This is something totally cool that I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try out for myself. It’s called Sketchcasting and you can check it out at Sketchcast.com. The idea was hatched a couple months back by Richard Ziade at Basement.org and some folks decided to take his idea and run with it — so to speak.

What is Sketchcasting? Well it’s kind of a criss-cross of blogging, podcasting and sketching whiteboard-style. Basically, you talk into your microphone while you draw on a whiteboard. Not an earth-shattering concept — whiteboards and sketchpads have long been invaluable tools for communicating ideas and illustrating concepts quickly — but to do it you need to capture on video what you’re sketching and record what you’re saying while you’re talking. That would require a video camera, a microphone and some patience to get it onto your computer, compress and edit as required. Kind of loses the whole “in the moment” essence that makes it work so well in the real world. What Sketchcast.com does is fill in the gaps so that the entire process is now done via a web-based tool — recording AND sketching. You hit record and the site captures your sketches and voice (if you feel like talking) and then lets you save it and share it really easily. You can even embed the finished product on your site much like a YouTube video.

So what’s it look like? Well, they suggest you use a graphic tablet for sketching but here’s something quick and dirty I just threw together.

Ok - a graphic tablet would make that a whole lot easier… but it’s still a really neat idea!