If you’ve not been tapping into some of the screencasts being published by Jon Udell, you are missing out on a great phenomena achieved with free desktop software. This under 3 minute piece documents very clearly the power of a simple JavaScript / bookmarklet tool for managing web site password logins.
But the subject, while neat, is not the subject. Udells method of communicating technical topics is reaching and making sense to a wider audience (see Movies of Software). Without a doubt his documentary showing the evolutun and de-evolution of a WikiPedia page– Heavy metal umlaut must be the academy award winning feature of this genre. He makes the wiki come alive.
I’d be curious to know more of Udell’s method, not the technology. Is he a one take wonder? Does he script, outline? Part of what he does well is explain things clearly, not overly explained, evenly, and with sometimes a sense of wonder, without becoming a gushing “this is so cool”.
What I am curious about is– where are all the imitators? And bigger then that, this technology / methodology can certainly be used for more things than just showing how technology works… I am game to find some spare bits of time soon to take a swing at doing some simple digital stories using this approach (and now I’ve gone and tipped my hand, poor poker player am I).
I would be screencasting a lot, but I have no idea how to do it without giving more money than I have to Macromedia.
You can send your cash now to Adobe 😉
I’ve yet to do more than think about it, but there is no need to use Flash. Udell’s “movies of Software” shows how he uses (free) Windows Media Encoder to capture content as *.wmv file, which can then be served or converted to QuickTime format. Frankly I think a media player/ quicktime format is better than straight *.swf since you have the controls to stop, pause, rewind etc w/o fishing for a contextual menu.
Not sure if you’ve seen Heavy Metal Umlaut: The Making of the Movie:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2005/02/07/primetime.html
I just wrapped up a couple days here at University of Mary Washington, and Adam Rush is using Camtasia to build simple tutorials for a Mediablogging project — though I agree with you that there is no need to think solely in terms of software demos.
Whoops — that’s *Andy* Rush…
Sleep deprivation is a killer for the terminally delirious.