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Live Screencasting - Stream Your Desktop over the Internet with Procaster

Online video broadcasting services like Ustream.tv, Mogulus, Justin.tv or Qik.com have made it possible for anyone to stream live video over the internet for free. Just connect your web cam (or DV camera) to the computer or switch on the video camera of your cell phone and you are all set to broadcast live video on the web.

Now there’s a new live streaming solution in town called Procaster that goes beyond webcam video and lets you broadcast your desktop screen activity live on the Internet. Video gamers may also enjoy using Procaster as it supports game-casting so you can even live stream your video game sessions to anyone in the world for free.

To get started, you need to download Procaster - it’s currently available for Windows though a Mac version is also in the works. Now run the Procaster application and choose whether you to want to stream webcam video or your desktop screen or a video game that you may be currently playing on the computer.

Live screencasting is on

As you hit the record button, a semi-transparent information bar fills the bottom of your computer screen that shows a live preview of your current broadcast. It also has zoom buttons in case you want to limit the broadcast area to only a particular portion of the desktop screen.

That’s all you need to do at your end. People can visit the mogulus site and watch your live broadcast in their browser without having to download anything (see the following screenshot). Or you can embed the mogulus player into your blog and visitors can watch the live screencasts from there itself.

Mogulus is free but if you are looking to broadcast HD quality screecasts, you may want to go for the Pro version.

The previous versions of Camtasia Studio had a live output feature that turned the screen recorder into a virtual video camera so you could directly stream desktop recordings into any hardware device that required a "video source". Live Output was removed from Camtasia Studio 6 so this Procaster utility looks like a good replacement.

Want Windows 7 on your Laptop? Attend a Local Workshop

For people in Bangalore, Gurgaon (Noida, New Delhi), Mumbai, Pune, Siliguri, Chennai, and Hyderabad.

The official release of Windows 7 is expected to happen later this year but Microsoft is working hard to get as many people as possible to try the beta version of Windows 7.

Windows 7 beta was available as a free download on the Microsoft site for some but if missed that opportunity, here’s another one.

Microsoft India & local IT User groups are organizing a day long workshop on April 18 in select Indian cities with sessions on getting started with Windows 7 and attendees will have opportunity to use this new Windows Operating System at the venue itself.

And if you carrying your laptop along, the volunteers at the venue would be more than happy to install Windows 7 on your computer without you having to download the 2+ GB ISO from the Internet. You may later obtain a product key for Windows 7 from the Live website and use the software without restrictions until August 1, 2009.

To register for Windows 7 day, please click the name of your city: Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Bangalore, Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Siliguri.

Registration is free but beta testers won’t be getting a free copy of Windows 7 once it’s released to manufacturing.

Organize Firefox Tabs as the Folder tree in Windows Explorer

Are you are power Firefox user and simultaneously work with a few dozen tabs? Or are you using Firefox on a small screen laptop ("netbook") and need some extra viewing space for web pages?

Then watch this 1 minute long screencast video to understand how the very-impressive Tree Tabs add-on can help you in both the above situations.

The tabs in your Firefox browser are arranged below the address bar as a long horizontal strip - Tree Tabs takes that strip from the top and arranges it as a vertical pile that you may display either towards the left or the right of your computer screen.

Let’s say you are Google.com and open a few pages from the search results. Now all these pages will appear under the child node of Google.com (makes sense as they are logically related to the parent) - you can collapse the main Google.com site and all these child nodes will hide as well. Or you can close all of them in one go by close the Google tab.

The other advantage is that you save lot of screen space. The stack appears on the side, like the built-in Firefox sidebar, and you can even set it to auto-hide for more viewing space.

The Tree Tabs view in Firefox may initially appear a bit confusing, but the more time you spend with it, the more you’ll love it.

Yay! Digg is Permanently Removing the Diggbar for all but Digg Users

Good news folks. If you are not logged into your Digg account, you’ll never ever see the controversial Diggbar on web pages again even if you visit these pages via a Digg short URL.

The strong, and often negative, feedback from bloggers, SEOs and concerned site owners have pushed Digg back to the drawing board and they’re in the process of making some big changes to the Diggbar.

Here’s a summary of what’s coming in simple English:

1. If you are anonymously browsing the Digg website, all URLs will point directly to the publishers web page and they’ll appear without the annoying Digg frame.

2. The Digg short URLs will do a 301 permanent redirect instead of rel=canonical thus flowing all the Google juice back to the publishers site.

3. Since search engines bots are equivalent to anonymous visitors, they’ll never see any short URLs on the Digg.com site.

4. Diggbar will be visible only if you are logged into your Digg account. But don’t worry, you will still have the option to disable the toolbar from settings and opt-out permanently even if you are logged-in.

The above changes are expected to go live sometime next week. For someone like me who rarely uses Digg, the Diggbar is now just another URL shortening service similar to tinyURL or bit.ly.

Spammers Can Get Your Email Address from Google Profiles

A word of caution for people who have their email accounts on Gmail and are planning to use a vanity URL for their Google Profile.

Vanity URLs are available across all Google Accounts but you can pick a custom username for your Google Profile (like this) only if your Google Account is not associated with a Gmail address.

Gmail users have two choices - they can either continue using the default cryptic URL for their Google Profile (like this) or they can have their Google email username in the Google profile URL.

Now that may sound tempting because a URL like google.com/profiles/google_username is definitely search friendly and more easy to remember than google.com/profiles/121221 but before you jump, here’s a quick warning.

When you add your Gmail user name to the Google Profile, you are indirectly exposing your email address to spammers. They can simply take the username from any Google Profile, append @gmail.com and they have gold in their hands because its you real Gmail address.

All public Google Profiles are indexed in search engines so think twice before turning vanity URLs with your Gmail username. Hat tip Seer.

Planning a Road Trip in India? Get Driving Directions from Google Maps

You can now find detailed driving directions for India roads through the Google Maps website.

The more-handy print version of Google Maps splits the whole route into smaller blocks that are zoomed-in for easy viewing and you can further customize the map area visible inside these individual blocks. Do remember this when you plan your next road trip in India.

Driving Directions on Google Maps - Overview

Detailed Driving Instructions for Print

A Time-Lapse Movie of the Digg Front Page

This Time-Lapse video of Digg will help you visualize how stories move up or go down with time on the Digg front page.

For this movie, I initially captured some 8+ hours of continuous activity on the Digg front page and later squeezed it into a 80 seconds video for your viewing pleasure.

This is an HD screencast so make sure you watch it in full screen.