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Video calling was available for a long time with messenger clients like Yahoo, MSN etc. But they only allowed one to one connection. What pure video calling software like Skype or Oovoo did was they allowed multiple people to do video call conference. The service is free upto some persons and then they charge a little fee for extra persons.

Video calling (video conference or videoteleconference) is a set of interactive telecommunication technologies which allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously. It has also been called ‘visual collaboration’ and is a type of groupware.

Ref: Wikipedia

Transmission of picture or video was initiated by ATT in the 1970s with your picture phone. In the second half of 1980s PictureTel Corp made the first made commercial video conferencing available. In the 1990s IP based video conferencing became possible which was more efficient. It was only in the last decade that we saw the real growth of videotelephony with free services from skype etc. Video calling has advanced to a great extent now with HD technology, echo cancelling technology etc.

Video conferencing is mainly used by corporates and offices all over the world and it is a lucrative business. Video conferencing services are provided by big companies like Tandberg of Cisco, Halo of HP, ATT, Verizon, Polycom etc. For consumer usage I suggest Skype, Oovoo, Logitech VID HD etc. Now a days with advancement in technology it is possible to make video call even on the mobile phone using 3G technology.

Jing is a screen capture and screen recording software from TechSmith. Jing has both a free version and a paid Pro version which cost Rs $14.95. Now what it has in it for you so that you should it! Well at the outset it looks like any other screen capture and screen recording software. Today I downloaded Jing in order to try it. After installing it when you will try to use it, it will ask you to sign-up on their online screen capture website Screencast.com. They also provide 2 GB of free space.

Now there are many good free screen capture and screen recording software which do not bound you to sign-up for anything. And in the open source era I could not even think of paying for a screen capture software unless it has great features and adds value. So people like me who just need the a decent software can give Jing a miss and go for Quick Screen Capture from Etrusoft.