Well last night I was doing some browsing and trying to find some good screencasting software to use that was FREE of course.  In my searching I ran across SKYPE and had to check it out.  I went to the SKYPE Beta 2.8 download and downloaded it to check it out.  I’ve got to say Skype Screensharing is pretty much the bomb.  The problem it currently has as of this post is that it doesn’t display your cursor, but it does all the actions of the cursor at an incredible speed.  I was not disappointed.  Once the cursor shows up it will be unstoppable.

So SKYPE haters stop hating and give it a try.  If your internet connection sucks, don’t push the sucky blame onto SKYPE, really give credit where it’s due.

Usage Ideas

Here are some ideas that I thought may motivate some of you to give it a try based on some practical business and freelancer use:

1. Technical Support Screencasting – this is pretty self explanitory, whether it’s the teaching the senior citizen’s how to copy and paste or teach your dad how to check his email this would work great.
2. Application Training Screencasting – being able to train someone how to use your application so easily without an encrypted link and long url to have to send them, SKYPE makes this process very seemless.  Just double click on your contact and select to share screen.
3. Website Training Screencasting – say you have a client and you need to show them how to manage their new site you have just created for them.  Turn on your screen recorder and the SKYPE Screen Sharing and now you have live training with a recorded video to upload to YouTube or some other video sharing website (recommend making the video private for obvious reasons).
4. Webinars - I think SKYPE has a 25 person limit on conference calls, but I’m assuming that you could share your screen with all 25 people within a conference call.  I’ll have to double check on that one.
5. Online Education – teach online courses through Skype now using a combination of video and screensharing.

Things to keep in mind about the SKYPE Beta 2.8 is that it is for a Mac.  Yet another reason to buy a Mac.  I’m sure it will come out on Windows eventually potentially post Beta release on Mac, but it doesn’t matter the viewer.  I tested it last night sharing my screen from my MacBook Pro to my HP Windows Vista machine and it worked perfect.

If you need anymore convincing then you are one hard cookie to sell.  Please leave any comments or feedback you might have.  Feel free to share this post so we can get more feedback.  Oh yeah and did I mention, I LOVE SKYPE!

P.S. Skype is starting to show up on iPhones and I even have it installed on my Google G1 Android phone.  They’re still kind of early in development but don’t be surprised if you can make calls from your mobile phones using your mobile internet without burning up your minutes.