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What’s on your screen right now, aside from this video? You probably have things on your desktop, likely all over the place. Have you ever tried screencasting? That’s when you take a recording of whatever is on your screen, and then pushing it out to the Web. Usually, it’s done in conjunction with audio. If you’re interested in getting into screencasting, and tying it into your Twitter account, you should check this resource out.

ScreenJelly allows you to record whatever is on your screen – for free! Screenjelly records your screen activity with your voice so you can spread it as a video via Twitter or email. Use it to quickly share cool apps or software tips, report a bug, or just show stuff you like.

How is this useful? Let’s say that you have a family member on the computer on the other side of the world. Ask them to record what’s on their screen so that you can help them with any errors they may be seeing, or something they are having trouble explaining.

You don’t have to install anything in order to use ScreenJelly, as long as you have Adobe Flash. Push your screencasts right to Twitter, where a link to your recording will be posted. You cannot push to YouTube at this time, but hopefully that will come in future versions!

Want to embed this video on your own site, blog, or forum? Use this code or download the video:

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/NlcOpRo7NZ0"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/NlcOpRo7NZ0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://chris.pirillo.com/">Chris</a> | <a href="http://live.pirillo.com/">Live Tech Support</a> | <a href="http://media.pirillo.com/">Video Help</a> | <a href="http://feeds.pirillo.com/ChrisPirilloShow">Add to iTunes</a>

Free Screencasting

Chad Wandler (from Split Rock Communications) was listening to the stream from BloggerCon this weekend, overhearing me answering a question about screencasts. For clarification purposes, he informed me that Camtasia Studio and CamStudio have nothing to do with each other and never have. Per the CamStudio’s History site:

CamStudio was originally released by a company called RenderSoft who were subsequently bought by a company called eHelp who used some of the technology in their program, RoboDemo. Some time later, eHelp was bought by Macromedia who wanted RoboDemo (which was to become Captivate).

Knowing that CamStudio did some of the stuff RoboDemo did for free (mainly export to streaming Flash), it looks like they released a newer version of CamStudio (2.1) which fixed some bugs but most importantly, removed certain features, mainly the ability to create SWFs and you were required to register to use it… lovely – and over time, links to the various webpages that had CamStudio and it’s source code were became broken. However, I’ve managed to find the earlier version 2.0 complete with the related CamStudio video codec (comparable to Techsmith’s excellent TSCC), the source code for both and just put the website up so people can download them…

No wonder I was confused – that’s a confusing story! The long and short of it is that CamStudio is on on SourceForge for all you would-be screencasters. And through NickTheGeek’s CamStudio page, I discovered Open Source Alternatives. Awesome!

Camtasia Studio is not CamStudio