bobbyblue's blog

Every once in a while, there is a Web 2.0 tool that really excites me because it’s something I have never seen before, never thought of and it’s cool. That’s exactly what Flowgram is, a cool new tool you can use to create a new type of screencast which includes live web pages, photos, voice, documents, RSS feeds, and lots more.

Flowgram is a great tool for creating a combination of a screencast and a Powerpoint presentation. It’s a mix of various types of content like I mentioned above linked in a chain along with your recorded voice and annotations.

For an example of what a Flowgram looks like and what you can do with it, check this out below:

Pretty cool eh!? It’s very easy to create a Flowgram and once you’ve made it, you can share it via email, on your own site, on social networking sites like Facebook, on YouTube, or anywhere else you can think of.

However, that is not what makes Flowgram interesting. When viewing a Flowgram, the web page is live and you can actually interact with the site while the narrator is speaking and while annotations are shown on the screen. In the background, Flowgram actually loads up the current site just like a web browser would bring up the page.

Flowgram excels for those who are frustrated or limited by the current methods of sharing information with people, i.e. Digg, Flickr, StumbleUpon, etc. If you want to explain a concept that require multiple sites, photos, documents, audio, and stuff to be pointed out with arrows or annotations, it’s possible with software such as Camtasia, but Flowgram not only makes it a hundred times easier, it also gives you more options.

When you sign up for an account, you can start creating your Flowgram by picking to add some content:

If I add a web page, for example, it will load up the live site and I can then record audio, add annotations, highlight text on the webpage, or add media, such as music, etc.

Flowgram is not complicated to use and even a person with very little technical knowledge can make a Flowgram. It’s a wonderful tool for those who really want to capture some sort of insight, make a commentary, or provide a viewpoint. It allows you to walk people through doing something online step by step.

The only downside to Flowgram is that you can interact with the live web page, but if you click on a link, etc, the browser will navigate away from the Flowgram and load the page instead. It would have been nice if the Flowgram simply continued and left the webpage in some kind of frame window so you can click on links, etc without navigating away from the current Flowgram.

Other than that one downside, I find creating a tutorial about a web site is much easier than using Camtasia. Unforunately, you cannot record your computer desktop screen with Flowgram yet, otherwise you would totally not need something like Camtasia Studio. You can also use Google Docs to create online presentations, and you can create interactive tutorials similar to Flowgram using Wink. Enjoy! Source: CNET