ScreenCam, Lotus's On-Screen "Tape Recorder"

D. A.

Too much technobabble and too heavy a reliance on video: Steve Barlow, the product manager for multimedia at Lotus Development (Cambridge, MA), believes that these two obstacles have contributed to the perception by business that multimedia doesn't make you productive and isn't worth the cost. Barlow says if Lotus had originally marketed its flagship Lotus 1-2-3 in the same way multimedia is being promoted today, the company would have pointed at the spreadsheet program and said, "Look at this great technology -- look at this great cell engine."

As part of its strategy to deliver business-practical multimedia into the hands of novice computer users, Lotus has introduced ScreenCam, a program for Windows that lets you capture screen activity, cursor movements, and sound into a file that can be integrated as a stand-alone executable file or with any Windows program that supports OLE.

To create a ScreenCam file, you click on a record icon to begin the recording session. As you move the mouse and enter keystrokes, you narrate your screen activity as you speak into a microphone. To play a ScreenCam file, you don't need ScreenCam or the application that created it. ScreenCam does not require a video-capture card (although it does require a sound card). It can create full-screen, full-motion files that can play on a 386-based or higher machine.

Lotus says that ScreenCam is a natural for letting people distribute files that explain a new feature in a program or annotate a word processing or spreadsheet file. A 1-minute ScreenCam file will typically consume about 1 MB, most of which is due to the sound, Barlow says. Lotus is investigating several compression alternatives.

ScreenCam will be bundled first in Lotus 1-2-3 release 4/Multi media Edition, but Barlow says the company plans to release it with future versions of Lotus Notes and SmartSuite. A stand-alone version expected in the first quarter will probably sell for under $100.