The customers of today are on the lookout for more interactive content. They want content which will be truly useful for them. They don’t like being flooded with information because of two reasons – 1) they don’t have the time for it and 2) they don’t require all that data. The need of the hour is interactive content and that is where the role of five year old New York based Outgrow comes into play.

Founded by Pratham Mittal and Randy Rayess, the company offers content that places customers first and makes them an active participant. The company’s platform is a space where clients (large or small) can create their personalized interactive content which include calculators and quizzes that help them collect necessary information from their customers. In this manner, Outgrow enables various businesses to make new generation tools that are much better than the conventional ones.

Outgrow – helping businesses create synergistic online content

The main aim of Outgrow is to add value to the customer’s brand. Pratham Mittal is of the opinion that interactive content through platforms like Outgrow will prove beneficial for those companies that may not have huge staff or resources. The company mainly works with small and medium-sized businesses who can make use of the interactive platform to not only communicate with potential clients but also further their business.

Outgrow has a variety of tools at hand to boost the marketing strategies of companies. These include numerical calculators, outcome quizzes and graded quizzes. These calculators and quizzes serve the purpose better than common surveys as they are considered more beneficial by customers. The general feeling about surveys is that they are mostly one-sided and offer nothing in return. But quizzes created with Outgrow are much better and unique.

Some of the best features of Outgrow include:

• The platform offers highly interactive forms with top-quality quizzes and calculators
• It makes use of E-books to interact with potential customers
• The tool lets you create forms for a custom domain which can be incorporated in the customer website as well
• It uses PowerPoint editor to create interactive forms
• The platform offers immersive exchanges with clients
• It lets users collects information through forms and imparts information by allowing users to share their outcome
• Outgrow works well Converkit, Gmail, Google sheets, Hubspot and Pardot

To read a complete list of Outgrow features please visit Outgrow.co Features.

How It Works

Outgrow offers three interactive techniques, viz., calculators, graded quizzes and outcome quizzes to help companies build their brand better. One can choose a technique depending on the type of business they are engaged in. A detailed explanation of the working of all three platforms is given below:

Calculators

Calculators are used when one uses a formula to show a numerical result at the end.

1. It begins by the user coming to a homepage with a particular question.
2. If he likes the homepage, he will move forward and then browse through different options. This process is very simple as it takes very little time and can be done with the help of the mouse. Depending on the answers he chooses he can view his results real time and then make his final decision.

Some examples of calculators include VenturePact Mobile App Cost Calculator, Mortgage Loan Calculator, Marketing ROI Calculator.

Graded Quizzes

Graded quizzes are mostly used for assessment purposes.

1. The quiz opens with an eye catching title and then the questions.
2. Publish the questions in the Outgrow editor and then put out the options.
3. After the questions and options are ready, design a wacky background for the quiz to keep users happy.

Graded quizzes must be a reflection of the brand and should be pleasing to the eye. One can use a catchy title, GIFs to attract the user.

Outcome Quizzes

For the outcome quiz:

1. First set up the welcome screen.
2. After customizing the first screen, add the quiz title. You can create a headline, a sub-headline and a lead generation.
3. Then you can edit the color, font and other details.
4. Then you start creating your questions and the subsequent answer choices.
5. Then map the options to all social media networks. You have the option for single as well multiple questions.
6. The final outcome section gives one the option of customizing the outcome.

You can generate more than one outcome for the quiz.

Pros

1. Mass Appeal: People, in general, are not happy filling up simple forms or signing up to the mailing list. They are, therefore not going to participate in polls willingly. This is where the benefit of opting for Outgrow comes into play. The interactive quizzes and calculators at Outgrow appeal a lot to the users.
2. Highly Interactive: Outgrow has highly interactive methods of getting people to open up to brands and their products.
3. Attractive templates: The different templates of Outgrow attract the viewer and is therefore a great way of getting solid leads and knowing what people want.
4. Advanced marketing: Outgrow also helps companies with highly advanced marketing techniques, which adds value to their brand. The forms used at Outgrow use photos and logos and this helps bring in more users to express their opinion.

Cons

1. Not An Easy Design: The negatives, if any, of Outgrow include that it is not designed for the standard format so it is not so easy to use.
2. You Can’t Force People: Another minus point is that you can’t get people to subscribe to your company mails with the help of Outgrow platform. But the pros definitely outweigh the cons and Outgrow is a tool for the future.

• Outgrow – helping businesses create synergistic online content @outgrowco outgrow.co via @supermonitoring

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Verdict

What really works for Outgrow is that how interactive and user-friendly the platform is. The calculators, graded quizzes and outcome quizzes are very helpful for brands to bring in new traffic and facilitate better customer interaction through custom built prices, savings/RO calculators. The tool is extremely brand friendly and we give it a thumbs-up!

At one point or another in a lifetime, we’ve all been addicted to animations and felt fascinated by them. If you’ve ever wanted to create your own animations and fascinate the world, well my friend, the time is now! Today, we’re showcasing a super easy tool that will help you achieve what you have always wanted to do – create animations and videos effortlessly. The product we’re talking about is called Animatron, and with renowned companies like Google, Dell, Facebook, and Amazon using it, you can’t go wrong with this one.

Animatron can easily be tagged as one of the most popular and simplest of tools with the utmost advanced features to create high quality, studio-like animations or videos. And if you’re thinking that you need some basic coding experience to create such intricate videos, the answer is a big NO! There are two products which Animatron offers you to choose from depending on what kind of videos you want to create – Wave.video and Animatron Pro Studio. Both of them are free to try but are very limited and should definitely give you an idea of how things work.

Wave.video

This tool is ideal for users who want to create light animation videos, particularly marketers or social media managers. You can instantly resize your videos and import your own assets to create or add customizations. And it lets you instantly preview your results! What’s more – you get access to over 200 million stock video clips. So create a basic and trigger your creativity.

How do I use Wave.video?

It is really simple to get things started with Wave.video. Follow this step-by-step guide.

