Mouse without Borders

If you're working with 2 Windows computers side-by-side (or more), you will probably adopt rightly this excellent tool from "The Garage" (a Microsoft geeks nest).

It would already be great if it was only a software alternative to KVM's but it also allows you to share your clipboard between computers as well.


In my profession, I frequently experiment on one PC and document the operation on another. I'm using Greenshot to capture screens and save them in a central network location, but sharing clipboard is sometimes better as you can directly copy/paste picture, text, anything...into the final document.
A menu option allows to send a screenshot to, or receive it from, another PC, but you also can use the PrintScreen button (or Alt-PrintScreen) to get the screenshot directly in the shared clipboard without always openning 'Paint'. An option to automatically save the screenshots to file would be a nice addition . 

Installing:
All it takes, is to download a tiny file (1.1MB) and install it on each computer. A security key will be created to associate only the computers you choose. From that point, your mouse will be able to travel from one computer screen to another by just crossing the 'border'. You need to ensure that your screens disposition in the "Machine matric" matches the real situation. If needed, this can be adjusted by a simple drag an drop.

Get "Mouse without Borders" here

With its large media coverage, this tool from Microsoft brings an another software under the spotlights to people (like me...) who didn't know that such a solution already existed for quite some time: Synergy, a Multi-Platform (Linux, OSX, Windows) and Open Source alternative, which is definitely worth a try!

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Screen Capture and Screen Recording

As a big part of my job is to make technical procedures as clear as possible for non technical people, a vital tool that I extensively use to achieve this is the screen capture utility, and, to a smaller extend, the screen recorder.

I adopted Gadwin PrintScreen. It's a closed-source freeware, but I yet have to find a matching open-source offering together the features that I required:
- substitute to the PrintScreen key
- ability to save automatically a region screenshot in clipboard as well as file without prompt.
- delayed capture
- ability to capture the mouse pointer
- jpeg support
- automatic naming
- lightweight (3.5 MB)
- fast to load and run

Open-Source alternative:
Greenshot (no delayed capture and pointer capture in v0.7, but does everything else!)

Screen Recording
At times, I need to produce a screen recording video as a software bug evidence for instance, or as a tutorial complement. The open-source CamStudio gives a very complete set of features to produce video recording in AVI of Flash along with captions and audio comment if needed.

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