Licecap

LICEcap is a desktop capture tool with a focus on low-latency, high-quality animated GIFs. It is simple to use, yet powerful, and is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

LICEcap can capture an area of your desktop and save it directly to .GIF (for viewing in web browsers, etc) or .LCF (see below).

You can also choose to capture audio from your microphone.

The resulting animation can be played straight from LICEcap, or you can use a tool like GIF Brewery to add text and other effects. .LCF animations can be imported into various video-editing applications, such as Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro, for further editing.