When I worked at Adobe and we announced Acrobat.com, I was so excited with all the free Cloud services included, and it also meant that I could leverage the story in promoting my apps because of some of the integration between them that we had built. As an Evangelist then, with every new product launch Adobe did, i always asked myself, how can we leverage the new technology in our less known products, and more specifically, how can we get Adobe Captivate involved.
One Acrobat.com service I thought about was having a light-weight version of Adobe Captivate as part of Acrobat.com that would enable customers to do simple screen recordings or even software simulations, that could be shared and posted everywhere, on YouTube for example, or even right on Acrobat.com somehow. I thought not only would this be awesome for people to use, but I also envisioned the tremendous marketing benefits this would create for us. I imagined everyone who tried it would want to do more eventually and as a result would investigate further and eventual end up buying Adobe Captivate. So armed with my passion and all, I went to work on selling this idea to the right people, but unfortunately as it happened with most of my ideas, it was shut down and never implemented. So much for that. More on this in the eBook I’m writing on what I learned at Adobe.
Enter Screenr.com from the Articulate folks, the makers of Articulate Presenter and Articulate Studio.
When I first found out about Screenr, I thought wow, these guys are brilliant in so many different ways.
Let me explain.
Screenr is a completely free, web-based technology that allows anyone to sign in with their Twitter or Facebook account and record anything on your screen for up to 5 minutes. Then you can Publish and Tweet a link to your recording. People interested in your topic, goes back to Screenr.com, watches the recording and says, wow this is cool, I want to do the same thing, so just like that you have millions of people doing the same thing and driving people back to Screenr.com. Eventually all the major Tech blogs rave about it and people say, this is amazing, who creates this technology, I want to know more and when they need a Rapid eLearning tool, guess who they are going to go to, that’s right, Articulate.com, the folks who make awesome software they say.
Simply Brilliant!
For the last few days, I’ve been using Screenr.com and I’m hooked, I can’t stop recording, and I’m looking for any excuse to use it again and again. I have even created a category on my Evernote account, where I send myself emails every time I have an new idea for a Screenr.
Here are 10 things I absolutely love about Screenr and I believe you will too when you give it a shot:
- Screenr.com is completely Free. That’s right, anyone with a Browser can go to Screenr.com and start recording. There’s a Pro version but I haven’t investigated that yet.
- Nothing to Download. Screenr is browser-based, so there’s nothing to download locally for itto work, it’s in the Cloud if you will. That means I can record something from my Mac at home, or my PC in the shop, or record something when I’m traveling right from my laptop.
- Screenr is limited to 5 minutes. I know some people may have an issue with this limitation, but I actually like it and I believe this feature alone will make you a better screencaster. This is like Twitter limiting us to 140 characters, I believe this makes us better communicators because we have to be creative in how we share our message.
- Screenr has a commenting platform. Everything these days has a commenting platform as a way to interact with other users interested in the same things. I’ve only posted a few screencasts, but I’ve already gotten a few comments and I enjoy responding back.
- Screenr uses Twitter or Facebook to sign in. Again very straightforward, if you are on Twitter or Facebook, you are in, just sign in using your credentials and there are no additional forms to fill out.
- Publish and Tweet. Once you finish your recording, simply give your screencast a meaningful description and click Publish and Tweet. The recording is added to your list of recordings on Screenr.com and immediately shared with your Twitter followers. Here’s the last one I did as an example:
- You can also publish to YouTube. Once your screencast has been published to Screenr.com, there’s an option to also publish it to YouTube. This is obviously important because after all, YouTube is the second largest search engine, so you’ll want to do this if you want your content to be found. Incidentally this process couldn’t be simpler, just enter your username and password for YouTube and it goes to work.
- You can download the recordings as .MP4. I love this feature too because it allows eLearning professionals, Technical Communicators and anyone else to embed their videos in their projects.
- Videos work on iPad and iPhone. By now we all know that Apple will never embrace Flash and most everyone has moved on and began making the necessary transitions toward HTML5 so that iOS devices can display videos properly for their end-users. No worries, your Screenr.com videos will display just fine on the iPad and on the iPhone.
- Excellent for Informal and Social Learning. Last but certainly not least is this important new way in which we are learning today with the advent of Social Media. We all want to share our knowledge and learn from others and there’s no better way to do this than by sharing what you know with your communities via short recordings. I’ve said many times that everything I know about woodworking (my new hobby), I learned on YouTube.com. I have gotten so much more watching short videos than by reading the manuals that came with all my power tools.
- Let’s follow each other on Twitter @rjacquez
- Let’s connect on Facebook at http://facebook.com/rjacquez
- Let’s share great content on Google+ at http://bit.ly/upqr3m
A Twitter Search Tip for making sure you never miss a mention or RT, especially from newcomers. screenr.com/E63s
— RJ Jacquez (@rjacquez) January 10, 2012
So there you have it, go to Screenr.com and record your first video and leave a comment here and I’ll go an check it out and give you feedback.You can find my videos here: http://www.screenr.com/user/rjacquez