It is sometimes disconcerting to know what the U.S. intelligence complex is doing, right in your backyard. McLean is a beltway city in Northern Virginia that is best known for Tysons Corner, one of the shopping hubs of the East Coast. On the outskirts of the city limits there is also the George H.W. Bush CIA complex, on of the agency's main hubs in the D.C. region.

The CIA facility was set up after a recommendation from the 9/11 Commission. According to the AP, its first priority was to focus on, "counterterrorism and counterproliferation." The reports generated from the CIA Open Source Center invariably make their way to president Barack Obama's desk.

The Green Revolution in Iran in 2009 was when social media like Facebook and Twitter really came to the forefront of the center's analysts. The analysts correctly predicted the Arab Spring that came to Egypt and Tunisia this year. Essentially, the CIA is using social media to predict where groundswell will turn into real action and follow breaking trends and news.

The U.S. media does much of the same thing, albeit on a much smaller scale. One prominent example was during the Discovery Building hostage crisis in Silver Spring, Maryland in September, 2010. A news startup owned by the owners of Politco, TBD.com, was able to track the tweets and social media happenings around the building and the circumstance, giving a correct and at times chilling view from the area.

(Disclosure: I worked for TBD.com at the time and was in the newsroom during the Discovery Building news. I also lived in McLean, Va.)

Tracking Facebook, Citizens, The World

Facebook has been long accused of having secret ties to the CIA. Some of the more outrageous claims believe that Mark Zuckerberg was recruited by the CIA to build Facebook as a data-mining project and that Facebook hatched as Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiative. These types of rumors seem ridiculous, but there is no doubt that governments around the world are using Facebook data to keep an eye on citizens.

The AP report made little mention of what the CIA is doing on the domestic front except for noting that the CIA is using its social media records to compare it to the track record of polling organizations to see how accurate the results are. Think of it as a calibration technique; the polling organizations are often quite accurate and can be used a somewhat of a loose standard to judge the accuracy of the Open Source Center's results. On the domestic front, the Federal Bureau of Investigation may have its own social media tracking program.

While it may seem underhanded and sneaky for the CIA to be tracking social media use to know the pulse of the world, the practice is not something that should surprise anyone. Much of this data is open to whoever is looking for it and the large companies and data specialists of the private sector likely have similar operations focusing on a variety of aspects of humanity from market trends to politics, sports or fashion.

Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va) will introduce a "Do Not Track" bill that would allow consumers to opt-out of online tracking and block websites and marketers from tracing their Internet activities. The "Do-Not-Track Online Act of 2011" would build on recommendations by the Federal Trade Commission which would govern enforcement of the act, according to the Washington Post.

According to the Post, the bill would require online companies to honor the choice of a user not to be tracked. Web companies would have to destroy or make anonymous user information when it was no longer useful (read: profitable).

The California legislature has proposed a do-not-track law and search giant Google has joined a lobby to oppose it. That makes it all but certain that Google would oppose a federal do-not track law as well.

Of the major browsers, Apple's Safari, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 have built-in do-not-track functionality. Google has released a browser extension for do-not-track but the Chrome browser itself does not have it built in.

Also introduced today from members of the House of Representatives is a bill that would prevent children from being tracked online. The bill would create guidelines for how marketers can track and target teenagers on the Internet. The bill would also protect teenagers from location tracking. This bill is pertinent considering the Sony PlayStation Network that was hacked with information of up to 70 million users, many of them adolescents, exposed.

Apple is said to be quick at work to release a new version of iOS, its mobile operating system, to fix the "bugs" that began in iOS 4.0, which track your device's location and store it in a file on your device and on your synced computer.

If you're anything like me, however, the idea of a file with all of your location sounds really cool and you might not want to lose that information. If so, here's a bit more about Apple's proposed fix and what you can do to save that information before it disappears.