• Visit www.animatron.com which will give you the option to choose either Wave.video or Pro studio. Here, click Wave.video.
• The subsequent page will ask you to sign up where you can enter your email details.
• A verification link would be sent to your email through which your account can be set up.
• Once this has been completed, you can start creating your first project.
• Do this by clicking on the “Create Project” button.
• The next page would lead you to all the predefined templates where you can choose something which suits your idea.
• You can also start right from scratch! Go on – innovate!

Pricing

Here comes the main part – the pricing. There are three plans from which you can choose –Pro, Agency, and Ultimate which are priced at $39, $49 and $149 per month respectively. The prices shoot up by approximately 40% when you choose a monthly plan. The agency plan is the most popular plan which most of the users prefer.

Apart from this, they have many resources which you get access to. Using these resources you can educate yourself in making professional videos. You can also see the tutorials on their website or walkthrough the workshops which they offer. This can give you a better idea about the tool.

Animatron Pro Studio

As the name suggests, this is for people who want to create heavy animations and is more suitable for small businesses and agencies. The word “Pro” might make you feel like you need prior experience in using this software. That’s where the guys behind Animatron have cracked the puzzle. The “Lite Mode” of the Pro Studio is so simple that it does not require any prior knowledge of the tool. You can create animations using a drag-and-drop action from the huge marketplace content they have. Using the Lite mode, you can easily create Whiteboard animations, Object appearance effects, smooth butter like scene transitions, and record your own voice in the editor to give it a voiceover. Once you are used to this, you can start exploring the “Expert Mode” which gives you the options to create business marketing style videos, HTML5 banners, and stunning presentations. With this awesome tool, you can impress your audience with your new-found skills!

How do I use Animatron Pro Studio?

Before you ignite your creativity, you will need an account.

• Create an account with Animatron. Click on “Studio” on their homepage – www.animatron.com
• Click on the “Create Project” button which should take you to the tool directly.
• There are a number of parts in the screen like the toolbar, the menu bar, the import function, the timeline, and the main canvas, to name a few.
• You may want to explore your first video in the Lite Mode by clicking on the “Lite” button in the top bar.
• Go on – explore the endless possibilities with this tool.

Pricing

Coming to the pricing plans, there are two pricing plans to choose from. They are named Pro and Business. They are priced at $15 and $30 per month respectively when priced annually. The same plans will cost you 50% higher when you opt for monthly billing. All the plans include the pro features such as HTML5 publishing, exporting to SVG, and SVG+SMIL, Social Sharing, Interactivity, and Scripting.

Pros VS Cons

While it has several pros like:

• A fluidic UI design
• Wide variety of customizable graphics
• Focus on customer experience

There is a huge con to Animatron:

• The UI can sometimes be a bit slow on the uptake because of the heavy animations

• Create custom videos and animations, effortlessly, with @animatron animatron.com via @supermonitoring

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Final Verdict

On the whole, we liked Animatron. It is a great tool to not just give a boost to your sales but also earn you a good return on investment. The company claims to have above 300% ROI, which is ultra-impressive. This tool definitely is worth a try. It runs in close competition to Adobe AfterEffects and you would never regret spending your dime on it.

With social media and sharing content with friends becoming the norm of the day, people keep coming up with new and unique ways to say what they’re trying to say. The closest example we can cite for this case is animated GIFs. All you need to do is scroll down your Facebook page a little to spot at least one hilarious GIF someone has shared. Even on WhatsApp, GIFs are the new craze. From commenting on posts to reacting with witty one-liners, everything is being achieved with custom GIFs these days.

If you’ve ever wondered how people seem to find the perfect funny GIFs to share on the exact right moment, well, you’re not alone. A lot of people (including us) have been looking for a way to create our very own GIFs with custom images and we’ve found just the tool that can help. Say Hi to ezGIF – the online GIF maker and image editor. Let’s find out all there is to know about this tool.

ezGIF – Suite of tools for GIFs

ezGIF started off as a simple online GIF maker tool but has evolved into a whole suite of tools for GIF editing. Creating, resizing, cropping, reversing, optimizing, and applying some effects to GIFs, you can do anything with it. Classified as one of the best post production tools, this is the go-to product if you really want to turn your GIFs around. It works with images as well as videos (not YouTube links, yet), lets you play around with GIF size, make them more effect-y flip them horizontally or vertically, add overlay texts, change their speed – basically do almost anything you can think of when it comes to GIFs.

Here’s a quick look at the different tools packed within the ezGIF suite:

• GIF Maker – Allows you to combine separate image files as frames to create your own animated GIFs.
  • You can also edit, shorten or merge existing GIFs.
  • Additionally, you can upload JPG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF and they will be converted automatically
  • Supports PDF files or ZIP archive with images
• Video to GIF – Allows you to upload your mp4, AVI, WEBM, FLV, WMV and many other popular types of video and rich media files to turn them into animated GIFs.
  • Source video file can be uploaded from your computer or Smartphone or fetched by URL
  • Lets you crop the video by entering start and end time
• GIF Resizer – Lets you resize, crop, or flip animated gifs and other images, with the same quality and speed as professional software, without the need to buy and install anything.
  • Lets you select the action to perform if the aspect ratio of the source image and your chosen size does not match
  • Supports resizing of animated WEBP, APNG, FLIF and MNG files (and any other common image type) without losing animation
• Optimizer – Lets you optimize GIF images in one of 4 ways:
  • Reduce GIF file size by compressing them using Lossy GIF compression
  • Reduce GIF file size by reducing the number of colors in each frame
  • Reduce GIF file size by removing every second, third, or fourth frame to reduce frame rate and, therefore, file size
  • Reduces GIF file size by keeping the first frame in the background, and making unchanged parts of the following frames transparent

In addition to these primary tools, ezGIF also includes GIF to Sprite Converter and Sprite Sheet Cutter to play around with CSS Sprites that can be posted directly on websites.

