DemoGirl

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:

Flash Demo3m

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:

Flash Demo5m5s

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