web-based screen capture/recording tool

As simple as it is to create a video and share it with the world (aka screencasting), I feel that technology for creating a recording of one’s desktop interactions (combined with audio) is still somewhat limited. Camtasia is probably the better known desktop/screen recording application. However it only works on Windows. Same goes for the open-source Camstudio. I did find a couple screen recording tools for the Mac. There’s ScreenMimic and Snapz.

However, I prefer a web-based tool rather than having to run another application on my system. As a regular user of Webex, I’ve started using it as a mechanism to record a screencast. This works well for presentations, whiteboarding, and desktop recording. Now, using webex seems like an overkill for my requirements (plus it’s also a paid service). Interestingly, there’s screencast.com where you can upload screen recordings from Camtasia and have it stored & distributed from the site (for a fee of course).

Digging around some more I found screentoaster & screenjelly, both are web-based and platform-independent screen recording tools. It appears that both sites are owned by Veodia. I feel that there’s perhaps an opportunity here. A browser-based screen recording tool that also provides the management of the recorded screencasts. Imagine creating a screencast of presentations, product demos, tutorials, and more. Then post that across multiple social mediums such as youtube, facebook, myspace. Ideally there’s a way to glue in adverts into the screencasts for folks that want a free service. However, for the power users, the fees would be based on a metered service (# of views, simultaneous users, etc).

Does something like this make sense? Has that boat already sailed?