Boy Genius Reports reported today that Apple was working on iOS 4.3.3, which would "fix" this issue, stopping the iPhone from backing up location to iTunes and reducing the size of the location database on the iPhone. This means only a short period of time would be recorded on the phone, instead of the year or longer wealth of information currently stored. The fix will also improve battery life and delete the location database when Location Services are turned off.

I don't know about you, but before that fix goes live I want to save that information and I suspect I'm not alone.

Pete Warden, one of the data scientists involved in uncovering the tracking (and an occasional ReadWriteWeb contributor), explains on GitHub just how to examine this data for OSX. Warden also offers a data visualization tool for OSX that turns your information into one of the pretty maps you've likely seen all over the Internet since this story exploded. Check it out:

For those of you, like myself, who are using Windows, Warden points to a blog post that describes how to access the same information on your Windows machine. Another tool, dubbed nphonetrack, extracts the location data on Windows and plots it in a KML file to be viewed in Google Earth.

"Like Pete's app, the points are not reported exactly in this app," writes the app's author. "They are [approximated] to roughly a 3km grid, and the dates are rounded to the nearest 7 days. The real data has greater precision in both location (although the points are not necessarily accurate) and time."

If you're as excited as I am about seeing a recorded timeline of your whereabouts of the past year, grab one of these tools and grab your data before updating your iPhone to the next version of iOS, before it's too late and all that data is lost.

SecureRF Corporation, a company specializing in secure RFID software, proposed the project to the school district. Funding for the project could come by way of a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, which the company is close to finalizing.

One of the alternative uses the company has offered to the district is to enable tracking on school busses to see who uses the busses and how often. The data collected from experiments like these could be used to better budget the school funds, potentially opening up more money to underfunded areas of education, like the arts. Some district board members raised questions about privacy, but the experiments will likely be opt-in if they are given the green light.

Anyone who has driven through a toll station on a highway without having to stop to drop a few coins knows the potential for RFID to improve and optimize our everyday lives. For school officials tasked with managing hundreds of students across large campuses, technology like this could make their jobs much easier, keeping kids safer.

As Sysomos co-founder Nilesh Bansal told us earlier this week, traditional analytics tools like Google Analytics tools help users get a good understanding of what a visitor is doing on your own site. This, however, doesn't tell you anything about the sites that influence your visitors and the actual value of these visitors for you business. After all, somebody who tends to visit auto blogs is far more likely to buy something from your auto parts site than somebody who doesn't show any interest in cars.

Sysomos wouldn't give us any details about how it tracks a user's behavior across the Internet. Bansal told us that the company doesn't use cookies and just places a small snippet of JavaScript code on the publisher's site. Thanks to the data Sysomos already has in its Heartbeat and MAP social media monitoring and analytics tools, the company can easily identify the ecosystem around a certain topic. How Sysomos can tell that one of your visitors also went your competitor's sites and read Autoblog earlier in the week remains Sysomos' secret, however.

For publishers and e-commerce sites, this also means that they can now keep a closer tap on their social media ROI. After tweaking Audience's scoring engine, marketers can now see exactly what the value of a given campaign on Twitter or the company's blog was. You can also see what blogs tend to bring the most valuable visitors to your site and then specifically target this audience.

We do have some lingering questions about how Sysomos can track a user's behavior across the Internet and the potential privacy implications of this, but there can't be any doubt that this will be a very popular tool among marketers, community managers and sales managers. Sysomos is currently testing Audience with a small group of beta testers and plans to open the service to all of its clients by the third quarter of 2010.

But before you rush to sign up with yet another activity aggregation service, it may be time to pause and think. Do the benefits of seeing your friends' purchases on sites like Strings and the online shopping tracker Blippy outweigh the risks of handing over login credentials to these third parties?

There are more than a few services out there today that allow you to share your activity with the world at large. FriendFeed and Google's new Buzz service, for example, are popular playgrounds for social sharing. Their aggregation capabilities offer combined activity streams from sites like Twitter, YouTube, flickr, Google Reader and much more. These social activity trackers aren't too risky except for the fact that they make you more of a public persona than you may have intended - something not everyone is comfortable with as was apparent by the recent Google Buzz privacy backlash.