How the various tools within ezGIF work

Visit ezgif.com and choose one of the 4 primary products indicated in the upper center of the screen. Let’s pick each up one by one.

GIF maker

1. Click on “GIF Maker” on the home page to reach the work page
2. Choose the files with which you wish to create GIF. You can choose multiple files by pressing and holding ctrl / command key
3. Click on “Upload and make a GIF”
4. You will now be redirected to the editing page. Here, make the desired changes like:
   1. Change image order (drag and drop)
   2. Set time delay for each image (in milliseconds)
   3. Resize to make all images of the same size
   4. Toggle the range of frames
   5. Set Loop Count (how many times do you want the GIF to repeat playing)
   6. Additional effects (crossfade frames to include a smooth transition effect, or remove frame stacking)
5. When all edits have been made, click on “Make a GIF”
6. After a few seconds your GIF should display in the a box a little lower on the page
7. You can make changes to the GIF (crop, resize, optimize, speed, etc.) after it is created

Video to GIF

1. Click on “Video to GIF” on the home page to reach the work page
2. Choose the video (from computer or Smartphone) with which you wish to create GIF
3. Click on “Upload Video” (maximum upload size is 120 MB)
4. You will now be redirected to the editing page. Here, make the desired changes like:
   1. Cut any undesired parts of the video
   2. Enter start and end time (if you don’t select anything, the GIF will be created with the first 5 seconds of the video)
5. When all edits have been made, click on “Make a GIF”
6. Depending upon the size of the video and your edits, after a little while your GIF should display in a box a little lower on the page
7. You can make changes to the GIF (crop, resize, optimize, speed, etc.) after it is created

GIF Resizer

1. Click on “GIF Resizer” on the home page to reach the work page
2. Choose the image you wish to resize (GIF, JPG, PNG, BMP, WebP, APNG, FLIF, MNG)
3. Click on “Upload”
4. Once file has been uploaded, click on “Resize”
5. Depending upon the size of the image after a little while your resized image should display in a box a little lower on the page

Optimizer

1. Click on “Optimizer” on the home page to reach the work page
2. Choose the image you wish to optimize (GIF, JPG, PNG)
3. Click on “Upload”
4. You will now be redirected to the editing page. Here pick which technique you wish to use to optimize the image:
   1. Lossy GIF Compression
   2. Color Reduction
   3. Removing every nth frame
   4. Optimize Transparency
5. When all edits have been made, click on “Optimize”
6. After a little while your optimized image should display in the a box a little lower on the page

That’s pretty much it.

The Good VS the Bad

The good points of this tool are many and don’t need to be recounted.

There are no bad sides as such, only some features that would be good to have, like the ability to upload videos larger than 120 MB, or YouTube link support.

• Create, edit, resize, & optimize animated GIFs easily with @ezgif_com ezgif.com/ via @supermonitoring

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Verdict

Considering that the tool lets you do everything for free, we’d say it’s definitely worth it. It works great and does exactly what it promises – delivers great GIFs! Double thumbs up.

Gone are the days when shopping needed people to step out of the comfort of their home. With facilities like multiple choice, cash-on-delivery payments, free first-hand trials, and easy returns, shopping for anything, from everyday essentials to luxury items to clothes and accessories, has become a sit-at-home thing. All you need is a hand held device or a laptop with an active Internet connection and you’re set to go. Even leading product vendors realize the immense potential of the mobile device market which is why they come up with novel ways to entice more customers and make online shopping easier than ever before.

One of the newest trends to overtake the online shopping market is that of displaying shoppable images on websites. A shoppable image is one where you see a still photograph of a product in use and can click on it directly to see its price and purchase link. This setup saves you from the headache of having to browse through product catalogues and makes things a lot simpler. Some of the most popular clothing, accessory, make-up, and home decor brands are making use of this kind of direct marketing by simply putting shoppable images as advertisements on various blogs and webpages. If a user sees something he likes, he doesn’t need to click on the image and be redirected to the vendor website where he has to browse through products. Instead, he is straightaway given small clickable icons on the exact products on display which when clicked give him the price of that product and the link to its purchase page. Direct and simple!

Wanna try out this brilliant sales mechanism? Visit LinkLay!

LinkLay – Quickly make product images shoppable

LinkLay is a unique online tool developed with the aim to give bloggers, content creators, online marketers, and even businesses to increase their profits by increasing the click-through rates to product sales pages. It introduces website visitors to a new way of shopping – picking out the exact product they like from the advertisement they’re attracted to.

How many times have you come across an advertisement for a dress or a bag maybe which you really liked but which on clicking led you to the vendor website where you had to sift through thousands of products to find it? Well, say goodbye to that with direct links to the “buy now” page of the exact product you click on in an advertisement, thanks to shoppable images created with LinkLay.

Getting the drift? For some more clarity, here are the best benefits of LinkLay at a glance:

• It caters to the growing needs of internet users who want instant results and a seamless experience
• It gives vendors the chance to keep their audience engaged by directly leading them to the sales page for the product they like and thus prevent a hot sale from going cold
• With LinkLay, embedding a shoppable image on your site is as simple and copying and pasting code snippets where you want it to appear
• Shoppable images created with LinkLay are kept free of any logos
• The platform is Pinterest friendly, Google compliant, and mobile responsive. Plus it integrated with Google Analytics to let you monitor the user impact of your shoppable images
• It is a great way for bloggers, content creators, and e-commerce vendors to convert more sales

LinkLay is compatible with all website builders and e-commerce platforms that accept HTML code like WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Magento, etc. It is powered by an extremely user friendly interface which makes creating shoppable images a matter of a few clicks.

