If you want a very easy and simple way to capture something on your computer screen and easily share it with friends or colleagues, look no further than the Jing Project.

A new service from TechSmith – makers of long-established applications such as Camtasia and SnagIt – Jing is a free application for Windows or Mac.

I think it’s ready appeal is very much in tune with today’s climate of informal conversations and sharing, where the ability to quickly record something visual, with or without a spoken commentary, and then make it available to as many or as few people as you want is increasingly popular.

As Jing’s Tony Dunckel says:

[…] The Jing Project is our journey to discover how we can improve everyday conversation. Think of all those IM chats, emails, blog posts and comments you’ve made over the years. Now imagine a more visual world where integrating screen captures and screencasts into those took nothing more than a matter of seconds. Can you imagine it? I can – I’ve seen it, I’ve lived it – it’s Jing.

To set up and use Jing is simplicity itself. Just download the app, install and get capturing. It’s that simple.

TechSmith have linked Jing with ScreenCast.com, a place where you can share your audio-visual creations. During this beta period, they’re offering free 60-day accounts.

You don’t have to use ScreenCast.com, though, which is an aspect of Jing I find highly compelling. This means once you’ve recorded your screen capture – which, for video, is in the Flash file format – you can do anything you want with your file.

I did a quick capture once I installed the app, which you can view and listen to below (RSS subscribers, you may need to actually visit this blog to use this). As long as you have a Flash plug-in installed in your browser, it will just play. I’ve also uploaded the capture to ScreenCast.com. [Note July 20: if that link doesn’t work, see update below]

It really was very easy to make this capture. If you have a microphone connected to your computer, the capture will also record your voice as you speak. Nothing to set up or configure for that: it just works.

Via TechCrunch, who has a decidedly mixed review (broadly, a good one). Reviewer Duncan Riley mentions you can’t embed an uploaded capture in your own site. Yes you can, as the one I uploaded includes code to embed the video – and that’s what’s embedded below.

Note that what you’ll see is not the full-size video window. Actual image dimensions are 1062×941 pixels – far too large to comfortably embed here. So I’ve reduced it all to 430×381. But when you click it, it tries to use the full size, hence you just see part. Probably best to head over to ScreenCast.com to see it there.

Based on my quick look, I think Jing will prove to be highly popular with anyone who wants to easily grab something from their screen and quickly share it.

[Update @ 3:15pm] In a comment to this post, TechSmith’s Brooks Andrus says that Jing Screencast.com accounts are not restricted to the normal 60 day trial period. Rather, they are free for the duration of the Jing project (no word on how long that is, though).

Also, Dan York has a good review of Jing.

[Update July 20] Greetings if you’ve arrived here via Stumble Upon. So many of you have that, unfortunately, it’s meant that your accessing the video at ScreenCast.com has used up the entire bandwidth allowance and so the video is no longer accessible there.

But I’ve enabled a link to it locally. So you can still view it, below.