DemoGirl

When looking for a new place to live, there’s almost an endless amount of online resources that are supposed to be useful.  But how do you sift through them all to find the best ones?  Well, if you’ve been reading DemoGirl for a while you probably know that I’m moving soon.  (Saturday!) Whenever I have free time I’m usually  searching the Web for an apartment.  I’ve found some useful sites and some that have more ads than apartment listings.  So, I decided to share some of the sites that I’ve been using for my apartment hunt.  The sites referenced in this screencast are MyApartmentMap, craigslist, hotpads, and ApartmentRatings.  If you think I’ve missed an important resource then please share it in the comments!  Here’s the screencast:

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Gleamd is a site that helps you find and write about interesting people on the Web. You can browse through categories of people, view people in the “spotlight”, and view popular people. By people, I mean biographies that have been added by the gleamd community. You can add someone’s bio easily and if they come across it, they can claim it. Getting featured in the “spotlight” or as a “popular” person just means you need to get voted up. Voting works like Digg, meaning the more you get voted on the higher you move up. Unlike other social bookmarking sites, you can add people as favorites and if they’ve claimed their identity you can follow them. Following them consists of their activity feed being added to your activity feed in your profile. You’re not supposed to add your own bio to the site but you can sign up and create a profile, so I’m not sure what the difference is. Here’s my screencast tour of gleamd:

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TripIt gives you a great way to organize your travel plans in a neat little package.  There are a few ways you can use TripIt.  You can simply email your itinerary to plans@tripit.com and TripIt will automatically organize your flights, hotels, car rentals, etc.  It will even include weather forecasts and maps for your destination.  You can also enter the information in manually and add activities, maps, and notes on specific days.  If you don’t have a trip planned yet you can use TripIt to search for flights, hotels, and car rentals and save your searches for future reference.  They also have a handy dandy “TripClipper” that you can add to your bookmarks toolbar to instantly save stuff you find on the web to your TripIt account.  When you’re ready to go you can print out your itinerary easily and be on your way.

TripIt is currently in private beta but I have 5 invites for the first 5 emails I get in the comments.  Here’s my screencast tour of TripIt:

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(note:  TripIt made their own screencast demo that points out some features not mentioned in mine.  Check it out here!) 

Tafiti is a new research tool from Microsoft that uses Silverlight and Live Search to give you a really cool way to find and store research on any subject. You can try it out without signing up but in order to save any of your research you need to log in with your Windows Live ID.  If you’re wondering about the title to my post, it’s because Tafiti means “do research” in Swahili.  Here’s my screencast tour of Tafiti:

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(If you don’t like my screencast, check out the one on the Tafiti site here.)

Zoho has again improved on one of their great products.  Zoho Writer, the online word processor, has now added an “offline” feature.  When you’re logged into Zoho Writer you can simply click on “go offline” and your documents will automatically be downloaded and ready to view in in offline mode.  Whenever you log into writer.zoho.com/offline you’ll be able to access your documents.  As of now you can only view your docs but they plan on adding editing features in the coming weeks.  I had the chance to work with Zoho again and create a screencast showing off the new offline Writer so if you want to check it out first then you can view it here.

Where I’ve Been is a facebook application that lets you create an interactive map for your facebook profile showing the places you’ve visited, lived, and would like to go. It’s only available to facebook members now but their website shows they have plans to allow you to create maps for MySpace and your own website or blog in the future.

(I want to apologize in advance if I sound weird. I’ve been trying to shake off a cold all week and it got the best of me yesterday and today. I know I sounded weird before… but today I sound even weirder )

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FooWHO is a site that wants to find cool stuff for you and let you share the cool stuff you find with the fooWHO community.  What sort of cool stuff you ask?  Well, it could be just about anything you want.  A cool blog (*cough*), a neato video, a sweet gadget, or even your favorite neighborhood bar.  When you sign up fooWHO will ask you questions about movies, technology, sports, etc.  This info is used to find recommendations for you.  Submitting your own recommendation is a breeze and users can vote your submissions up or down which can result in you gaining or loosing points on the site.

All in all fooWHO was a fun site to browse around but it did leave me confused at times and I couldn’t find a help or FAQ’s page anywhere.  They are in beta so maybe that’s coming.  Here’s my screencast tour of fooWHO:

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(source:  Mashable)

Mahalo Follow is a Firefox extension that displays Mahalo search results that match whatever you may be searching for on Google, Yahoo!, etc.  The results pop up in your sidebar and only if Mahalo has a page written for your search term.  There is also a “random” feature which (duh) displays random Mahalo pages.  If you don’t know what Mahalo is then you probably don’t understand one word of this post and should probably watch my screencast tour of Mahalo here.  For everyone else, here’s my screencast tour of Mahalo Follow:

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A while back I was a food and beverage manager for a restaurant and every few months I’d schedule the dreaded staff meeting.  The servers and bartenders hated it, and so did I, but it had to be done.  It was typically and hour of me explaining that it’s not OK to talk on your cell phone while taking an order, that you shouldn’t tell your tables “sorry, I’m just really hung over”, and all of the ass slapping and other inappropriate behavior that goes on between restaurant staff should be done in the kitchen where no one can see.  What does this have to do with TimeBridge?  Well, it was a pain scheduling these meetings.  Most of the staff either had a second job or they were in college and didn’t have much free time.  I’d always end up with little pieces of paper in my mailbox from different employees explaining that they couldn’t make it to the meeting at my proposed time.  This is where TimeBridge comes in.

TimeBridge makes it easy to schedule meetings that all of your employees can attend.  You simply enter in the email addresses of your staff, choose up to five dates and times that you’re available, and you’re done.  Your employees don’t need to do anything except respond to the email by checking off their availability on each day and press send.  They don’t need to sign up for anything and TimeBridge will figure out the best time for everyone.  I know there are other scheduling applications out there, but so far this is my favorite.  Here’s my screencast tour of TimeBridge:

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VibeAgent is a hotel recommendation site that wants to help you find a great place to stay based on features that are important to you and reviews written by the VibeAgent community.  Once you sign up for an account you’ll officially be an agent and be able to write hotel reviews, join groups, read other reviews, and make new friends with that whole social networking thingy.  All of your reviews, your friends reviews, and group reviews are shown on your very own map on your profile page.  VibeAgent is currently in private beta but I have 10 invites to give out to the first 10 people who drop me their email in the comments.  Here’s my screencast tour of VibeAgent:

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