Here’s how it works

To start using the tool, visit linklay.com and click on the red button that says “Start your 14-day trial”. This should lead you to a signup page where you’ll be required to fill in the usual new user information. Once through you’ll reach the dashboard with the following options:

1. First, you’ll be prompted to take a 37-second video demonstration of how to use the tool (first time users should take it). Close the video dialog when done.
2. Play around with the sample image provided by LinkLay to get a better hang of the product usage. Hover over the image to see 4 options – edit, copy code, analytics, and delete.
3. Since you’ve not added any clickable points on the image yet, select the ‘edit’ option.
4. You should now see the enlarged version of the sample image in the right-most panel of the screen and editing options in the middle panel.
5. To start adding click-points on the image, click anywhere on it. An instantaneous pop-up will appear containing the following fields
   1. Product name
   2. Price (indicating price with the appropriate currency symbol is recommended)
   3. URL to the buying page for the product
   4. Option whether or not you wish the user to open the link in same tab
   5. Option to enable / disable a no-follow link
   6. Option to enable / disable affiliate link disclosure
   7. Option to delete this click-point
6. When you’ve filled all fields in this pop-up, close it. The cursor will automatically take you to the next required setting which is color, shape, and size of the clickable icon. Make the desired changes (you’ll see the effects instantly on the image to the right) and click on ‘Save’.
7. Scroll down and give the Call-To-Action button an appropriate name like “But Now” or “View on Vendor Site”
8. Give the shoppable image a name (this is for identification purpose only, the name will not be displayed on the image)
9. Select the gallery on your website where you wish to place this shoppable image
10. When everything looks the way it should, click on “Save and Get Code”
11. This will open a floating pop-up with the HTML code for your shoppable image. Copy this code and paste it into the HTML section of your blog post or webpage where you want the shoppable image to appear.

That’s it, you’re all done. To create a new shoppable image, click on “Create New” from the left hand panel of the dashboard and you’ll be given the option to upload the image which you wish to edit with the same editing options displayed in the middle panel. To have a look at all your shoppable images, click on “Gallery” in the left hand panel.

Pricing & Licensing

For a tool that holds the potential to boosting direct sales, a monthly price of $7 (billed yearly) for a standard account is actually not bad. With an investment as low as that, you get to create 10 shoppable images a month that you can use on 1 website with Amazon Cloud Services backup, Google Analytics integration, no-logo images, as well as email support. Advanced higher priced packages come with even more features.

Not bad at all!

• Boost product sales with shoppable images created through LinkLay linklay.com via @supermonitoring

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Verdict

Quite as expected – a straight double-thumbs up!

What does every writer-in-the-making need? The right inspiration, the right plot, helpful tools, or the proper environment? Truthfully, all of these! But there’s something he needs when he’s done with all of these, and that something eventually proves to be more critical than everything else. That’s a qualified, patient, and honest editor.

While there are heaps of professionals out there who can do the job of an editor extremely well, every small time writer might not be able to afford them. What he needs is someone to do the job for him equally well, but at a much reasonable price. And that’s where the Hemingway App steps in.

Hemingway App is a one of a kind online editor that allows you not just to pen down your thoughts, but helps you improve your writing performance by highlighting grammatical, syntactical, as well as prose and voice related errors so that you can make your writing bolder, stronger, and clearer. Check out the amazing features and working of this tool in our complete review here.

Hemingway App – Making your writing bolder and clearer!

Hemingway App is an online writing and editing tool that offers users a distraction-free environment to jot down their creativity. It is a rather simplistic tool with only and only what’s needed for it to do its job. When you visit the tool’s homepage, you land up right in front of the editor with a sample text written within it and suggested changes highlighted in different colors. Each color is associated with a kind of change that the tool suggests you should make. The tool indicates what kind of edit you should make to make your text more descriptive, meet it’s intended goal, hit the audience in the way it is supposed to, and be interesting too!

For example, in the sentence “You can utilize a shorter word in place of a purple one”, the word utilize is highlighted to indicate that the user should make an edit here. If the user hovers the mouse over the highlighted word, an appropriate suggestion is made by the tool to make the sentence more readable and easily comprehendible. In this case the suggestion was to replace the word “utilize” with a simpler word like “use”. So basically, the tool helps you tone down your content where needed and also makes it more forceful where applicable.

The key features of Hemingway App are:

• It cuts the dead weight from your writing by highlighting wordy sentences in yellow and fiercer ones in red
• Highlights adverbs, passive voice, and dull, complicated words while suggesting you to change them thus making your writing more powerful and clear
• The tool can be downloaded as a desktop app and used without Internet
• Includes text formatting options like bold, italics, headlines, and bullets
• Supports one-click integrations with Medium and any WordPress blog
• Handles everything you need for a web page, including HTML headings, formatting and links
• Once you’re ready to publish, it allows you to export your content as HTML or Markdown for your blogging platform or CMS
• Can work alongside other editors like Notepad, PDF, or Word by facilitating direct import options

This is how the tool works

Much of the tool’s working has been described in the previous section, however, here’s a concise account of the steps to use it:

1. Visit hemingwayapp.com and start writing in the middle of the screen
2. Wherever you make errors, words or phrases will be highlighted with one of the following colors indicating appropriate edits as described below:
   1. Yellow for length, complex sentences. These should be shortened or simplified to help readers understand them easily
   2. Red for extremely complicated sentences. This sentence should be edited to remove typically difficult words.
   3. Purple for words that have a simpler alternative
   4. Green for passive voice. This should be replaced with active voice words
   5. Blue for adverbs. These words can be omitted to make your writing stronger.
3. By default, the “Edit” mode is selected which will highlight errors on the fly. If you’d like to finish writing first and then make all the edits at one go, switch to the Writing mode by clicking on the “Write” tab on the top-right corner of the screen. This actually helps focus.
4. Text formatting options can be found in a horizontal menu placed at the top of the editor. Highlight the text you wish to format and click the appropriate formatting option to apply. Standard keyboard shortcuts also work.
5. Interestingly, the tool also displays a summary of the kind of read your writing is. To see this click on the “Show more” label from the right hand panel of the screen. You should find the following attributes:
   1. Reading time
   2. Letters
   3. Characters
   4. Words
   5. Sentences
   6. Paragraphs

This should help you get an idea of how your readers will perceive your writing.