However, some tracking services go beyond simple social activity aggregation. One of the more puzzling launches of late is Blippy, a service that tracks your "favorite purchases" made with any credit card used at a selection of online stores. Similarly, the web activity tracker Glue lets you share the results of your day's web surfing when visiting both social and non-social sites including Wikipedia, Amazon, NewEgg, eBay, BestBuy, Zagat and dozens of others.

The concept for the newly launched Strings fits it in nicely with the others of this genre. At this time, the service tracks 25 web sites from the more social Hulu and YouTube to more traditional sites like Nordstrom and Tiger Direct. And like its competitors, you can follow others on the service to see what they've been doing, where they've been shopping and what they've bought.

Strings: Let's See Where You Shop

Unfortunately, in Strings' case, the execution is somewhat lacking. The design leaves a lot to be desired with small, light-colored text and a slightly confusing flow. Should I add trackers first? Do I need the Firefox extension? Is the desktop app a necessary component? All these options are thrown at you on the front page with little explanation as to why they're needed.

More importantly, for every site you add, you're asked to provide your username and password. Obviously, for online shops like JCrew, this makes some sense - there isn't exactly a public stream of your purchases there. However, for social apps like YouTube and flickr, there's simply no need to request a password. Your account activity can be imported into your stream simply by providing your username. That's how FriendFeed and Buzz do it and that's how Strings should too.

In fact, tracking services should make every attempt not to request your credentials unless absolutely necessary. Every time you provide this information to a third-party service, you're taking a risk. If their servers were compromised and their database of account information was accessed, the attackers would have your login information to a number of online sites - sites where you've often stored credit card information, phone numbers and addresses, too.

But is this risk acceptable? , you may ask.

Is Aggregating Your Credentials Too Risky?

Before we pick on Strings alone, though, it's worth noting that their request for your online shopping sites' login isn't unique to them. Blippy, too, requests your login credentials for the sites you want to add to their service. They also want your credit card information so they can track other purchases.

Now, one can argue that the fear of sharing your credit card info online is unfounded. After all, if you do any online shopping, then you've already shared this info with a number of companies, some of whom may operate servers with far less security than Bippy's.

That's definitely a valid argument. But there is something to be said for the increased risk due to the aggregation of your online accounts. While you may only store one or two credit cards at Amazon.com, Blippy lets you track all your cards. If their infrastructure was compromised not only would the potential hacker gain access to this information, they would also have your username and password to quite a few online web sites too. And if you're like 99% of the world, that's probably the same username and password you use elsewhere...like on your webmail account, your computer sign-on and maybe even your bank account or corporate VPN, assuming the password is complex enough to meet their security requirements.

Also, the risk in using these services doesn't necessarily have to come from an outside malicious attack - the services themselves may not have your best interests at heart either. Take for example, this text from Blippy's Privacy Policy:

Blippy may sell, transfer or otherwise share some or all of its assets, including your personally identifiable information, in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets or in the event of bankruptcy. You will have the opportunity to opt out of any such transfer if the new entity's planned processing of your information differs materially from that set forth in this Privacy Policy.

Most people would prefer their personally identifiable information to remain private. But if Blippy crashes and burns, it's up for sale unless you take action to opt-out.

Strings' privacy policy is different than Blippy's, but not much better. In their case, your personal information may be collected so you can be marketed to from other parties:

...we may invite you to participate in surveys, questionnaires or contests, contact us with questions or comments or request information, provide us with feedback, participate in chat or message boards, or complete a profile or registration form. Due to the nature of these Services, we may collect personally identifiable information such as your name, address, email address, phone number, age or date of birth, gender, and other contact information that you voluntarily transmit with your communication to us...

And they may use that information to contact you about:

software and/or Services that you may wish to contact and for targeted advertising.

Do the Benefits Outweigh the Risks?

