I tried CamTwist a long long time ago. I would try, and try, and I’d never quite understand it. I kept on trying and I was like, okay, there are a bunch of options here, but what the heck do they do? Nothing is happening! But I recently finally figured it out.

No, it doesn’t record or broadcast. it is like a virtual memory camera, that the computer will recognize as a real camera or webcam. The advantage here is that you can have the webcam do almost anything. It can be a view of the desktop, a movie, a slideshow, or even a set of flickr photos. Or at least that’s how it is with CamTwist. It is probably most useful for it’s desktop feature. It also has many cool effects that I can use, so that I can make it look like it’s matrix, on fire, or just plain weird. Now here’s the catch: You have to have your own recording tool that can recognize available webcams. Like the YouTube quick-capture. You can select a microphone and a webcam. Under the webcam if you have CamTwist running, will be a camera called CamTwist. That video camera will be whichever you select in the CamTwist application- your desktop, the actual webcam, a flickr set, a movie, or even a slideshow Hit the record button and you are recording whatever you want. and using CamTwist studio, you can get amazing transitions between different sources and effects (watch the video a the top of the post). The studio part of the application makes no sense at first, but it’s easy to get the hang of once you know it. And let me say that I found the application yesterday, and I’m already posting about it today. That’s FAR above my standard. This application does more than that, by doing nothing more. As you know Skype does video chats. You can select CamTwist as your webcam, then you can show your friend your desktop over Skype, add cool effects, and even show video and pictures to your friend without doing a file transfer and risking a virus. Or if you still want them to be able to see you in the webcam, there is still an advantage: effects. I know that a friend of mine that used a Logitech QuickCam with effects. In fact, I did too, and we’d both have fun with those effects. Then I got my Mac and he was bragging that I didn’t have any camera effects and that he could change it to look so cool. Not anymore! I also have FAR many more effects that all work, and I can show my desktop, play a movie, play a slideshow, even s flickr set. HA. I can even make me or my desktop look like matrix. I can show a rotating apple on my or my desktop wherever I want. I can put a halo on me or my desktop, I can even show what iTunes song is playing, and even a little icon and text that shows the weather conditions for my zip code. Even better, I can do all of them (and more) at the same time! It even also works like Skype on ustream.tv, so I can have me with special effects on ustream.tv, or my desktop the same. But you know what that means blog readers? You can watch me make my posts. All it takes is a little bit of popular twitter freeware, then just follow me on twitter, and I will post when I’m broadcasting my desktop of me writing a blog post. In fact, I did the same for this post. As I wrote this post, it was available to everyone else who had twitter and got my update with a link to the live broadcast page. Those lucky people got to see me type this blog post. And next time, you could be one of the lucky people to! you don’t need a twitter account to view my feed, but to know when I’m broadcasting you need to have twitter and follow me. Does this easy to use CamTwist sound interesting to you?