ReadWriteWeb

Jing has consistently been one of our favorite screenshot and screencasting tools here at ReadWriteWeb (especially among the Windows users). With one simple tool, you can take screenshots or record videos and save them to your computer or upload them to online services like flickr, YouTube, and TechSmith's own Screencast.com.

Today, with the launch of Jing 2.1, both Jing and Jing Pro users are getting a bevy of new features which makes the little app we can't live without just that much better.

Hulu, the popular online destination for streaming TV shows and movies, just opened up its new Labs project and one of the first projects to come out of the Hulu lab is a desktop application for viewing Hulu's content on Mac and Windows desktops instead of in a browser. In addition, Hulu also released a new video panel designer that allows users to customize Hulu's embed code, a new recommendations engine, and a new way to browse videos by when they aired on live TV.

In 2006, this this video about BumpTop became a hit on YouTube. The video showed a physics driven 3D desktop environment with an innovative menu system. Today, a bit more than two and a half years later, after numerous closed alpha and beta versions, and after adding a number of cool features, BumpTop's developer Anand Agarawala and his team are finally ready to open up BumpTop to everybody (Windows only for now). BumpTop will come in two versions: a free, somewhat restricted version, and a fully-featured 'pro' version.

BumpTop has given us 200 free pro versions to give away to our readers. You can find details about how to claim yours at the end of this post.

Netflix lovers out there, rejoice! You can now manage your Netflix queue right from your desktop using a new Adobe AIR application called Queued. Created as a demonstration of how AIR and the Dojo Toolkit can be used together to create rich hybrid applications, Queued is open-source, BSD-licensed software. Although the point for Queued's existence may have be to demo different types of technology, the end result is definitely something we all can enjoy.

Last week we introduced you to FriendDeck, a new online application that lets you monitor FriendFeed in a way that's very similar to how the Adobe AIR app, TweetDeck, monitors Twitter. Within FriendDeck's columns, you can track FriendFeed searches, users, friends, lists, rooms, and more.

Recently, FriendDeck developer Paul Kinlan released an Adobe AIR application of his FriendFeed tracking tool. Although still rough around the edges, this app has potential to become a viable alternative interface to FriendFeed for the service's heaviest users.