Pros and Cons

The pros obviously include user-friendliness and utility. However, there are a few negatives too.

• Many of the tool’s features cannot be experienced with the free online editor.
• To take advantage of features like platform integrations, publishing, etc. you’ll need to buy the desktop version of the product

• Write bolder, writer clearer, with the @HemingwayApp hemingwayapp.com/ via @supermonitoring

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On the whole

Hemingwayapp is a useful tool. And priced at $19.99, it isn’t too costly either. If a basic editor with correctional abilities is what you’re looking for, this is the app for you. For advanced features however, you might want to look elsewhere.

A successful blog post is made of three important elements: text, images, and video. While you may think that your text should be enough to describe your concept properly, walking that extra mile with an image doesn’t hurt. A picture speaks more than a thousand words, doesn’t it? But what works better than images, are videos; especially when you are trying to explain a complex concept. You need to monitor your post traffic to understand if your audience gets hitched on to your content easily without getting confused or intimidated with long and complex words. Videos are the best thing that have happened to the Internet; which is why more and more organizations are opting for video instructions than textual documentation.

A live walkthrough of the application that you are giving to the market, a quick demo of the new concept you are going to teach in class, tutorials to educate your team on the new tool, all of these require videos. While there are quite a few software applications available in the market that will help you create videos, what will be really nice is creating a video without actually learning the mechanics of recording combined videos.

Enter Screencast-o-matic!

Screencast-o-matic: All you need to know about this cool video creating tool

The simplicity of Screencast-o-matic is its USP. Once you perform a video recording of your screen, all you have to do is upload it to your sharing platform and that is it. Take a look at few of the many amazing features of this tool.

• Free version entitles you to 15-minute recordings. With Pro you can record longer videos.
• Editing Tools to make your videos more appealing (Pro version)
• Option to add audio scripts to your recordings (Pro version)
• Simultaneous recording of the screen along with the Webcam turned on. Or you could record only the screen or only with the Webcam turned on.
• Direct publishing of content to YouTube. Also, you can save your content online as a video file on Screencast-o-matic’s portal.
• Option to publish videos to Google Drive, Vimeo, and Dropbox (Pro version)
• Easy to use. Even if you are beginner, you will find no trouble learning how to record videos of the screen.
• They have a free version available, which comes with only a few hindrances. What’s more! The Paid version (Pro) is pretty cheap at $15 a year.

This is how it rolls

Visit Screencast-o-matic’s homepage and click on the blue button that says “Start Recording”. You’ll be directed to a page where you can choose between using a free trial or registering for a paid pro version. Our suggestion would be to try the tool out first before investing in it, so click on the green button that says “Launch Recorder”. This will download the tool launcher to your system. The executable will be named WebLaunchRecorder.exe. It is a legitimate download so you don’t need to worry about malware.

Once the download is complete, install and run the set-up file. After the setup is complete, the system will prompt you to select an option. For the free version, select the Use FREE Recorder option. You can start recording with one of the following options:

• Record with the Webcam switched on without the screen
• Record only the screen without the Webcam switched on
• Record both the screen and the Webcam

To start recording, click the Rec button at the bottom left of the screen. The system displays a small timer that times everything that is being recorded. To pause or stop the recording, click the Rec button again. When you press the button for the second time, the system will display the following message:

Delete everything and start over?

Don’t panic, simply choose an appropriate option. If you have finished recording, click Done and the system will display a preview of your recording. If you want to delete your recording, click the Trash Can icon. To save your recording, choose one of the following options:

• Save the video locally on your system with one of the following extensions: AVI, MP4, etc.
• Upload your video to YouTube.
• Upload your video to Screencast-o-matic.

The Good and the Bad

Let’s visit the plus points of the tool first:

• Once you start working on the tool, it is pretty simple to navigate and get stuff done.
• Since the tool allows you to directly upload your content to YouTube you don’t need to waste any extra time in saving it locally and going through the tedious procedure of publishing.
• Screecast-o-matic allows you to record from both sources simultaneously, which means you save the time you would have spent if using more than one software application to combine both videos.

Now for the negatives:

• Because Screencast-o-matic requires a constant internet connection to record everything, it gets inconvenient for users to work offline.
• For users trying out the free version, full-screen recording is not enabled. You will have to buy the Pro version for full-screen recording.
• The free version comes with a 15 minute limit of recording time. Of course, the Pro version does not have this limitation.
• Another disadvantage of using the free version is that it comes without the ability to use the computer’s audio recording system. The Pro version can be used to overcome this limitation.

• Record on-screen activity without any hassle, try @screencasto screencast-o-matic.com/ today via @supermonitoring

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Wrapping it up

While the free version is quite limited in functionality, it is still pretty useful for people wanting to make a quick recording of a short presentation or video call. Most of the limitations of the free version are not applicable to the Pro version, which in turn is not very expensive. We urge you to give Screencast-o-matic a try. Since videos are quickly becoming a must in all blog posts, Screencast-o-matic could become quite a handy tool for you.

Vibrant colors coming to life, hand drawings of complicated charts, ideas that demand a world of their own; you get all this and more if you have your animation down pat! With the increase in its trend, animation is one of the most sought-after marketing techniques. It is widely used in branding, imaging, education, and a lot of other fields. Until now, Microsoft PowerPoint was the popular choice to help with those arrow tricks and zooming gradients. But that has changed; with the rising demand for cool animation tricks, comes the increase in the number of animation software options available in the online market. However, one fact remains established: Animation is the key to any marketing proposition you make to capture your audiences’ attention.

Now that that’s established, if you wanted to use animation marketing for your latest project, how would you go about selecting the right tool? Of course you’d need something easy to use so you can avoid the need of seeking help from a professional. At the same time, you need to avoid doing a sloppy job of it. You need to ensure that the end product looks as good and as professional as an expert would do it.

That’s exactly where tools like VideoScribe come into the picture.

VideoScribe – Making Doodling Fun!

