Recently I read about an Easter Egg in WordPress 2.6 and 2.7. After trying it out, I decided to record it and show it through a video rather than describing it. I’ve been wanting / needing to become more proficient with screen capture software so this finally gave me the motivation to do so.
I tested Cam Studio Open Source, which is free open source software, at first. I had a little bit of trouble with the settings – the text on the screen was all blurry when the video was resized. I later figured out what I had done wrong but had already tried creating the video with Jing, which a number of people recommended to me on twitter.
Jing is screencapture software for Windows and the MAC. And it is so easy to use. Just click and follow the instructions. Really! It’s super easy.
Basically, this is what you do.
- Download and install. On Windows it required .NET 3.0, which I didn’t have, but it installed it for me.
- Create an account. The account allows you to share the videos online and gives you the links and embed codes to use on your blog.
- There will them be a little yellow ball at the top of the screen, which looks like this. There are three menus; Capture, History, and More.
- Click Capture
- Set the recording area
- Select Image or Video
- If you have a microphone, you can also record audio.
- Click record
- Click stop when done
- You can then save the video to your computer or upload it to your new account. I uploaded mine so it would be easy to share them. The screencast account, which is associated with the Jing software gives you 2GB of storage and 2GB of bandwidth per month.
- Go to your online library
- Select the video and get the embed code
- Paste the code into your post
Even if these instructions seem complicated, I assure it couldn’t be easier. You just click and follow along.
So, here is the video I created of the WordPress Easter Egg. Please note that videos of this already exist and this is not some great discovery of mine. Like I said, I decided to use this when learning how to do screen captures. Oh, and it’s super short.
photo credit: (Ex-)Exil-Fischkopp
Hey Kim! That was fun! And I love hearing a real voice with the people I know “online”! Thank you for all you do to educate me. I’m going to pass your post on to Mike who wanted to know more aboutnew ways to create video and see if he can use it to do the promos for Wausau Whitewater.
Julie Walraven´s last blog post – Postcards from the road
I like Jing! I’ve used it on a few occasions to create some tutorial for clients to help them get acclimated to their blogging software. It works well enough…
I had some trouble navigating my way through at first but once I got it down, it was all good! :-)
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LOL! That was awesome! I completely agree with Julie, exactly my feelings!
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Hi Kim,
Fun article. It was cool watching Kim do tech support again. :-) And thanks for the mini-review of Jing.
Great Easter egg for this Christmas :) Thanks for the video (and the capture s/w info as well)
And needless to say, you have a great voice that is good enough to do demos and podcasts and/or video posts.
Cheers, Ajith
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@Julie – Maybe Jing will be useful for Whitewater. It’s always interesting to finally hear the voice of someone you “talk” to all the time online.
@Ricardo – Hmm…maybe Jing isn’t as easy as I insisted. I was using Cam Studio before I tried it so maybe that’s way it seemed so simple.
@Raju – Thanks!
@Jim – Oh no, not Tech Support ;-) I was thinking of my shaky mouse training when I was making the video.
@Ajith – LOL – “Easter Egg for Christmas” Thank you very much! I’m thinking of doing some video tutorials so it’s good to know that my voice isn’t irritating. A long time ago I used to do the recording at a movie theater I worked with because my co-workers thought I had the best voice for it.
great post and great voice indeed… one thing i’d like to note is i think you should narrate a liiiiiiittle bit faster. just an itsy bitsy faster. other than that it’s great!
btw i can’t imagine someone sitting and messing around with his blog that much to discover this :)
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Thanks, Kim, for the information and demo of Jing and the WP 2.7 Easter Egg.
Jing looks really interesting. Although I have screen capture software, I have nowhere to store it online (except YouTube?) so I can embed it into a post. Now I do! I don’t know how I would use it in my blog, but I know it’s there if I need it.
And it was great to hear your voice!
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Hi Kim – that was great but I’m glad you did the demo. If I had got that message I would have been crapping myself incase it was a virus.
