Work smarter, not harder.
Basically, there is this site that is a subsidiary of a company called TechSmith that has released a program to easily capture and upload things like videos or screenshots to give to other users. All you have to do is simply choose the area of the screen, record, and click upload! A link is then put straight into your clipboard and you’re ready to send it to someone. The videos are automatically encoded into .flv format and are displayed in a nice flash movie.
You can either supply the program an FTP that is accessible by the web where it will deposit your videos, or pay them and they’ll one click host it for you straight from Jing.
You can check out Jing Here
A matter of fact: here’s a video of what I just recorded.
Yay!
QR Codes Kick Ass
See that? That’s a QR code. It’s not a UPS package – it’s my contact information. QR codes can be scanned by camera phones for instant addition of contacts. Ever hear of a business card scanner? Yeah, stupid idea – QR codes… GOOD idea. Check out this video, the guy talks too much like most Mac users:
The only problem I’ve had with this system is that not all bar code readers or generators will automatically figure out that it’s contact information. for instance, if the bar code generator or the PEBCAC generating it chose ‘text’ then the message will come out without any of the handy one touch functions. Gotta use a good generator, this one works well enough. I found one better at one point that had a website link and all, but I’ve long since lost it.
QR readers are available on almost any phone model and will become more and more standard. Actually, as I read slashdot tonight, Microsoft has just released Microsoft Tag… which is a sort of Microsoft version of this functionality. It kind of says to me: “Tag, your idea is consumed!” Way to throw a boulder in the world’s stream Msft. All that aside, I’m glad this will be something we can look forward to doing in the future – I’m sure you are too.
Having one of these babies on the back of your business card helps bridge the gap between tangible notes and electionic information… just like one of my favorite programs, Evernote, which saves things from your phone’s camera, Windows clipboard board or mac (whatever they call it) into an online account sync’d across all your devices and available online. Even images are text-recognized so you can search things by the words in an image. Might sound a bit much, but holy cow has it saved me a number of times.
So what I hope you take away from this is: Start using QR codes on your stuff, they work in even small pictures and are on the bleeding edge of the adoption curve for the US.
So, ok… I JUST posted about Windows 7 having probelms installing a brand new Vista certified sound card and the fun isnt over. One of the new 7 features is the new startup repair options… great, right?
Not so much. It detected a problem with my boot record and automatically proceeded to destroy my dual boot system into oblivion. I could not cancel, even though the button was available. The reason? “The automated repair process can not be canceled.” So I guess the automated repair process is omnipotent now? It claimed to have found errors but really just raped my computer. Elite.
Now I get the error that no boot device could be found.
So I repaired the boot.ini and Windows 7 boots again… but only in safe mode. Then as soon as I enter safe mode the SoundBlaster card installs again. Its basically the mark of never booting normally again. Unless of course, I disable or remove my brand new Vista certified sound card from Best Buy.
Have some pics…
Oh yeah, I wrote this from my G1 again.
