Third Anniversary of Screencasting: Micro Screencasting? Jing

Reading Jon Udell's blog and discovered that today is the third anniversary of the term screencast!  Here's a screencast to mark the date.

He reflects on the genre and how people are using it and the significance of jing from Tech Smith, a screencasting application that makes it very easy for anyone to do a screencast. 

Just today I was beta testing a new site for a colleague and he me wanted to fill out a survey and make screen captures of screens that weren’t clear. I just whipped out Jing and recorded my testing, verbalizing my thoughts or doing an adhoc think out loud process  …

I’ve also used Jing to create screencasts on the fly, in demand technical support help to people, including my dad on using skype)

I wonder if can include these types of screencasts in the genre of "micro-media" -- on demand remote technology learning and technical support.

Update:  Jon wrote a response here

Want to correct some facts I got wrong.  I said Jon invented the term and the genre.  Here's his clarification:

I always like to point out, as Wikipedia currently says, that I only invited readers of my blog to propose names, and selected the term screencast. It was Joseph McDonald and Deeje Cooley who both (separately) proposed the term.

I also like to point out that nothing was invented, and that the medium has a long history going back to (as far as I can remember) Lotus Screencam. My contributions were to realize that the medium was radically underappreciated, to explore it, and to evangelize it.

Comments

[Michael Pick]

Hey Beth,

I'm liking the idea a lot of screencasts as micro-media. Recently I've been guiding clients towards doing a 2 minute promo to show off all of the features of their site, and then focus on 20-30 second micro-tutorials, kind of like a motion FAQ.

I agree with you about Jing, too, it really has been a game changer in terms of getting people with a low threshold for the boring techy stuff to get stuck in and put screencasting to use.

Just blogged about the birthday of the term screencast. This was the same month that I turned full time screencaster, so it feels like a good omen to me!

Hope to catch you soon :)