When I first got a pc and got the illegal operation message, I had visions of the police breaking down my door in the night.
@Stratos – Maybe I always talk that slow ;-) Thanks for the feedback.
@Mike – Thanks! You never know when you will want to record something even if it isn’t for your blog.
@Cath LOL -“Illegal operation”. The first time I did it I was completely surprised when the screen went black.
That was great!
They say the person who knows your name holds a power over you, what about someone who knows your voice?!
LOL great find; (added to weekly round up revision 37!) one thing though update some plugins! lol
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Hi Kim: I guess some programmer over at wordpress has way too much time on his/her hands :-) It knows your name . . . haha.
@Manshu Thanks!
@Donace – Ok, stop picking on me ;-) Why does it count deactivated plugins as needing to be upgraded? That annoys me.
And it’s only your “true” name that gives someone power over you :-P
@Marelisa – LOL I guess they needed to program in some error message so someone thought they would be funny.
Great demo. I’m trying out Jing right now.
I often use screenshots for demos and record my audio separately. But this is SO much better. :-)
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Kim, this was very cool!
I’d just heard about Jing myself and wondered if it were easy. I’ve heard of Camtasia and other tools but haven’t tried any out myself just yet.
My favorite part of the video was “I found this black screen unnerving…”
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@Shirley – Thanks! Jing really is easy to use. I’d like to see some of your demos.
@Gib – Cool! So will I get to hear your voice? ;-)
Hey Kim, that was neat. I downloaded the software, I’ll let you know what I think after I play with it. I have been thinking about video blogging a little.
Great to hear your voice. You know how you picture people that you talk to on the phone? well the opposite is true of course when you have picture but no voice. I am ALWAYS wrong with my imagination…not that thats a bad thing or good thing, just always wrong… :-)
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Wow, it’s great to put a voice to the avatar and I reckon I am going to have to download Jing for myself. I’m a little lost about the whole Easter Egg thing though. I really wanted to see an Easter Egg.
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@Dee – Now I’m wondering what you imagined my voice to sound like ;-)
@Sire – Are you teasing?
I hope you like Jing.
I haven’t downloaded it yet. have too much on at the moment, and as much as I love to tease, I really expected an Easter Egg to pop up somewhere?
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@Sire – Aahh .. an alternative definition of “easter egg”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_egg_(media)
OH! Silly me. Luckily you are not like that other blogger who chastised me for my ignorance over Black Friday. Thanks for that link.
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@Sire – I was thinking about that ;-)
You know, for some strange reason I was imagining that the thought had actually crossed your mind.
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Ok Kim, more fiesty I guess, not so soft?? I just never guess or imagine correctly, not that either is good or bad! now I’m stumblin. I’ll use the software and you can see if my voice is what you think, he he…
Dee Langdon – BloggerNewbie´s last blog post – Who Reads A Blog On A Cell Phone?
@Sire – But I would never ever do that. ;-)
@Dee – LOL – “feisty” It’s a little mellow. I was nervous and probably tired. I’m usually more animated.
It took awhile, but I finally downloaded Ping, and it lasted all of an hour before I removed it from my computer. On the surface it looked great but once running it slowed my whole computer down, and when viewing the short clip that I made the whole thing was out of sync.
A bit disappointing but it was worth a shot. Now where did I put my video camera?
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Hi Sire – Hmm… that’s too bad. I do have a lot of memory on my
computer so maybe that’s why I didn’t notice a performance issue.
I didn’t like the way it would autostart with windows so I did turn that
off.
And I don’t know where your camera is ;-)
I’ve only got just over a gig of ram, but I thought that have been enough. I even rebooted the computer and just opened the blog but it was still damn slow.
Are you sure you don;t know where my camera is?
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Nope – don’t know where it is ;-)
And I’ll keep RAM in mind for future video related articles – I’ve got 4gb.
Damn women, always have to be 3 gigs up on us blokes. I suppose you drive a big V8 as well ;)
I haven’t had this computer too long. And I don’t drive – I’m actually very
ant-car ;-)