For some people though, this new openness is the future of online sharing. By allowing others to peer into our lives this deeply, we're becoming, as a society and a culture, more transparent. And that's a good thing. Notes pro-openness blogger Louis Gray, "instead of keeping all my data internal to me, it opens it to the world for discussion." He also notes Wall Street Journal's review on Blippy which concludes that the biggest risk for people in using Blippy is that "their purchases are totally mundane and you're really super boring."

We would argue there are a few more risks than "boringness" to be considered here, but for some, those risks may be worth it. So whether you believe than aggregation sites are hacker goldmines, marketers' dreams or simply new stores of data that will enhance our understanding of the web and its users, they services are likely to stick around for a little while. The only question now is: will you be using them?

One great feature of this release is the fact that users can track their travels via a GPS device and save the results as a KML file to be viewed in the application at a later time. The example given is a look at the route taken to climb a mountain; however, the same tool can be used to track marathons, sailing regatas, road trips and basic travel. For information on how to convert GPS data into Google Earth, users can visit Google's KML Support Section. If you haven't already downloaded the application, you can do so here.

As an additional plus, Tracer adds, "Our data shows that those pages that users engage with most are not necessarily those with the most page views." With Tracer, publishers can find out their most sought after information and increase the relevancy of their resources to readers. Creative Commons is already using Tracer to see what readers are highlighting, copying and redistributing.

As well, Creative Commons' Fred Benenson encourages members to consider using the tool. He says, "As a creator and contributor to the commons, you have the right to attribution (all six of our licenses require it), so why not make it easy for your audience to automatically provide it?"

To test Tracer, members can register at Tynt.

Read more:
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/16060#ixzz0MCiF2lSE
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
http://tracer.tynt.com/features-and-benefits-of-tracer#ixzz0MCg9SuUl
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution No Derivatives

Once FairShare has the content, it creates a custom RSS feed that delivers a running list of site links where the licensed content may be found. Each result contains a link to a FairShare page that has more information and a stored capture of the Web page in question. The collaboration with Creative Commons comes in when FairShare attempts to determine whether sites reusing your content are respecting the terms you've set in your Creative Commons license. For example, ads on the page violate conditions for one type of CC license, non-commercial reuse only.

The FairShare system was developed to help content creators discover all the ways their works were being used on the Internet. By automatically monitoring for re-use, authors get a better idea of who is taking inspiration from their works. This works well, but we would like to be able to pull up more detail on each site, for example WHOIS information.

FairShare is launching in beta today and is accepting new RSS feeds from anyone. If you have your own feed, go ahead and give it a try. You might be surprised (even pleasantly) by where your words appear and in what context.

Using Particls with Twitter:

For Twitter users, just follow @particls on Twitter. To track something, start your request with 'd particls.'

Example:

d particles follow "web 2.0"

will track all references to "web 2.0" on Twitter.

d particles follow "web 2.0", "web 3.0"

will track all references to "web 2.0" and "web 3.0"

Using Particls via IM:

If you would rather use your instant messaging program to be alerted about your tracked keywords, you can do so with any XMPP client, including Google Talk. To get started, just follow particls@particls.com. You can then use the following commands to begin tracking keywords:

follow "web 2.0"

will track all references to "web 2.0" on Twitter.

follow "web 2.0", "web 3.0"

will track all references to "web 2.0" and "web 3.0"

Will a Simplified Service Save Particls?

For whatever reason, the original RSS tracking and alerting service provided by Particls never quite caught on. Perhaps it was just a little ahead of its time. The service aimed to help us address our RSS/information overload issues before some of us even had any to address. But the concept behind the service was solid: a desktop ticker, instant prioritized alerts, easy sharing of RSS items, simple feed subscriptions, and so on. In fact, that version of Particls sounds a lot like one of our favorite desktop apps today, Snackr, which does many of the same things but launched nearly a year later.

