Lighting strikes twice (and thrice): winning Snagit and Camtasia

So, once again, it pays to TwitterTM. I happened to be online when Techsmith (@techsmith on Twitter) announced that they would be doing a 24-hour marathon about one of their flagship products, Snagit, with prizes to boot. I was immediately excited because I am familiar with Snagit and it’s an absolute-must for anyone who blogs. Besides the allure of winning something, I was curious to get to know the marketing machine (@betsyweber is the chief evangelist) and developers behind the product.

It was a long event (24 hours) so I was in and out. The #Snagit24 videos by Techsmith are up online for your viewing pleasure, but back to my title about winning, I won a license of Snagit v10 and Camtasia v7. Slightly surreal and I’ve already put Camtasia v7 to good use with this first video about setting page breaks in Excel 2007.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uScQ7nJm1NQ

One of the first things I noticed about Camtasia v7 is that redesigned interface puts the focus on creating your content. With Snagit v10, there was the addition of an all-in-one capture mode which I absolutely love. With the previous versions of Snagit, there was an emphasis on Profiles and shortcuts to launch your capture modes. I’m not big on keyboard shortcuts because on my HP notebook, it’s usually a combo of Fn+PrintScreen or Ctrl+Shift+Letter. That’s a LOT of key presses so in the past with Snagit v9, I would have to:

  1. go to the quick tray in Windows (7) and rightclick on the Snagit icon.
  2. Navigate to the Profiles tab; Click on “Basic Profiles” to select the particular capture mode I wanted.
  3. OR

  4. Start up Snagit by clicking the tray icon or going to the Programs menu
  5. Click on the capture type I wanted and hit the “big red button” to start the capture.

oldsnag.png

Now, the smart developers at Techsmith decided that instead of letting users do ALL the work, they engineered the All-in-one mode with which you can capture regions, windows, objects and scrolling windows (horizontally & vertically which is the holiest of Holies in my book). 😛 Needless to say, the addition of this feature alone is what would have made me upgrade from v9 to v10 because it cut down my fiddling time.

Some of the gifts they gave away includes books about making screencasts, Snagit, Camtasia, etc. I was lucky and won license to Snagit v10 AND Camtasia v7.
camtasia-win.png
snagit-win.png

This was back in May. Also back in May, Digital Inspiration and Softonic EN ran contests in which they were giving away a license to Snagit v10 each. I entered both contests, but I didn’t get my hopes up. So this morning, when I received a message from Tom Clarke from Softonic, I knew that lightning had struck twice. 😛 He had emailed me to tell me I was the winner of their Snagit v10 license giveaway! 2010 is shaping up to be *quite* the year. 🙂

softonic-win.png

However, I could not (in good faith) accept the prize without telling him that I already had won a license to Snagit & Camtasia from a previous Techsmith event! So, I proposed that if he/Softonic was amenable to my giving away the license to a nonprofit organization (Free IT Athens at http://freeitathens.org), I would do so or they could pick another winner. Thankfully, that was an arrangement he & I could live with so Free IT Athens is now the proud owner of Snagit v10. 🙂

Update (5pm): FRITA advocates for the use of open source software so I’ve emailed Tom Clarke about selecting another winner.

The moral lesson through my rambling article:

  1. it pays to enter giveaways.
  2. It pays to enter multiple giveays. 🙂
  3. In my experience, the stuff I’ve won so far is stuff I use *daily. I absolutely LOVE my HP Touchsmart 600 and I nearly bit the poor husband’s head off when he suggested selling it to “upgrade” to a bigscreen TV. lol.
  4. Add value to the giveaways; My contest entries are usually thoughtful and honest about what I would use the item for if I won it. In my experience, I would say honesty is definitely the best policy.

That’s all for now. Good luck and happy hunting! 🙂

Lightning does strike twice and more contests

Wow. Remember that Camtasia contest that I won? Well, there was another winner to that contest (Mr. Evan Brammer) and now, he’s won the granddaddy of contests: BostonPocketPC’s HP magic giveaway!!! What a lucky man! He’s also putting to very good use and he might have even won the same contest over at Liz-Henry’s blog because he’s just lucky like that! Here’s to channeling some of Mr. Brammer’s luck and wishing for a nice gift too!

All jokes aside, this post is just to talk about the HP magic giveaway again. This time, I’m entering Techie Diva’s contest which just kicked off. I’d written an official declaration of what I’d like to do with this giveaway on my personal blog. To recap from my previous post, the printer, photo pack & KungFu panda dvds will go to the Athens Area Homeless shelter in Athens, GA. I am still donating the Touchsmart PC to the University of Georgia Center for Teaching & Learning to help with their core mission. The Corel VideoStudio X2, Windows Live and the dv4 laptop will go to the College of Veterinary Medicine (where I serve as the laboratory coordinator for the Anatomy laboratory) to help edit short videos to help students with learning anatomy. The HDX and MediaSmart Connect will remain with me (my husband will inherit my current dv9700t laptop) and I’ll be able to use the HDX to help me at my job & my online pursuits/business. The HP mini 1000 + Office licenses will go to my sister-in-law for use in her classroom & ease her workload. A cousin of mine posted on Facebook about how God gives you what you need & not what you want. I want these items for the purposes I’ve listed above. However, if I’m being brutally honest, I wish those items will go to those in the most need. In fact, I didn’t enter a few giveaway contests because I didn’t feel like contributing something that wasn’t inspired. So, with that, I’m signing out. Cheers and don’t forget to check back at Jane Talks Tech for more videos, rants & how-tos.