Demo Girl

FlauntR is a free online photo editor that allows you to edit your photos and add effects to them with just one click of your mouse. You can grab photos from your computer or your flickr account and then immediately start adding lighting effects, frames, overlays, you name it. When you’re all through, you can share your photos on your MySpace or facebook profile, email them to friends, or save them to your flickr account. Here’s my screencast tour of flauntR:

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Podcasting – “yes I’ve heard of that”. Screencasting – “well, it’s a bit newer, but I know all about it”. Sketchcasting – “wtf is that”? Those were my thoughts last month when I came across this site. I noted it in my post here as well. Well, now we don’t have to wonder because it seems that today sketchcasting has really started to build a name for itself and Sketchcast.com is a place where you can start making your very own sketchcasts. By definition, a sketchcast “is a new way to communicate something online by recording a sketch, optionally with your voice speaking”. Sketchcast.com allows you to do just that. After you’ve recorded your sketchcast, you can embed it on your blog or website, email it to friends, and other people can view and rate your sketchcasts on your very own sketchcast channel. You can use sketchcasts for a variety of reasons – creating a tutorial, demonstrating how to draw an image, or for plain old fun. Here’s my screencast tour of Sketchcast:

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Alan also posted a video review of Sketchcast here.

You’re reading this blog right now so that means that you probably read a few more. Well, when I’m not finding content to feature on DemoGirl I like to read quite a few blogs as well. Some I read more than others and some are for fun while some help me learn new things for work. There are days when I don’t have time to read any blogs, and that makes me sad . However, you’ll usually find me here in front of my computer at night catching up on everything I’ve missed throughout the day. I wanted to show my appreciation for all the blogs that help me get through those lonely and friendless nights here in San Francisco. Aside from having to learn how to use, and explain how to use, a couple of new applications each day, blogs have taught me a lot about technology. I’m very grateful for all the time bloggers put into writing great content. Also, it’s Friday and I was really in the mood to listen to some upbeat music and being that us bloggers spend a lot of time sitting on our tushes, I thought you could use something to help you get up out of your chairs and move. If you can’t move to this song, I don’t know what to tell you. Here’s my tribute to the blogs I read:

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update: Here’s a list of all of the sites included in my tribute:

downloadsquad , CenterNetworks, boingboing, Mashable, Cool Tools, eHub, Digital Inspiration, Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day, CrunchGear, Everything 2.0, Essential Keystrokes, Wired, Go2Web2, Gogelmogel, The Digital Edge Blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, The Official Google Blog, handwrittenblog, cleverhack, I did not know that yesterday!, Profy, BetaNews, AppScout, life notes, Lorelle on WordPress, Marshall Kirkpatrick, aim true, Beth’s Blog, Micro Persuasion, MoMB, NewTeeVee, Not So Relevant, om.Daily, WebGyver, Read/WriteWeb, programmableweb, Pronet Advertising, Quick Sprout, Quick Online Tips, aliza sherman rants and raves, Rev2, A girl worth saving, Seven Mile, Solution Watch, Somewhat Frank, Slashdot, StartupSquad, TechBuzz, TechCrunch, Techmeme, VentureBeat, Valleywag, Webware, Web Worker Daily, LifeHacker .

Hey! Nielsen is a new opinion/social networking /rating community created by The Nielsen Company.  It’s taking community members opinions and ratings of TV, movies, music, personalities, and Internet and combining them with data from their sister sites – Billboard.com, HollywoodReporter.com, and BlogPulse.com – to gather the Hey! Nielsen score.  The Hey! Nielsen score gives users and important media mogul types an idea of what people are saying about what’s on TV, in the movies, etc.  Could this influence the powers that be to make 5 more seasons of Lost?    Who knows, but it’s still an interesting concept of how to use social networking to gather data.  Here’s my screencast tour of Hey! Nielsen:

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Google has launched (sort of) a new social bookmarking tool – Google Shared Stuff.  Basically, it’s a bookmarklet that allows you to quickly share web pages that you find interesting on your Shared Stuff page.  Your page includes a profile where you can add a photo, personal information, and links to your own blogs or websites.  You can share just the link or a preview, which is just an image from the web page and the title of the post.  Your Shared Stuff page is public but it’s not really clear how people are able to find your page unless you email them a link to view it.  For more insight, check out Marshall’s review of Google Shared Stuff here.  Here’s my screencast tour of Google Shared Stuff:

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TryThis is a recommendation site that helps you find pretty much anything you can think of with the help of the TryThis community. After you sign up, you can add things you like to your profile. It can be anything from movies to electronics. Other members can see this in your profile and leave you messages and of course, ask you to be their friend. You can ask for any sort of recommendation and members can vote up what’s been recommended to you and comment on it. It’s pretty fun to see what people are suggesting on TryThis but I would like to see a better way to filter through recommendations so you can easily get results in your area. Here’s my screencast tour of TryThis:

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Only2clicks claims that your Mom will love it because it’s so simple to use.  Well, I suppose it depends who your Mom is, but I have to agree about the simplicity.  Only2clicks is a start page that lets you organize all of your favorite websites in one place.  It really does only take 2 clicks to add a site and you can create multiple tabs so you can keep all of your search engines in one place and all of your online gambling sites in another .  Here’s my screencast tour of only2clicks:

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[source:  Webware]

Y! Mash is a new social networking site from Yahoo!  With Mash, you can make profiles for your friends to help them get started, allow other people to edit and add things to your profile, and customize your profile with modules from the module gallery.  Editing your profile is really easy and you’re in complete control of who can view and edit your profile.  You need an invite to get in right now so if you want one, let me know in the comments.  Here’s my screencast tour of Y! Mash:

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Bluestring gives you a really easy way to store your media, create slideshows, and share your works of art with friends and family.  You can create “shows” with your photos, videos, and music and then allow the people you share it with to add their own media as well.  Of course, you can keep it to yourself or share it on your blog or website.  While I was testing it out earlier today I was having trouble figuring out how to do the simplest thing – upload media.  I finally figured it out after reading the help page (I never read the directions first ) and thought I’d share a demo of bluestring with you.  Here’s my screencast tour of bluestring:

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I was sitting here earlier today, doing what I do, and I remembered something a friend of mine said to me the other day. “I Googled your name and you belong to like every social networking site out there”! Yes, this is true but it’s my job to sign up, see what it’s all about, and probably never return. (No offense, but I too only have 24 hours in my day.) Anyways, I got to thinking about all the sites I still use and all the ones I’d long since forgotten and I thought I’d do a refresher course. Then I thought I’d share these lovely SN sites with you. Of course, these are not all of the SN sites out there but there are only so many logos I can download before I start to loose my mind. If I missed a big one (which I’m sure I did) then just let me know nicely in the comments. Here’s my slideshow presentation of Social Networking gone wild:

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(I used clip2net to grab all the logos)