We thought Particls 1.0 was a good first attempt at managing those sorts of issues, but it was not without its problems. The program was a Windows-only client, had some UI challenges, and, from personal experience, hit an older laptop's CPU just a bit too much.

Later, the company split the Particls solution into half, with one half becoming Engagd, an attention management engine, and the other half becoming Particls 2.0, the visualization and alerting engine. From the sound of it, those two projects have now been abandoned - the company notes that all resources have been diverted to the new project, Fountain.

Oops, a DM Limit

Unfortunately, there is one major concern regarding the new service, and it's not really Particls' fault. Currently, Twitter API limits direct messages to 5000 per day for whitelisted accounts. That will severely impact what the service can do using DMs.

Here's a video of Chris pondering this issue:

This API limit is a clear example of the sort of thing a company would gladly pay Twitter for access to, if only there was the option. It's unfortunate that Twitter's hard-set limits are actually affecting the abilities of other companies to innovate around the core product.

Yet that won't stop them from trying. For the record, Particls is not the first service to attempt to implement the missing Twitter Track feature. For example, the Twitter toolkit from TweetLater also provides this functionality. However, the difference between the two services is that TweetLater provides tracking via an emailed digest - not real-time alerts as Particls does.

Will Fountain be a Success?

Whether Particls Fountain will succeed where previous incarnations did not is something that's yet to be seen. However, the company is now actively working with the community and letting them drive the development. This critical step is vital to making a successful product, so it's encouraging to see the interaction.

Through the UserVoice site, 100 or so testers have already begun providing feedback about Fountain. They - and you - will be the people voting on the next step for the service, whether that's tracking your alerts history on the web, receiving an email digest, adjusting alerts through a web-based dashboard, or something else entirely.

If you want to give the service a try, you can do so today; just follow the instructions above. Besides UserVoice, you can also give feedback directly to the creators of Particls on Twitter: just follow @ashleyangell, @stephenkelly, and @chrissaad.

Like Yotify and Alerts.com, Trackle is your personalized web scout. Instead of having to constantly revisit web sites and services for the news you want to follow, you can use Trackle to be updated automatically when there's a change in whatever it is you're following. Want to track prices of a new Canon camera? Want to know when your favorite band has a new album on iTunes? Want to get the latest sports scores? Trackle does all that and then some.

Trackle Has the Most Alerts

What makes Trackle unique, though, is the sheer quantity of alerts they've made available. It's here that Trackle really outshines their competitors. They've also added some alerts that are unique to their service (at least so far), like the ability track crime in your neighborhood - you can even select and de-select checkboxes for the types of crime you want to track when setting up that particular alert.

There are also plans to give third party developers the ability to create their own alerts in the next version of Trackle. And the company promises their service can scale to support however many new ones are created.  

Alerts We Love

For the Facebook obsessed, a Trackle alert can notify you when someone sends you a message, adds you as a friend, posts to your wall, etc. Of course you can see all these things on Facebook, but with Trackle, you can set up an SMS alert for this. That's especially useful for students and employees who have to deal with Facebook being blocked by their I.T. department or for anyone who doesn't spend their entire day in front of a computer.

Bloggers and other information hounds will appreciate Trackle's scouring agents that let you track anything on the web, including blogs, RSS feeds, news, and more. Although other sites allow this too, what's different about the way Trackle works is that you can set up one alert but associate it with different keywords. So, for example, you could fill in "TweetDeck," "Twhirl," and "AlertThingy" as keywords you wanted to track across blogs, but save the whole alert as "Tracking Twitter Applications" instead of having each keyword as its own alert.

Smart and Well-Organized

Trackle is smart, too. Once the system has shown you something once, it's not going to show it to you again and again, even if that particular link rises to the top of Google's search results. Your alerts will always be new information so as not to waste your time.

