The Jing Project

This is a piece of software that is sponsored by TechSmith. What this does is that it brings in a lot of goodies from Camtasia in (though not all). It allows both Screen Capture and Screen Recording functions. And it has a tie-up with Screencast.com (which is what it uses for storing the data) that allows you to share whatever you have captured or recorded.

The fact that you cannot use it without a Screencast account comes as slightly negative to me. But at least for the meantime, if you are using Jing, then there is no limit on your Screencast trial account (which is a good thing). But still, this tie up disqualifies Jing as being a stand alone desktop utility. Head over to the Jing Project website to get started. You can see a video story (funny) from the home page to learn what Jing allows you to do.

CamStudio

This is an Open Source alternative to Camtasia. This is a standalone screen recording software that you can use to perform the basic function of recording the actions you are performing on your screen and then allowing you to playback these recordings later. The great thing about this product as of now is that a recent release was made (version 2.5) which fixes a lot of bugs that the old version of the product used to have.

There you have it, two alternatives to spending a lot of money to buy a license of Camtasia.

However, in case your needs are a little above the free versions, but not as much as the premium software out there, you may want to check out ScreenFlick (for Mac) and BBFlashBack (for Windows).

Of course, the best option, if you just want to view the file, is to use the Word 2007 viewer from Microsoft. This allows you to open the DOCX file and view it. It is a free utility from Microsoft. Another option from Microsoft is available to you if you have an earlier version of Office installed (such as Office 2003). It is called the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack. This allows you to open, view, and edit Office 2007 documents in Office 2003 or Office XP. If you don’t like Microsoft, but still want to view the file that you have, there are other options, and I point out out 3 of these below:

Zamzar – Zamzar is a free online file conversion service. It allows you to covert a file from a number of formats to a number of formats. One of these formats from which you can convert is DOCX. You can convert the file to a number of formats (such as DOC, PDF, TXT, PNG, etc.).

DOCX Converter – This one is a service which is dedicated to DOCX files. It is a bare minimum conversion utility, which simply converts a DOCX file to an HTML file (an option that is not available in Zamzar). This also allows you to install a dashboard widget.

DOCX2DOC – This one is another specialized service which converts a DOCX file to a DOC file. Now why would you want to do this if you have the option of a compatibility pack? Well, you may not want to install this pack or may not have permissions to install this pack.

All of these services would have some delay associated with the conversion in the free version of their service, but then you never know when you would need something like this.

Google, it seems, can’t crack this either.

Google did a good thing by making some changes to the Gmail. Mainly it improved overall speed and added a new loading page with a progress bar. However, this progress bar has the same flaw as the ones in Windows do. It doesn’t show the right progress. Take a look at the image below:

The progress bar in the image shows that the process of loading is nearly complete.

It takes a split-second for the progress indicator to reach that level when I load my Gmail. It’s so fast, that despite several tries, I couldn’t get a screen shot of it while it was half way.

However, once it reaches this level, it pauses for more than a second. So, even this progress bar is actually not a true indicator of where the progress of the process stands in terms of time. This is the same problem as that of Microsoft Windows’ progress bars.

Note: I do realize that this is trivial and it is hard to make this work in an ideal way. But still. Also, yes, I realize that the title of this article is a little sensational.

I have used SyncMyCal for almost a year now and have been very happy with it all through this. So, I didn’t feel too bad when Google released their own utility. However, after having a look at the offering from Google it turns out that I would still go ahead and use SyncMyCal in place of Google simply because it offers so much more.

Here is a look at a comparison between the two utilities (picked up from the SyncMyCal site):

Given the fact that there will be a Contacts Sync option soon enough, I think that SyncMyCal is still the best bet.

Positives for Google

Of course, you can’t write off Google (heh). Their tool is free (SyncMyCal has a limited functionality free version). And it’s their API so they are probably going to come out better in the end.

Wikipedia says that a Mind Map is

a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central keyword and idea.

I use Mind Maps to organize my notes from meetings or to brainstorm. Which brings me to the topic at hand. While there always have been many desktop tools available for creating Mind Maps, lately we see that these offerings are moving online (largely due to advances in technology available for creating online applications).

Let’s dive right into the comparison. Below I compare the services feature by feature:

User Interface

Mindomo has a completely Office 2007 like UI – complete with the Ribbon, the big round button, and the works. This brings a lot of familiarity to someone who is used to working in Office 2007. The other thing it does is that it makes all the options available to the user very easily and intuitively.

Mindmeister, on the other hand, has a very minimalist user interface which does look very fresh. Being minimalist, it may not be that easy to learn for the first timers, however. It has its controls on a panel which docks on the right side of your page.

Usability

I found Mindomo to be far more usable than Mindmeister. Because it follows the UI conventions from Office 2007, it makes it very easy for the user to do things such as change font or color of the items on the map. It has several preset designs, icons, etc. for use on the maps which it lets you choose by single click from the ribbon. (see screen shots below), while with Mindmeister, you have no such ability.

Both have very easy to learn and intuitive keyboard shortcuts which allow you to create the map without taking your hand off the keyboard.

Other Features

Icons and Images - Both allow you to add icons against nodes on your map. However, Mindomo also allows you to add images against each node (it has its own set of predefined images, or it also allows you to insert external images).

Sharing and Publishing – Both allow you to share your maps with others and also allow you to publish the maps on the Internet. They also allow you to embed the maps in your own website.

Export and Import – Both services allow you to export your mindmap to a variety of formats.

• PDF – Mindmeister exports the entire map as is into a PDF. Which means that your PDF actually contains an image (I find that kind of pointless because there is also the possibility of exporting to Image). Mindomo on the other hand tries to convert your map into text when exporting to PDF and organize it into neat sections. I personally found the resultant document to be very messy (and it doesn’t export the images that you embedded into the map).
• Images – Both allow export to jpg, gif, and png. However, with Mindomo all my efforts at exporting to jpg were going waste because the quality of the jpeg produced was really bad. I had to export to png which was quite acceptable.

Mindomo also allows importing a Freemind or MMAP file (popular formats for Mind maps). Mindmeister didn’t seem to have this feature also has this feature though its not real easy to find on the UI. However, Mindmeister allowed export to Freemind or MMAP in its free version which Mindomo did not (the feature is available in the paid version I believe).

Free vs Paid – both have free versions and paid versions. To see the difference, visit the sites as I only wanted to compare the free versions. I do have to mention that Mindomo shows Google Ads in a pane in the free version while Mindmeister doesn’t show any ads.

A couple of other things – Mindomo is Flash based and requires you to install the Flash plugin on your browser. On the other hand, Mindmeister doesn’t require any Flash  (or other runtime). Finally, Mindmeister allows you to collaborate on the same map in real time (ala Google Docs) – in other words multiple people with whom you have shared the map can work on it at the same time.

Conclusion

While there are many other features to compare, I believe that my conclusion is that Mindomo is a better offering due to its overall user friendliness and larger range of options.

Mindomo Screen shots

Mindomo allows easy choice of styles and other formatting options from its ribbon tool bars.

Here’s my summary from the data collected:

For those who already have Office, Live Workspace is the obvious answer. Google Docs will only appeal to those who don’t have Office already.