Travel Agents can easily prepare amazing quotes with these professional, free software products.

OK, here's an even faster, easier suggestion that the longer one below! Email a Placemark from Google Earth to your potential customers with the destination they are interested in from the Google Earth Search field. Say it is Surfers Paradise, Queensland, type this into the Search field and then right click the search result, in this case, Surfers Paradise, Queensland, and choose to email it as an attachment. Your customer can then open the attachment and it will appear in Google Earth.

Otherwise to make the quote look even more professional, try these free software products to make a short video clip of the customer's proposed destination and email it to them as an attachment!

Windows Movie Maker OR Picasa 3 BETA
CamStudio
Google Earth

Give your potential customers another reason to book their holiday with your travel agency by quickly putting together a short video ad of under 20 seconds using only 3 software products.

If you use XP or later, you should have Windows Movie Maker in your Accessories/Entertainment folder from your Start menu. (If you don't have Windows Movie Makert, try Picasa 3's free Movie Maker free from Google and have your free Gmail log in details!)

If you can use Powerpoint at a basic level, it is simple to put a very professional looking movie together for your potential customers! Please refer to the Help topics in Movie Maker or the free tutorials on the Microsoft website for help but the basics are pretty much the same as putting together a slide show.

Next, download CamStudio from sourceforge.net or via the link attached to this blog. This easy to use screen recording software accepts donations but does not charge to be downloaded. Make sure to quickly check three menus in CamStudio before recording -
1. Open CamStudio then click Region/Fixed Region then check that the default size is stated as "Width" at 640 and "Height" at 480, then click OK.
2. Next, click Options/Program Options and make sure that you check "Minimise Program on Start recording" otherwise your video clip will show CamStudio running over or in the screen you want recorded!
3. SAVE your file with the AVI file format to say, your desktop, so that you can quickly add it to your Windows Movie Maker video.

Last - download (at www.earth.google.com) or open your freeGoogle Earth and in the Search field, type in and right click the holiday destinations that your customer is enquiring about. Now open CamStudio and record a short clip of the Google Earth image of the destination and add it to your movie.

If using Picasa 3 to make your video clip, see the quick and simple Help topics on making a great looking movie free with this great free download from Google! (Music soundtrack for our clip above is entitled Cafe Mojambar by MusicShake from YouTube's Audioswap)