However, one of the best things about Trackle is the look and feel of the site. The overall design is visually appealing which makes the service easy to use. Left-side navigation leads you to just the type of alert you need and each alert is clearly marked with an "Add," "Info," and "Share" button. ("Share" because Trackle lets you email or Twitter alerts). That same sense of organization is available in your Trackle inbox - the tab where you can catch up on your alerts. When you have new alerts in a particular category, a number appears next to the category name, designating the number of new alerts available. You can click the category to be taken right to it or you can scroll down through your list.

Only One Problem

The only downside to Trackle - and watch out, it's a big one - is that it appears to have been designed mainly for U.S. usage. So for example, when you're tracking crime, home prices, events, etc., you have to pick from a list of U.S. states. That's too bad, because Trackle's service deserves to be used the world over. We hope they'll expand to include other parts of the globe soon.

Versionista offers a modern version of that update notice that alleviates both of those problems. It provides both an accurate date of the last change and reveals the edits that have been made between versions of the site - highlighting what has been added and removed in side-by-side comparisons.

Why reveal this information? Because not revealing it can be used against you. Versionista rose to fame on the campaign trail in 2008 when United States Presidential hopeful John McCain used the tool to highlight changes Barack Obama's team was making to its Web site. While the content on your site might not be under as much scrutiny as that one, it's always better to be as transparent as possible.

Adding the change log feature to your site is simple. Register for Versionista, begin tracking your site, and then add a snippet of javascript to your pages. When you make changes to your site, visitors will see the date of the last update and will be given the option to click through and compare the current version to past versions.

While this sort of transparency isn't for everyone, it offers yet another way to be open and honest with visitors to your site. And remember, even if you don't add the feature there's always the possibility that someone is using Versionista to watch your pages for changes, anyway.

Larger software companies possess complex bug and issue tracking systems to help them capture, triage, and respond to this type of feedback, but smaller companies often still struggle to find a way of managing this information. Sifter hopes to change that with a simple and straightforward bug and issue tracking app.

Admittedly, a number of products have attempted to solve this tracking problem, simple or otherwise. What makes Sifter different? Sifter is built in the "less is more" vein of product development. There's just enough there, but not too much.

When I saw Sifter, I immediately thought of it as the perfect complement to Get Satisfaction. Get Satisfaction makes gathering customer feedback incredibly simple. And Sifter proposes to make dealing with that feedback just as simple. What's more, Sifter is so straightforward that practically anyone - not just developers used to issue tracking systems - can use it. And that has the potential of making every person on the team a valuable contributor to the system.

But there's something else happening here. Thanks to its simplicity, Sifter actually makes bug and issue tracking accessible to groups who may have never considered it before: Web developers, blogging teams, community managers, graphic designers, and the like.

When it comes right down to it, tracking issues shouldn't be terribly complex. There's a problem that needs to be solved. And someone needs to solve it. Unfortunately, that apparent simplicity leads many smaller teams to forego the cost of a traditional management system by using email or spreadsheets to manage the incoming requests and assignments. Then things begin to fall through the cracks.

Yes, tracking should be a simple process. But there still needs to be process. Sifter seems to understand this. And they've priced their solution accordingly.

In terms of product development, Sifter has something else that makes it interesting. Sifter's whole development history was transparent. So you can go back to see why decisions were made. And get an idea of what might be coming next.

If you're part of a small team of developers who find typical bug tracking software too arduous or don't want to deal with having to set up a service of your own - or if you're someone who deals with issues but has never considered a bug tracking system to manage them - Sifter may be for you.

Yotify lets you track any number of things from hotel room rates to sports scores or even the latest videos on YouTube. The list of things you can track is practically endless. To help you find the scout you need, the different types are organized into broad categories which include shopping, fun, travel, classifieds, and news and blogs.

Saving Money

When it comes to product searches, Yotify is very smart. It doesn't just look at keywords, but also lets you know what the current best price is and then lets you select a checkbox to have the service alert you if the price drops below a certain point. You can also optionally check to be alerted when there are new product reviews available. The shopping section features scouts for common searches like digital cameras and laptops, but the shortcuts section lets you create more specific searches for a keyword, like a product ID or model number.

