses the SMS – Short Message Service – communications protocol),
- instant messaging (such as Yahoo Messenger or Google Talk), or
- a third-party application such as Twitterrific or Facebook.
Twitter says that its purpose is to allow “friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: ‘What are you doing?’” Think of it as an intermediate stop between email and instant messaging. For a good introduction, see the Twitter video – click Watch a video! on www.twitter.com.
Who uses Twitter? By some accounts there are a million Twitter users around the world. One Twitter user is National Public Radio’s Planet Money. See their Twitter “conversations” at twitter.com/planetmoney.
Does it seem like Twitter is a total waste of time? You be the judge. But, beyond finding out what’s going on with your friends, following are some more reasons Twitter might be useful:
- Follow “thought leaders” in your field
- Follow groups, events and conferences
- Get the news – in a very condensed fashion (BBC, NYT)
- Monitor trends
- Drive followers to your content
- Let people know you’ve been arrested in a foreign country – really! CNN reports that a U.S. college student used Twitter to alert friends and relatives about his plight.
Jing – simple, quick, free screencasting
Screencasting? It’s the process of creating a digital video of screen captures and your actions on the screen. TechSmith (the producers of Camtasia and SnagIt) brings us Jing, and the special part of Jing is that it is incredibly easy to use. You can create a screencast with or without audio, or capture individual screens. When you have finished your screencast, you can upload it to the Jing, Flickr, or FTP site or save it as a file, and share it. The Jing application is installed from the site, www.jingproject.com. It also requires and installs .NET 3.0, if needed. This installation can take a few minutes.
Jing is incredibly easy to use. I installed it and was able to use it almost instantly. The biggest challenge you will find with Jing is in planning. If the final video is for any professional purpose, a good needs analysis, storyboards, and script will help ensure that you have a good result. You may have an informal need, however. Perhaps you just want to demonstrate a particular usability issue to the software developers with whom you are working. Jing makes it simple to do.
For a very nice explanation of Jing’s value, see Tom Johnson’s article, How Jing Can Benefit Technical Writers.
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