From time to time, I have to share screen shots, it’s a common task for some, especially when showing errors and the likes. This is usually fine because it can be emailed, or saved as an image file for attaching to a bug ticket. I’ve started sharing some screen shots online, which now requires a few more steps, and becomes quite time consuming, screen shot, save image, upload to some site. This is where jing came in…
Jing is an application that can be used to take screen shots, or videos. It has an added bonus that it is backed by Screencast.com. With the two combined, you could take a screenshot, have it uploaded, and get a URL to send to other people in as little as 3 clicks. Pretty cool, especially as you can do video as well.
However, I was struggling with a memory issue, upwards of 300MB after taking a single screen shot. The Jing folks followed up on my tweet with an interesting posting on memory management. It details some interesting stuffs about .NET and the Garbage Collector. Whilst this is a great post, and provides some excellent insight into some application memory management, it doesn’t resolve my memory issues. So I am stubborn, and went looking for some other options.
I stumbling across a site called AlternativeTo, which has references to possible alternatives to applications. A couple of the applications looked interesting, but not quite what I wanted. Then I stumbled upon zscreen. Another .NET application which seems quite a bit less memory hungry. The UI is basic, but stuffed with options. Including not limiting your uploads to just a specific site, with built in support for RapidShare, SendSpace, Flickr, ImageShack, TinyPic, Twitter, ImageBarn, and MindTouch to name a few. That’s not the only option either, with FTP support an option too, you can push to your own private site, and generate URLs for your use.
Whilst jing faithfully served me as the little glowing yellow ball at the top of my screen for a while, zscreen has become my screenshot taker of choice. Give it a shot, worth playing with.