Staying Informed

The News and Blogs section lets you search a handful of sites, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The Huffington Post among others, but most people won't be satisfied with the small selection provided and will need to turn to the shortcuts section instead. From here, you can track any site's RSS feed, or for sites without RSS, you can search the blog itself just by entering its URL. You can also track changes to search results as well as track vanity search results for your name.

The shortcuts section includes a few other useful scouts, too, including one which lets you track a profile on LinkedIn, another to track local events (provided by Eventful), one for eBay auctions, and even one that tracks your FriendFeed.

Asking For Help

The social aspect of Yotify comes into play under the "Ask Friends" section. Here, you can share your scouts on Facebook and FriendFeed and get responses. Using either option will post your query directly to those social networks and when people reply you'll be informed via email. If you want to share a scout with select friends only, that can be done under the "Edit Scout" section where you can enter in individual email addresses instead. You can also share the scout with your friends on Yotify.

How It Compares

In a lot of ways, Yotify is reminiscent of the newly launched Alerts.com, a service which differentiates itself by letting you receive updates via SMS, email, voice, or IM. In a lot of ways, those various contact options from Alerts.com makes that service the more useful of the two, especially since a lot of our information overload today begins with email, which is currently the only way to receive Yotify updates. However, Yotify's options for sharing your scouts with friends give it a unique twist as do the various options for fine-tuning your searches.

Still, we definitely like the new direction Yotify is going with their service. Instead of adding to our social media burden by creating yet another place to "hang out" online, they're using the network of connections we've already built to make their service more useful to us. Our lives are busy enough, so we hope this is the start of a new trend of smart social apps.

In this post we look at the work of four of our favorite screen casting freelancers. We think you'll enjoy their work and we hope that you can point us to some still undiscovered people making this kind of magic.

Jon Udel, who used to work at Infoworld and is now at Microsoft, is widely considered the granddaddy of the screen cast. Another strong old schooler is Don from Screencasts Online, a site that has free and subscription tutorials about how to use a Mac. Don uses ScreenFlow, a wonderful Mac app you can buy for $100. We've been using Screenflow lately to make some screencasts ourselves.

The first freelance screencaster available for hire that we discovered was Molly McDonald, whose work at DemoGirl has made her the go-to screen caster for hire for many startup companies of late.

Here's a sample of her work, a screencast demo of mixtape site 8tracks.

The Up and Comer

Colin Sproule at InternetJogging has been making a number of great screencasts lately, most of them about using the Mac single app browser Fluid. We discovered his work when he made a great video about Muxtape in Fluid.

Here's another one he made about using Fluid and Threadless together.

You Just Missed Him

Michael Pick was one of the inspirations for this post, but now that we take a look we find that he's no longer available for freelance work! Pick's been hired full time by Automattic, the makers of WordPress. While we are happy for him, we are dissapointed that we won't be able to see his work around the web about apps in general. His departure from freelancing leaves a big hole in the market.

The Champs

The reigning champs of freelance screen casting have to be Common Craft. This Seattle consultancy found a hit formula in stop-motion line drawn illustrations telling stories about web apps. Their first, RSS in Plain English, is still the best way to explain RSS that we've seen yet. The production value is downright quaint compared to the more professional work they are doing now.

Common Craft's charming storytelling skills have lead to jobs from a list of companies, including Google and Twitter.

Here's Our Best Effort So Far

We just bought ScreenFlow ourselves and it's so much fun to use! Here's one video we made for a post this week. We're just starting to learn how to do this, but ScreenFlow makes it really easy.

There's Huge Demand

Proficient screen cast producers should be cleaning up right now. There is so much untapped demand for this kind of service. Who else do you know that offers this kind of service?

Want to be that person? Check out Beth Kanter's fantastic screen cast tutorial wiki. (See this awesome screen cast of Beth's, in fact.) The future of screen casting is wide open, but we sure are glad there's some great examples already for all of us to take inspiration from.