DemoGirl

LinkedIn is a really great way to create a professional profile that’s available for potential employers and employees to view. It also creates a way to branch out and network with other professionals in your industry.

One problem I found with LinkedIn is the abundance of features paired with not so abundant help pages. It’s not that LinkedIn is hard to use, but there’s a lot you can do and most people don’t have an hour to go through the site to figure out where to start. So, I decided to create a quick overview tour of just the basics. If you don’t have a LinkedIn account this may show you why you’d want one. Here’s my screencast tour of LinkedIn:

Flash Demo 5m14s

As a blog reader, sometimes you just want to comment on one really great or one really annoying sentence the writer has included in a post. In most cases you would put what the writer said in quotations and then add your remarks below it as to show exactly what you’re commenting on. Well, enough of that. Just insert one line of javascript into your web page and viola, you have LineBuzz. Now as a reader all you have to do is highlight the line you want to comment on and then leave your comment in a pop-up window. The lines that have been commented on will be underlined so other readers will know and be able to read and reply to those comments. Confused yet? Here’s my screencast tour of LineBuzz:

Flash Demo 2m11s

(Source:  StartupSquad)

Spool is an online music player that allows you to create and save playlists of all your favorite songs. You can share songs with friends and listen to music in real time with them by sharing your own URL. Features are limited right now but they do mention loads of new features and widgets on their blog. Here’s my screencast tour of Spool:

Flash Demo 3m

SharedCopy allows you to easily annotate webpages with just a click of a bookmarklet. You can keep these pages private and only share the URL with the people you choose. If you decide to make your notes public they’ll be posted on the SharedCopy homepage as well as stored in your account. In both cases, you can subscribe to the feed of your annotated pages so you can keep track of new comments. SharedCopy is similar to Fleck, which I made a screencast for back in November. You can watch that screencast here. Here’s my screencast tour of SharedCopy:

Flash Demo 3m20s

I don’t know, maybe it’s all the cold medicine I’ve been taking today but I think that’s a grand name for the latest experiment from the guys over at Google, and I made it up. This means that you can now use your Wii with Google Reader… made for the Wii. Great. I don’t have a Wii. That’s OK! Try it here. Here’s a video from The Google Reader Blog showing off GooWii:

GooWii Demo

I’ve heard that line before but hopefully with Gaboogie it’s true. Gaboogie is a service that wants to take the hassle out of having to remember to set up and attend conference calls. After you schedule your calls on Gaboogie you can simply go back to whatever you were doing and Gaboogie will call you and up to three numbers per person at the set date and time.

Gaboogie was smart enough to include 4 screencast tutorials walking you through various tasks:

Creating a Conference Tutorial
Moderator Console Tutorial
Recordings Tutorial
Phone Book Tutorial

(Source: GigaOM)

Jigadig is a search engine that searches for items on eBay, Overstock, and uBid. There are more features here though then search. Once you’ve signed in you can “pin” items to save and compare later and you can share these pins with your friends. You can also “dig” (that’s right, just one g) an item to save it and set alerts to be sent to you by phone or email for specific items.

I apologize in advance if I sound funny, I have a bit of a cold. Apparently Seattle sunshine makes me sick . Here’s my screencast tour of jigadig:
Flash Demo 2m36s

(Source:  eHub)

Jyve is a service where users can ask and answer questions from real people in a number of different ways. You can simply type in your questions and wait for someone to answer it or you can browse through users profiles and tag clouds until you find someone with the expertise you desire. You can communicate via Skype or the IM client of your choice. If you download the Jyve Notifier you’ll know exactly when someone has asked a question you’re qualified to answer and you can seek help from Jyve experts. Here’s my screencast tour of Jyve:

Flash Demo 3m26s

When doing searches using Google, Yahoo!, or MSN, you may get results that have nothing to do with what you’re actually searching for. If I do a search for digital cameras I may get results with links to, “fill out this survey and get a free digital camera!” and that’s not what I’m searching for. If you search using AfterVote you can block certain domains and links from your searches, view their pagerank, and give positive or negative votes on links which will help other users sort the good from the bad. Here’s my screencast tour of AfterVote:

Flash Demo 3m

 Do you love to take pictures of yourself?  Do you have a web cam?  Would you like to see what you’d look like dressed up in a gorilla suit?  If you answered yes to all three of these questions then you’ll love cameroid.  Cameroid is a service that allows you to quickly take photos with your web cam and then add silly backgrounds or cool color effects.  There’s no sign up so you can have fun with it without any sort of commitment.  I’ve never added recordings of myself into a screencast before so, please excuse the lag in the audio and my appearance!  Here’s my screencast tour of cameroid:

Flash Demo 2m37s