Jeff talks about a number of screencasting apps - I agree with him that visuals are great for communicating info. You might have noticed I've been doing a fair bit of that this week with recent posts. I've used a few of the apps Jeff mentions. I found DemoCharge a while back after Bob mentioned it Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality.
DemoCharge by Yes Software is a no frills screencasting / desktop capture application. If you've used Camtasia Studio before (very popular app in this space), you'll be right at home with DemoCharge.
With DemoCharge you can quickly and easily have it capture a Window, Screen, Region, or Run in the Background.
If you pick a Window, you then select the Window you'd like it to capture by using this Find Window prompt.
Here I'm about to tell Find Window to start capturing the instance of Windows Live Writer that I'm using at this very instant to write this blog post.
After I select Windows Liver Writer as the Window for DemoCharge to capture, it's happily running in the background capturing the images.
Here is a screencast of me typing that last piece...
Above is an export of the capture as an animated GIF. You have the option of Flash, Animated GIF, AVI, EXE and Java for exporting. The Studio portion of the software is flat out self explanatory so I won't even go into it.
Another nice feature is you can select any individual frame while working in the Studio to export it to an image. I'm very happy with DemoCharge and I like the price. You can elect to purchase a version of their software that leaves a watermark of their logo in the bottom right corner of your captures. This version is sold at a very reasonable price of $50 (at the time of my purchase).
Check it out - this app is a snap and opens up a huge world of possibilities.