Created by Sparkol in 2012, VideoScribe has seen a surge in their number of customers, and for excellent reasons too. They are at the top of their game when it comes to whiteboard animation, and have gained customers in not only the marketing industry but also in government agencies. VideoScribe has been used to create presentations by the US government, the Swedish parliament, and the UK government.

The animation software allows you to create engaging presentations without the help of a professional. It can be installed as a desktop program on both, Mac and Windows. What’s more, you can download its application on tablets running Android or iOS. The interface that VideoScribe provides is intuitive. A little playing around with the application and you will know what all the icons do and what templates are available. Additionally, you get guidebooks and tutorials to help you create engaging presentations.

Some of the most attractive features of the tool include:

• A huge library of high-quality images to add to your presentation. You have the option to purchase premium images if you can’t find a suitable free one.
• Support for video size and resolution modification.
• Vast collection of royalty-free music to add your video.
• Voiceovers can be imported or recorded.
• Ability to add your own watermark / logo (premium feature).
• MOV, WMV, and AVI file formats for your video output. JPG and PNG sequence offered too.
• Facility to share whiteboard presentations on Facebook and YouTube or covert them to Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.
• Saving projects online while working on them offline.

Created on one device, your VideoScribe presentations can be downloaded to multiple other devices.

Tool working

After you have downloaded and installed VideoScribe, you can start creating your very first scribe. While the software does come with a guidebook and tutorial, here are a few easy steps that will help you monitor your ideas come to life:

• Launch VideoScribe and click on ‘Create a New Scribe’.
• Click on ‘Add an image to the canvas’ and type what you are looking for in the keyword search field.
• After you select the image, you can make changes to its resolution, size, or color in the ‘Image Properties’ window. All effects that you add to your image come with a preview.
• Click ‘Add text to the canvas’ and type the text in the ‘Add text’ window. You can change the font, size, and color of the text.
• Click on ‘Add a chart to the canvas’ and select the type of chart, dates for data depiction, and color in the Add chart window.
• Click ‘Add or change a music track for this scribe’ and select a track by browsing for it in the ‘Browse music’ window.
• Click ‘Add or change the voiceover for this scribe’ and click Record in the Voiceover window.
• You can also change the background paper for your whiteboard presentation by clicking ‘Change the paper texture and color’ and selecting one of the available options in the ‘Paper options’ window.
• Click ‘Select a different default hand for this scribe’ and select one of the options in the ‘Select hand’ window. You could even add something of your own by clicking the ADD YOUR OWN button.
• To save your creation, click on Save or export this scribe -> Take a single snapshot to a PDF document. To save the scribe locally, type the name of the scribe in the ‘Save scribe’ window and save it on your system. To save your scribe online, click on ‘Save (export) online’. To export your scribe, click ‘Export to a “scribe” file’. To import your file back, click ‘Import’ and save it locally.
• To publish your project, you must create a video file. Click ‘Publish (render) your scribe video’ and you will be able to share your video on Facebook and YouTube.

Pros VS Cons

Why we love VideoScribe

• Ease of use.
• The massive library of high-quality images and sound tracks.
• Eliminates the need of a professional.

What we wish it would offer

• Something that the others in its competition are offering: sketch to video. The sketching of a video before it plays is a good-to-have feature, and bundled with VideoScribe, it would really be the whole package.
• The lifetime package of this software does come at a price too steep. If you are just starting out, investing in an expensive product like this one might not be a good idea.

• Create whiteboard-style animation videos easily with VideoScribe videoscribe.co/ by @SparkolHQ via @supermonitoring

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Verdict

Overall, we’d say that VideoScribe does the job and does it well! The best part about it is that you can find out for yourself and test its mettle by trying it out for free. So go, download it right away!

Most of us try to find the Google answers to at least 3 – 4 questions on a daily basis. Considering this, the apps or websites which host content about which people ask questions are bound to have huge traffic rates. Wouldn’t you want your website or app to be one of the most talked-about ones? Wouldn’t you want to put up content which prompts user discussions and helps keep you in the news?

Finding content ideas that trigger user interaction to bring about a real change in your field of work is a very challenging task. All the more if you need to put up such content on a regular basis. What would help would be a way in which you could find what makes users tick every now and then. What are things people like talking or asking questions about? Bloomberry is a unique online tool that lets you find out just that.

Bloomberry – Discover the most popular questions asked online

Bloomberry can be viewed as a database of real questions asked over the Internet. The database keeps expanding as more questions are added each day, and the tool, quite intuitively groups questions into topics so that its users can perform easy analysis. This tool is ideal for content writers, copywriters, market researchers, product innovators, and all those who’re constantly monitoring the Internet to come up with ideas that can catch people’s attention.

Bloomberry is like an elixir for the marketing industry. It lets you know exactly what it is about your industry or brand that people discuss the most.
Alternatively, you can use it to find out the most popular questions asked by your target buyer. Consider this scenario – you’re an online marketer who has been given the task of promoting a new product for a renowned company. You know what the product is about but can’t come up with the exact lines to hit the perfect sales pitch. Wouldn’t it be great if you could know the exact aspect of that product that people are most talking about? That would help you design your promotional strategy around that very aspect and sell your content like hotcakes, wouldn’t it?

That’s where Bloomberry steps in. It introduces you to questions that are already engaging audiences across the globe. It lets you know what topics people are talking about most on social platforms, so that you can use that knowledge to create the perfect marketing strategy. The tool has been created by the team behind BuzzSumo and it is extremely easy to use.

Bloomberry Beta is currently available for use so you can expect some nice finishing touches to it in the full version. However, here are the features it already has that we love:

• Scrapes tons of different sites that people ask questions on saving you from going through them manually
• Sorts results based on popularity
• Groups results into different topics
• Includes numerous filters like Time Range, Excluded Sources, Included Sources, etc. to help you find the exact topics you are interested in
• Allows exporting topics and questions in CSV or Excel formats

It’s simple and it’s neat, and that’s what’s awesome about Bloomberry.

