A few days ago, I mentioned some updates to Screencast-O-Matic – one of which was that you can now upload your screencasts straight to YouTube. To take Screencast-O-Matic’s straight-to-YouTube functionality to the next level, try playing around with Embedr.com. Say you create 4 or 5 great, brief screencasts (using Screencast-O-Matic, Jing, or your favorite screencasting tool) and upload them to Youtube or another great video sharing site.  That’s a great start, but why not showcase them on your own library’s website? Or encourage a local school to showcase them on his or her class website? Super easy with Embedr! Simply tell Embedr the URLs of the videos in question, describe your playlist, and click a button to get the code you need to embed that playlist in any webpage.  Sweet!

Here’s one I created in about 20 seconds!

Hat tip to my friend and former colleague, Jenn at HCC!

Those of you who’ve sat through pretty much any of my training in the past year or so have probably heard me mention Jing, a great and FREE screencasting tool.  I love it, and am completely loyal to it for quick, on the fly screencasts. However, Jing requires that you download and install a small program on your computer to capture images and videos, and a lot of you have mentioned that getting software on your computers is a non-starter at your place of work due to edgy tech folks who won’t give you the permission to download as you choose.  Enter Screencast-O-Matic. I’ve played around with it in the past, and like it well enough, but apparently, it just got better. This from Digital Inspiration:

You can now record full HD quality screencasts videos (1280×720) in your browser without even creating an account at Screencast-o-matic.

You may then save the recorded movie to your desktop in Quicktime (MP4) format or directly upload the screencast to your YouTube account where it will be encoded as HD…

Screencast-O-Matic has a few other features that make it a lot of fun and really handy, like the ability to add notes at any point in the video and features that make the mouse easy to track in your screencasts so that viewers can follow your actions easily. Try it out!

Anyone out there using Screencast-O-Matic or another download-free screencasting tool? Let us know in the comments!