Screencasts with iShowU
Screencasts are popping up everywhere. Small movies or slideshows, often with audio-commentary, which describe how to do a particular thing on a computer.
For instance, applications like Textmate have been made popular by people seeing its power via screencasts of people programming in Ruby. Experts on Lynda.com, and other such services, make a living at teaching people to use applications via screencasts.
Now, it is easier and more cost effective than ever to create your own screencasts. iShowU for the Mac OS is the best screencast creator I’ve used to date. Although iShowU has its fair share of competition on the Mac, it strikes a great balance between simplicity, feature-set, and cost.
iShowU interface
The key features of iShowU are simple enough for the novice, yet advanced enough for people to make some very well put together screencasts.
One of the greatest things about iShowU, is its documentation and change log. The documentation is simple, easy to follow, and not long winded. It gets right to the point and helps you get up and running quickly. You all know how I feel about change logs, and iShowU does a superb job of thoroughly describing the changes between the version you are currently using, and the version you are about to update to.
I was going to do an in-depth review that went through each feature and explained how great they are, but the review got to be too long. Instead I ask that you go download the demo, and if you decide to start doing screencasts, or you just want to convert from another application - purchase a copy of iShowU on their site. I recommend it over any other screen capturing software on the Mac.
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Looks pretty slick…..do you have a suggestion for a podcast tool on the Mac?
Dennis on June 13th, 2006 6:43 pm
Dennis: We used Skype and Audio Hijack Pro last time for our podcast and they seemed to work out quite well. There are also varying ways to actually capture the podcast using the aforementioned software but hopefully one of us can put up a little something something here for those interested.
Garageband was alright but it crashed a lot and the audio quality of iChat doesn’t seem to compare to Skype just yet. Maybe updates to both apps in 10.5 will change that though.
Mike Stickel on June 13th, 2006 11:15 pm
until they fix the garageband cpu and memory leaks, it will continue to suck.
I think Skype will continue to beat everything due to it’s p2p + overpeer nature. I’m hoping the Rumors that Apple will make a deal with eBay and Skype will be cross platform with iChat, which really means, that iChat from 10.5 would be a skype client. But, ah if wishes were fishes…
Daniel Nicolas on June 14th, 2006 1:00 am
Thanks Mike
Dennis on June 14th, 2006 7:00 am
Hi,
Very nice software ! I’m searching a long time ago a so good soft, and it is compatible intel ! Great !
denis on June 14th, 2006 5:58 pm