Demo Girl

Use 1DayLater to Track your Work and Personal Life

08Feb10

1DayLater is an application that allows you to track the hours you work on projects, the distance you drive everyday, money you spend on groceries, hours you put in at the gym, and anything else you can squeeze into a day.

Using 1DayLater is extremely easy – Enter in hours, mileage, or money spent and then a project/client name and description. A project/client name could be for anything you want to track, so if you’re tracking how much you spend at Whole Foods every week you would put “Whole Foods” into the project/client field. Lastly, add the date and click on “Go”. This activity will be placed into your activity stream for that day and the amount you entered will be added to any other day that you created an activity for that project.

You can view a graph that shows just what you’re spending your time on and export your data for further use. Future features include invoicing information and mileage calculation.

To see how 1DayLater can help you track your life, watch the screencast below:

[via WebWorkerDaily]

Filed under: Time Management, Tools, organization, screencast, task management | Leave a Comment
Tags: 1DayLater, project management

Trick Your Brain Into Remembering Text with MemorizeNow

03Feb10

MemorizeNow is yet another application that I wish existed when I was still in school. It helps you remember short and long phrases of text by training your brain how to read the phrases with different words removed in each sequence. This can be used for something as simple as word definitions to long speeches or poems.

It was initially created to aid in memorizing passages from the bible, but obviously it can be used for just about anything you need to remember.

To see how MemorizeNow works, watch the screencast below:

Filed under: Q&A, Tools, screencast, task management | 1 Comment
Tags: learning, MemorizeNow, memory

How-to: Google Search in Gmail

02Feb10

I finally got around to checking out Google Search integration with Gmail today and it turned out to be more useful than I had anticipated.

You see, I’m getting ready for my Mom to come visit me in San Francisco this weekend and now, instead of copying and pasting numerous Google search results of places we should check out into an email, I can simply start composing my email to her and then do Google searches within that message. The search results can all be pasted right into the email, links and all.

You need to go into your lab settings first and enable Google search and make sure your rich text editor is enabled. That’s all there is to it!

To see how easy it is to use Google search in Gmail, watch the screencast below:

Filed under: Google, email, screencast, search, task management | 2 Comments
Tags: Gmail, Google Search

Create Patterns Out of Your Photos with Repper

02Feb10

Repper is a fun tool that helps you create fancy patterns out of any old photo.

All you need to do is upload a photo and then use the Repper tool to create crazy patterns. The image above is what I created and then added to my Twitter profile page. You just need to be sure to use a “tile” background option to make the pattern look right.

To see how to use Repper to make your own patterns, watch the screencast below:

Filed under: cool, design, fun, screencast | Leave a Comment
Tags: design, patterns, Repper

Keep Track of Your Tabs in Chrome with TabJump

01Feb10

TabJump is an extension for Google Chrome that helps you manage your tabs. After you install it you’ll see all of your most used tabs that are open, related tabs, and recently closed tabs. You can also lock tabs – but since you can find recently closed tabs, this feature doesn’t seem all that necessary. It’s a really handy extension that doesn’t take up a lot of browser real estate, much like most Google Chrome Extensions.

To see what TabJump can do, watch the screencast below:

Filed under: Chrome, Google, Tools, organization, screencast | Leave a Comment
Tags: tabs, Google Chrome, TabJump

Something Else You May Want to Include in your Wedding Budget: MyWeddingBinder

22Jan10

First of all, let me say that I will try to make this my last post (for a while) about anything wedding related. It just so happens that I received a note from the founders of MyWeddingBinder yesterday and after using it a bit today, I really feel that it is a very useful tool. Since I spent so much time testing it out I figured it would be worth my time to go the extra mile and share my experience with you.

Disclosure: I am currently planning a wedding so please excuse me if I get over excited. I can’t help it.

MyWeddingBinder gives you a space to plan and organize the details of your wedding. Everything from your guest list, to your vendors, to the seating chart, to your budget – it’s all there to help you keep track of the madness that lasts just one day.

Now I know that there are a lot of sites out there that can be used to help you plan your wedding. The problem with most of these sites, however, is that they do not focus just on your wedding day – they focus on shoving ads down your throat (a bit extreme, but it’s pretty much true) for things like dresses and floral arrangements that most people can’t even afford. What I’ve found (and believe me, I have looked and looked) is that most wedding planning sites put your actual wedding planning in the background and pictures of extravagant ceremonies and merchandise in the foreground. And that’s why they’re free. So fine.

