ViewletCam Review
Computer-based training made easy
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You can buy it at RegNow for that price.
Affordable, easy to use, powerful, reasonable system requirements.
10 fps limitation (not an problem in most cases), capture area selection could be improved.
With the never ending pursuit of cost saving opportunities, more and more companies are opting to train their employees remotely, using videos and computers, instead of sending them to a formal instructor-led class.
Videos have been and still are being widely used, but typically they are expensive to create, and not easy to update. Computer-based training, a growing practice, tends to be boring if using just regular tools such as Powerpoint and Word, impacting the attention span of the audience and producing poor results.
The combination of the power and omnipresence of computers, with the appeal of videos then becomes a logical evolution path. Many products aiming at this market niche are available, in various grades of sophistication. The key here is to create an affordable product that combines power with ease of use.
Based on what I saw, I believe Qarbon is right on track with its ViewletCam, which allows the capture of activities performed on a computer for the creation of a video-like presentation using Macromedia Flash, making it playable with virtually any computer.
Imagine that you want to teach someone how to use an application. You just activate ViewletCam and it will capture all of you mouse movements, clicks, drags, screens opened, messages, etc. You can then edit the results, and add multimedia items such as sounds, videos, and files, or comments and instructions to the viewer.
The software is easy to install, a little bit complicated in the beginning to configure and use (as it has many options), but Qarbon was smart enough to use its own software to create “Viewlets”, a set of presentations using ViewletCam teaching you how to use it.
Surprisingly, the software used just 5Mb of hard drive space (although 20Mb minimum is required), did not consume a lot of CPU as other competitors do, and seemed quite mature. I also noticed a few limitations such as the capture rate limit of 10 frames per second (fps), and the tool to select the capture area could definitely use some improvement.
ViewletCam is a good alternative for technical and end-user training, and could even be used as a powerful marketing tool to demonstrate the capabilities of a software.