Jeffothy’s Keyings

Have you ever needed to help someone with configuration or use of a particular piece of software? Ever wanted a quick way to make a movie for your family or friends, they could follow along instead of writing out word instructions that didn’t seem clear?

For me, one thing being a computer engineer means is being the guy in the family that can help you with your computer stuff. I give help where I can, teaching people shortcuts for using their programs and setting up applications, and so on. I have used a couple tools to make videos for such a thing but it has always been quite time consuming to get the videos just right, in order to avoid confusion.

Recently I found an application by DebugMode called Wink. This program makes it really easy to create Tutorials and Presentations for using/configuring software. Wink renders Flash movies that can be simply displayed on webpages. The movies can also be saved as Windows Executables if you prefer.

I’ve created a sample tutorial to show you what Wink can do. This tutorial demonstrates how to set up a new mail account in Microsoft Outlook Express. Click on the thumbnail below to view it. Note that this sample presentation is about 1.5 MB so it may take a moment to load.

It should be noted that this sample presentation took under 10 minutes to create.

It’s amazing how easy this software is to use.