Tool Usage

To start using the tool without having to register, just land up on its homepage and you’ll see a large textbox waiting to accept your input. Type the name of a product or a topic about which you wish to find the questions asked over the Internet. We typed in a rather common word searched by millions of users across the globe, ‘recipe’, and clicked on ‘Go’.

We were directed to a results page that had a few options to customize our search. While the tool loaded the questions related to the word ‘recipe’, we cast a quick glance on the left hand side panel that had the following options:

• Time Range – to narrow down the time range of the search, for example, questions asked over the past 6 months, or part year, or past 5 years, etc.
• Excluded Sources – to exclude particular question sites from our search results which we might have already searched, for example, yahoo, aol, quora, etc.
• Included Sources – to limit our search to particular sites only
• Filter by TLD – to filter our search results by country by specifying country extensions, for example, .uk, .de, .au, etc.

This was our first trial of the tool so we decided against using any filters. The tool didn’t take much time to display the results and when it did, we were impressed. We would like to state here that if you didn’t really understand the purpose behind building the tool up until this point, after viewing the tool’s result page and the way it groups data by topic, you’ll have no doubts.

The results showed us some of the most asked questions about recipes grouped by topics which were created based on phrases using the word ‘recipe’. So in effect, when we searched for questions about ‘recipe’, what we got was a page filled with the most asked questions mentioning the phrase ‘best recipe’, ‘favorite recipe’, ‘substitute’, ‘easy recipe’, ‘recipe ideas’, and so on. A mere look at the questions and we could think of almost a hundred recipes mentioning ingredients or dishes that people find most over the Internet. And we could very well imagine the kind of response we’d get if we posted such a recipe on a blog / website.

Thus the tool actually did what it promised – showed us what people talk most about regarding our industry and helped us come up with content ideas that would spark real conversations among our target audience.

Additional Features

In addition to achieving its core purpose, Bloomberry offers analysis capabilities through a convenient ‘Analysis’ tab on the results page. It depicts the contents of the results page graphically and in a listed manner to allow you to quick draw insights and make decisions.

You can also view all questions without any particular grouping through an ‘All Questions’ tab. Exporting data to CSV and Excel is also offered.

• Find out the most trending questions about your brand / industry with bloomberry.com/ by @BuzzSumo via @supermonitoring

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Finally

The reason there’s no pros and cons section in this review is that we actually couldn’t find a downside to Bloomberry in its current state. Maybe when its full paid version is launched and free features become limited, we’ll have better luck at spotting downsides. Thumbs up to this brilliant tool.

The modern world recognizes the power of words. With Internet being transformed into an information hub, more and more people hook onto it to monitor all sorts of stuff ranging from food to technology to travel and leisure. In such a setting, one of the best ways to make oneself useful is by being a part of the community that makes such valuable information available. Writers and bloggers are an enormous part of this community. And this post is about a tool that is bound to make the work of bloggers and writers easy. We’re talking about StackEdit here and trying to find out how much water this online in-browser editor holds.

StackEdit – In Browser Editor for Smart Writers

When you hear the name StackEdit, it hardly strikes you as an online writing tool with awesome features that can simplify the work of bloggers and writers to a great extent. But that’s exactly what it is. StackEdit is an in-browser Markdown editor that promises to deliver an unrivalled writing experience. It lets you create articles and blog posts that you can publish on a number of social platforms simultaneously. And if you’re thinking there’s nothing great about it, wait till you hear about all the controls it offers you.

The tool encompasses almost the range of capabilities packed into NotePad++ or WordPad or other offline popular writing tools. Of course it isn’t as diverse as Microsoft Word, but as far as blogging or posting articles is concerned, it lets you achieve everything you need. Powered by What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get controls, the editor helps you visualize the final rendering of your documents before you actually post them online. What’s more, you can integrate StackEdit with Google Drive and Dropbox to save your documents directly to the cloud.

Additional highlights of the tool include:

• “Scroll Sync” extension to bind the editors’ scrollbars so that you can keep a constant eye on the output’s final look while writing
• Built-in “Spell checker” to carry out multilingual spelling checks and display suggestions for correction
• Various customizable options available to personalize writing settings and create personal extensions
• Allows direct upload of documents to Blogger, GitHub, Tumblr, WordPress, etc
• Documents can be uploaded in Markdown format, HTML, or using Underscore template engine
• Facilitates collaboration on common documents, automatically merges modifications from multiple collaborators
• Supports insertion of inline comments and discussions like Word or Google Docs
• Includes an offline mode that allows you to write on the move just like a desktop application

With advanced capabilities of inserting mathematical expressions into documents and creating UML diagrams using simple syntax, StackEdit is quickly becoming one of the most popular in-browser writing editors of all time.

Here’s how to use StackEdit

Visit the tool’s homepage and click on “Start writing now!” in the top menu. This will redirect you to a screen divided into 2 panels – left one for editing and right one to preview the output. The preview window is toggle-able and you can close it if distracts you while writing. By default you’ll see some text displayed in the editor. It is dummy text that you can delete but we’ll advise against it since going through it can give you helpful pointers about the tool’s syntax.

The syntax of the tool resembles HTML with tags specifying text attributes, for example, to insert icons tags are used. Catching the other shortcuts is simple too. We quickly made out that to make some text bold we had to enclose it within asterix pairs (**text**) and marking some text as headings (H3) required prefixing it with the same number of hash signs (###). Similarly, figuring out the trick behind inserting bullet lists and keyboard button images was easy.

We recommend that you read the full dummy text displayed in the editor to know about StackEdit’s features in detail. If you do need to delete the text, copy-past it elsewhere and then go ahead. This could save many of your potential work hours that you might have to spend in the future to find out precious shortcuts about the tool (like how to insert a table of contents or create UML diagrams using text syntax).

In addition to the text you’ll find a host of other editing options in the file menu including Bold, Italics, Hyperlink, Code-Sample, Image, etc. Simply click on any of them to insert the respective tags in the text and you’ll be good to go. In the same menu you’ll find undo-redo buttons as well as a button that allows you to insert comments into the documents you create.

