The Rise of the “How To” Movie

Screencasting goes commercial? I’m a huge fan of screencasting — short “movies”, most often of what you’re doing on your PC as a easier way of explaining how to use a piece of software — and I think it has huge potential. (Here’s a loose wire directory of screencasting stuff.) So it’s not much of … Read more

Directory of Screencasting Resources

Updated Nov 13 2006: added a piece on screencasting in Linux which looks helpful, albeit complicated. This week’s WSJ.com column, out Friday, is about screencasting (you can find all my columns here; subscription only, I’m afraid): Screencasts are really simple to grasp. And in some ways they’re not new. But I, and a few thousand … Read more

Transcription Made Simple

I’m always on the lookout for good transcription software — a program that will take a WAV, MP3 or other sound file and let me stop, start, rewind and speed up the recording using shortcuts as I transcribe it. Olympus do a good one for their digital recorders, but it will only handle its own … Read more

Great Tool For Recording Skype Conversations

A few months back I posted something on recording Skype conversations: Here is the solution to the problem, in case you’re still looking. It’s HotRecorder and it’s excellent. It not only does a great job of that, but Premium users ($15) get a free tool to convert recordings in  .ELP files to .wav or .ogg. The free … Read more

A Way To Record Lectures, Interviews and Stuff To Your PC

I have long been looking for a way to record interviews and whatnot to my computer. Here’s a program that might help: LectureRecorder, from Cyprus-based XemiComputers.    LectureRecorder “allows you to record lectures and write summaries for them. To make a lecture summary the program provides several rich-text fields: course, subject, date, lecturer, digest and … Read more