It began innocently a few years ago, when I needed a better way to capture a portion of my desktop. Jing (by TechSmith) was free. It was yellow and shiny. It floated gently across my screen and tucked itself away in the top right corner. Someone, somewhere along the line recommended it.

It’s addictive.

Like many tools in its class, Jing does a fine job of capturing your screen. It can capture your entire browser or zoom in and take a snapshot of a smaller area on your screen.

Why would you want to capture your screen? Think tech support – ever tried to describe what’s happening on your computer, either on the phone or in e-mail support? With a screen capture you can show it.

Jinxed myself bragging about this one...not zero now.

It’s also incredibly helpful for showing my clients how to do something, especially a behind-the-scenes task or function in the software and services we use to run websites, e-mail marketing and social media — Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, Facebook Pages, Basecamp, Mailchimp.

Jing kicks it up a notch by letting you capture a short video as well, also known as a screencast. Screencasts capture not only what’s going on on your screen, they can capture your voice, and some programs, like Camtasia Studio (Jing’s sister) and Screenflow, can capture a video of you. Jing covers the basics; if you want fancier, check out Camtasia or Screenflow.

When my clients ask, “How do I edit a post, add an application or upload new subscribers?” I answer with a short, 30-90 second screencast. My clients love it and it’s a godsend for teacher and student alike.

Jing lets you do some minimal mark-up – draw an arrow, add a text box, use a highlighter. That’s generally one step beyond the screen capture capabilities you’ll get with your basic Mac or PC software.

Where Jing really shines is its seamless connection with Screencast, an online storage space for videos, images and documents. Here’s how it works:

• Capture your image with Jing
• Mark it up (look here!)
• Download the image to the folder of your choice, or (drumroll)
• Share it on Screencast (or upload to Flickr), and have the link to your image on Screencast automatically put in your clipboard

I hope you caught that. Cause now if you are using instant message or e-mail, you just saved a whole lotta steps. No downloading and uploading an attachment. Paste a link. Easy for you. Easy for the recipient. And so very nifty when you want to share something lickety split with someone on IM.

Screencast has some slick capabilities as well. You can make playlists of your screencasts and embed a screenroll in your website or blog, like this:

I’ve cheated on Jing with it’s sister Snagit, which has deeper mark-up functions and a rolling screen capture that lets you capture the browser bits you can’t see down below. I come back to Jing because it’s so darn useful.

Jing is free (wahoo) and a snap to learn. Jing Pro gives you longer videos, better video compression, direct upload to YouTube and some other goodies for $14.95/year.

MeasureIt is a Firefox add-on that lets you draw a ruler across any webpage to check the width, height or alignment of page elements in pixels.

I use it at least once a week to size photos to e-mail and website columns. Light, fast and easy, MeasureIt sits in your Firefox status bar, at the bottom left of your browser. [HINT: In Firefox go to View > Status Bar to make it visible.]

Click on the link below for a 12-second tutorial screencast.

What tool do you use to do this kind of thing? Share it in comments.

Who to Follow/Also Followed By

Whenever I got an e-mail alerting me to a new Twitter follower, I’d click through and scan the person’s Twitter profile. I’d read the bio, follows and follower numbers, and the last few tweets, maybe even how many lists the person belonged to.

But what I really wanted to know was – who else follows this person? What circles of influence does s/he run in? Where was the social proof that guided me into following this person back because she’s a valuable source of information and conversation, or chalking her up as a Twitter user on Miracle-Gro?

There’s not quite enough in the profie to tell you if the person was worth following. (I do not auto-follow and do not recommend it.)

Twitter tried to do the suggested user thing a while back. It hand-picked users, bestowed upon them the enviable “suggested user” title and POOF! That person’s followers went through the roof. Lucky for them. Just slightly useful for us.

Previously you had to dig down a few levels to get to those suggested users. Most suggestions were extraordinarily lame. They did not reflect subjects and keywords in my bio, my location, what I tweet or who I follow. I peeked once or twice and never looked back.

A few weeks ago Twitter unveiled a “Who to Follow” right on your home page. You have to log into Twitter to see it (not working in Twitter client Hoosuite):

Now we are cooking!

Twitter’s suggestions look at mutual followers — who among my followers also follows this person. Most of us have grown accustomed to this kind of feature on Facebook and it’s very useful for gauging incoming friend requests.

This tells me what kind of circles that person runs in. I have a number of different themes in my stream – nonprofit, technology, Hudson Valley, Rhinebeck (well before Chelsea Clinton decided to get married here I might add) and food-ag-gardening. How does this person fit into my interests?

I also get a lot of social media “ninjas,” “gurus” and “rockstars” because I like to share Facebook pages, Twitter and other social media tips when I can. Nothing will attract social media gnats like talking about social media on Twitter.

I digress.

Hootsuite to the Rescue

Previously I used Seesmic to manage Twitter. Before that, Tweetdeck. Both are fine choices for managing multiple presences – Twitter, Facebook, Facebook pages.

Hootsuite has three pieces of magic that these others do not.

Drafts. Such a simple concept, but so necessary if you want to be disciplined about social media. Sometimes, the thought, the Tweet, the status update, should stay in the oven a little longer. It’s not done. Perhaps it’s edible, but not quite where it needs to be.

Scheduling. This has been a revelation. No more shotgun approach. I can plan ahead for days and weeks! For now I’m just giving myself a breather by spacing out my status updates and tweets, and doing a better job assigning the right communications to the right channels. This will come in quite handy as I do more Twitter campaigns were we draft the communications well in advance and time them with blog posts, e-mails and key campaign dates.

Teams. I’m an admin for a dozen or more Facebook pages for clients and friends. Hootsuite lets me coordinate with those teams within one application. It’s a thing of beauty.

Twitter is much more manageable and interesting now thanks to Hootsuite and the new Who to Follow and Also Followed by features.

Do you have a Twitter epiphany to share? Let me know in comments.