MyWeddingBinder is not free. In fact you can’t even set up a free trial account to test it out. There’s a fee of $29.95 to create your account, but once you’ve paid you have an ad-free, clean and organized space to plan out your special, and costly, day. At first I was a bit turned off by the fact that I couldn’t test the site out before handing over my credit card but then, after they were kind enough to let me use a test account for free, I realized that this is something that’s worth paying for. I’m not sure if it’s worth $29.95 yet, but it definitely made an impact. I think some additional features are needed to warrant the price tag. This is my wish list:

I want a way to customize the table set-up. As it is now there are only round tables available to create your seating chart.
Adding guests is a pain. You have to add them one at a time, click on “save”, and then click on “add guests” again. Maybe add an “Import your address book” feature.
How about a blog to keep your guests up to date on wedding day details?
A section to upload your inspiration photos

If you want to see all of what MyWeddingBinder can do, watch the screencast below:

Filed under: Tools, events, organization, screencast, task management | 1 Comment
Tags: events, MyWeddingBinder, planning, Weddings

Mom Calling You With Computer Issues Again? Point Her To ShowMeWhatsWrong

18Jan10

ShowMeWhatsWrong gives you the power to force your not-so-tech-savvy friends and family to show you what their problem is.

All you need to do is head over to ShowMeWhatsWrong, enter in your name and valid email address and click on “Generate”. You’ll get a link that you can send to your troubled friend and all they need to do is click on it to get started. From there, they just need to enter in their name and click on “Record”. ShowMeWhatsWrong will begin to record their screen (they’ll be screencasting and not even know it!!) and they can go through the steps that are giving them problems. When they’re done they just need to click on “Stop”, and automatically ShowMeWhatsWrong will upload and email you the video. They don’t have to do anything else. Seriously.

From there it’s up to you to decide how you want to move forward to help your buddy. You could call them up and try to explain what they’re doing wrong, or you could create a screencast using Screencast-O-Matic (the creators of ShowMeWhatsWrong) and show them what they’re doing wrong.

To see ShowMeWhatsWrong in action, watch the screencast below:

[via Lifehacker]

Filed under: Tools, cool, demo, screencast, video | 3 Comments
Tags: DemoGirl, screencast, showmewhatswrong

Use Google City Tours to Map Sightseeing Hot Spots

12Jan10

Google City Tours is a Labs project that has some pretty helpful features for people planning a trip to an unfamiliar city. You can begin by entering in the name or address of the place where you’ll be staying. From there, Google City Tours will load a map with various points of interest that you can walk to from your originating point. Each destination shows an approximate amount of time it should take you to walk as well as walking directions from point A to point B to point C…

You can also remove and add points of interest to the map and include the number of days you’ll be in town so that your sightseeing can be spread out over a few days.

I really like Google City Tours, especially because my Mom is coming to visit me in San Francisco next month and I would love her to map out all the places we can walk to from her hotel. With that said, these are my issues:

How do you save your Google City Tour? I couldn’t find a “save” link anywhere.
Can you share your City Tour with, for instance, the person who’s visiting?
I’d like options to switch from walking to driving to public transit. My Mom is NOT going to walk to the Golden Gate Bridge from Union Square.

Of course, Google City Tours is in Labs, which means that it’s a work in progress. Those are just some things that I think should be at the top of the “to-do” list for the people working on it .

To see Google City Tours in action, watch the screencast below:

[via Lifehacker]

Filed under: Google, Tools, events, maps, screencast, task management, travel | 1 Comment
Tags: Google City Tours, Google. Maps

MyPunchBowl Weddings: A Free and Easy Way to Announce your Engagement

11Jan10

As some of you may know, I’ve got wedding planning on the brain. And it’s stressing me out. A lot. Thankfully there are a ton of online tools that are easing a bit of the stress. I honestly don’t know how anyone planned a big event, like a wedding, without the help of the Internet. I don’t even want to think about that! I can’t even think about that. This leads me to the event planning site MyPunchBowl. I knew that MyPunchBowl was a great site for planning parties and managing events, but I didn’t know that they had an entire section dedicated to weddings! (Thanks Paisano!)

MyPunchBowl Weddings gives you a quick and easy way to send out engagement announcements without the cost of expensive save the date cards. In fact, it’s completely free to use (although there is a premium account which gives you more customization and ad-free announcements).

I’m not quite ready to send out save the dates, but when I am I think this just may do the trick.

To see MyPunchBowl Weddings in action, check out the screencast below:

Filed under: Tools, dating, email, events, screencast | Leave a Comment
Tags: events, MyPunchBowl, planning, Weddings