On the left-most corner of the file menu you’ll find a hash button which reveals additional options like import / export document, share, publish, convert to Markdown, etc. It will also give you access to account settings. Lastly, on the right-most corner of the file menu, a folder button will allow you to create new document, delete an existing document, as well as manage your documents.

Plus VS Minus

We were actually quite impressed by StackEdit. The tool was so simple, yet so brilliant. It gave us access to all options needed to create perfect looking documents and upload them to various social platforms easily. Moreover, it included a bunch of editing options and features at par with popular offline editors like Word.

But, there were also a few drawbacks we noticed, the biggest one being the absence of a ‘Save’ button. The documents were stored only in the browser’s local storage. There was no option to create an account wherein you could perhaps save the documents you create. So in case the browser crashed, we could lose all our text and changes. Another one was that although once connected to the tool’s site, you can get disconnected and work offline, to initially establish a session you need an Internet connection. This contradicts the tool’s claim to support offline working.

• Brilliant in-browser Markdown editor for writers / bloggers – @stackedit stackedit.io/ via @supermonitoring

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Final Verdict

StackEdit is actually a great tool, though with a few limitations. But then considering it doesn’t need you to pay even a single penny, not having to sign up could be counted as a benefit if the makers can provide a way to save documents.

How often have you heard the remark, “I’ve always struggled with my grammar”? Mastering the proper use of written English language is tricky even for native speakers of the language, let alone, people foreign to it. The punctuations, articles, phrases, similes, etc. that make up the language are sometimes too much to handle. And if the use of English is not directly linked to your livelihood, you can still manage. But if you’re a writer, a teacher, or a professor, the wrong choice of words could mean make or break for your career.

At this point if you’re thinking, ‘that’s why Microsoft built Word with spell and grammar check’, well, it’s time to expand your area of thought. ‘Coz we’re going to introduce you to a free online tool that will let you master written English language like never before. Presenting – Grammarly.

Grammarly – a writer’s best friend

Literally! If you’re among those who like to run a quick spell and grammar check on your documents before you submit them, you will fall in love with this tool instantly. It is slick, it’s simple, and it’s free! Grammarly not only points out errors in your documents, but also gives you suggestions to fix them. And we agree, MS Word does that too. But here’s what really sets the online tool apart from the document editor. Grammarly lets you fix highlighted errors with just one click. You read it right – one click only! Click on a suggested fix for an error, and it will be done.

The intuitive tool monitors your documents to make sure everything you write is mistake-free, easy to read and effective. And that applies not just to spelling errors, but also to misplaced words / phrases, incorrect grammar, wrong punctuation, verb mistakes and anything “grammar-y” you can think of.
Still thinking of your trusty Word spell check? These features might help in convincing you:

• Grammarly instantly fixes over 250 different types of errors, most of which MS Word cannot find
• You can find the perfect word for a sentence each time through context-optimized synonym suggestions
• It even points out correctly spelled words used in the wrong context so that you can avoid embarrassment
• The mistakes in your work are highlighted in a very subtle and interesting manner so that you can better learn about them and avoid them in future
• It lets you correct your grammar on any platform including emailing, social media, document editors and more through specialized add-ins.

With algorithms developed by the world’s leading authorities on linguistic technology, Grammarly goes beyond basic grammar and spell check and helps you become a better writer.

This is how it rolls

To start using the tool, you’ll need to create a free account with Grammarly. A simple signup later, you’ll be assigned your dashboard. In the dashboard you’ll be able to find various options in the left-hand panel that will help you perform different operations with the tool.

• My Grammarly – your work page containing all the documents you upload to the tool for correction.
• Profile – here you can view your account settings (name, email, password, etc), add words to your personal dictionary (so that words particular to your work are no longer flagged as misspellings), and / or select if you want to work with American English or British English.
• Apps – lists all apps suited to your account type. A free account is entitled to a browser extension, an MS Word add-in, and a native app for your desktop.
• Premium – page that shows what’s available with the premium edition (paid edition) of Grammarly and how much it will cost you (you can of course stick to the free account and still use the tool for as long as you want).
• Support – your help guide to the tool.

Once you’ve made the basic settings, you can start using the tool by uploading a document to be checked. If you need a little hands-on practice, Grammarly provides a Demo document with mistakes that you can open to work with yourself. Try it and you’ll get a pretty clear idea of how to use the tool (and how good it can make your work). Additionally, once you open a document inside Grammarly editor, you’re provided with a number of options to enhance it:

• You can turn specific checks on or off (contextual spelling, grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, style)
• Check for Plagiarism issues (available with Premium account)
• Enhance the vocabulary used (available with Premium account)
• Get your document proofread by a professional (available with Premium account)

Additionally, you can paste content directly into the editor or create a new document directly in the editor (so the tool becomes your online writing pad).

Just for fun and for really testing Grammarly’s capabilities, download the Demo document to your computer (there’s an option to do that). Once you have the document, run MS Word’s spell and grammar check on it and then compare the experience with the Grammarly experience. We bet you’ll choose the latter instantly!

Pros VS Cons

There’s no doubt about the pros.

• It’s way better than the simple grammar and spell check of Word.
• It includes features like vocabulary enhancement, plagiarism check, professional proofreading.
• It allows you to create new documents and check them right inside the editor.
• You may upload and download documents to / from the tool.

There is literally no con to this awesome tool. There is a free basic account that you can use for as many documents and for as long as you want. But, in order to access really helpful features like plagiarism checker, vocabulary enhancer or proofreading, you’ll need to fish out some money (the prices are quite affordable actually).

• Create brilliant, mistake-free documents easily with @grammarly grammarly.com/ via @supermonitoring

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Final Verdict

A must try tool for writers and bloggers. Give it a try for its sheer usefulness; but it you truly want to realize its potential, sign up for the premium account. You won’t regret it!