We have been getting a lot of questions lately about the videos on our site. I just use a few simple tools to create them:

Recording: iShowU

It is simple and fast. All it does is recording. No effects or editing but it works well for what it does.

Screen Highlights: Mousepose

This is a great little app for highlighting the screen. You should also check out OmniDazzle though I have never used it.

For editing I am just using QuickTime Pro. I highlight the areas I need to delete and delete them. Then I use the QuickTime Pro "Export for Web" feature. We used to host the videos on our site but when TUAW linked to us we got so many video views that it brought the site down. Now we host the videos on Amazon S3 and it seems to work pretty well.

There is a new app out that I am going to take a look at when I get a chance called ScreenFlow. It looks great but I haven't had a chance to try it out yet.

BTW - We also get people asking if ScreenSteps records video. It most definitely does not. These little 4-7 min. videos take several hours to create. Screen recordings are a major pain. That is why we created ScreenSteps. We use video as a quick intro and then fill in all of the other documentation with ScreenSteps.

We have been pretty busy here at Blue Mango. A couple of months ago we started a beta of our ScreenSteps application and last month we released the Mac version. We are still waiting to get a few things fixed on Windows before we release the Windows version.

ScreenSteps basically makes it easier than you ever thought to create visual software instructions. The response to the Mac version has really been fantastic. We have had some nice reviews and a lot of good feedback. It has made our lives so much easier to be able to churn out documentation.

We have also released a beta version of MediaNotes. MediaNotes is a video tagging application which we have developed jointly with the Brigham Young University Law School. It has been a fairly major undertaking but I think that the resulting app has the potential to dramatically improve the way that many human interaction skills are taught. If you want to see what it is all about you can download an example session file here.

We have more on the work bench. We will keep you posted as new things become available.

Let's look at an example training process with the use of the Blue Mango Learning System.

1. The customer receives multimedia training materials in the Blue Mango Learning System at least 1 week before the Application Specialist is scheduled to arrive. These can be delivered via CD-ROM or the internet. This multimedia training package may have 60 or more lesson modules in it - clearly too much for the customer to consume before the Application Specialist arrives.

The Blue Mango Learning System has a powerful feature entitled "Custom Curriculums". This feature allows the training developer or the individual Application Specialist to create a subset of lesson modules and deliver that subset to the customer. So instead of 60 lesson modules the customer is presented with 5 lesson modules that each take about 7 minutes.

2. The Application Specialist tells the customer that they will need to complete the 5 lessons before he arrives for the training. These 5 lessons might cover: