DemoGirl

Overstream is a service that lets you take videos from YouTube, Google Video, MySpace Video, and DailyMotion and add captions or subtitles to them. All you need is the video URL and then you can start adding captions and share your completed video with the Overstream community. Other users can rate your videos and leave comments – but you can keep them private if you want. You can also create a link to your video, email it to friends, and embed it on your blog or website. Here’s my screencast tour of Overstream:

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(source:  SimpleSpark)

AOL has finally decided to pull MapQuest out of the Web 1.0 closet and pretty it up with some much needed new features.  Now, with MapQuest Beta, users can enter in an address into a one-line search box instead of 4 different boxes.  You can save your searches and set default home and work addresses.  There is also a map on the MapQuest Beta homepage.  You can create multiple destination directions and re-order them as needed.  There is also a choice of printing a map with text and a map or just plain old text.  If you’re not quite ready for a change, (some people are so fussy!) MapQuest non-Beta is still available.  Here’s my screencast tour of MapQuest Beta:

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Planjam is a date planning service that helps you find new and interesting things to do on a date.  Just enter in your zip code and planjam will give you different date themes to choose from.  All of the activities include contact info, a map, average cost, a time estimate, and reviews.  You can drag and drop various activities onto your planner and planjam will give you a total time and cost estimate for your entire date.  When you’re all through planning, you can view a summary, email the date to someone, and get a map complete with driving directions to each location.  The best part about planjam?  You don’t have to sign up for anything in order to use it.  Here’s my screencast tour of planjam:

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TripTracker is a mapping service that helps you share your travel experiences, day to day, with friends and family.  Each trip you create has its own journal, a place for photos, and a map.  You can place all of your photos and journal entries on the map with a time stamp, so everyone will always know where you are or where you’ve been.  If you have a GPS device, you can also upload your files to TripTracker and all of your locations will be placed on your map.  Within the TripTracker community, you can view other peoples trips, make friends, and comment on their trips.  Here’s my screencast tour of TripTracker:

Flash Demo4m25s

Yoink’d is a mediabox that allows you to take or “yoink” your favorite media from around the Web and share it with your friends.  You can create different playlists for all of the different media you want to store in your mediabox.  I made a playlist for rock music, an 80′s mix, and one for cute animal videos.  Every time you “yoink” something it shows up in real-time and anyone else on yoink’d.com can yoink what you’ve just yoink’d.   (It’s really not as confusing as it sounds.)  You can share your mediabox with your friends and yoink back and forth to your hearts content.  I got a bit nostalgic when I first saw the name “yoink’d” as I have not-so-fond memories, as a child, of my brothers always grabbing something I had in my hands and saying, “yoink!”.  Here’s my screencast tour of yoink’d:

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UpNext is a really cool service that lets you see what’s happening in your neighborhood, and surrounding neighborhoods, on a 3D map.  You can easily find restaurants, businesses, and events and see exactly where they are.  If you’re wondering what’s in the big building down the street from you, theoretically you could just go to UpNext and click on the building and get the details instantly.  Besides information, there are reviews, pictures, and an UpNext community so you can keep up with what your friends are doing.  For more insight and to read an interview with the CEO, read Allen’s post here.  Sadly, for most of us, UpNext is only available for Manhattan right now, but you can still check it out – and I recommend that you do.  I hope San Francisco is next on their list of cities to cover!  Here’s my screencast tour of UpNext:

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Alright, I try to stay away from all of the MySpace layout tools and glittery widgets when deciding to create a screencast, but today I just had to do it.  SnapLayout really gives you some great tools for customizing your MySpace profile and it’s extremely simple to use.  They provide you with various color pallets to choose from, so if you’re not so great at matching up colors, it’s already taken care of for you.  You can drag and drop various boxes on your profile into the order that you like and add widgets like your twitter updates and YouTube videos.

Now for the two reasons I felt the need to make this screencast – iJustine and MC Hammer.  When I went to the SnapLayout homepage today, I saw that they had a demo video up.  Their demo is basically a video of iJustine and MC Hammer talking about how easy and fun SnapLayout is to use.  While I have nothing against iJustine or MC Hammer, I thought I would make a demo showing off the service  itself.  Here’s my screencast tour of SnapLayout:

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(source:  Mashable)

Mixaloo gives you a way to create digital mixtapes that you can share with your friends on your blog or favorite social networking site.  Of course, there is one small catch – in order to listen to more than 30 seconds of a song your friends have to purchase your mix.  Mixaloo says it will split the cash with you though, and you’ll earn points that you can use to get Mixaloo merchandise.  You can choose from over 3 million songs and add your own custom album cover and title.  The songs can be arranged in any order that you like and can be easily embedded right from Mixaloo.  They’re in private beta right now and there isn’t much information on the site, that I could find, about how you get your cash or merchandise but Mark from TechCrunch has written a great article explaining a bit more here.  Here’s my screencast tour of Mixaloo:

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MeVu is an online presence “helper”. It allows you to create a page, with your own personal URL, and include links to all of the sites on which you have a profile. First you need create categories to organize your links, and then you can start adding the URLs of all of the sites you belong to. These categories can be for anything – for example, you could create a “social networking” category and include your MySpace and facebook profiles. I came across MeVu today after creating a screencast for gleeme, and they are actually very similar services. The difference with MeVu is that you can add whatever types of sites that you want. Gleeme only allows you to add sites that are listed in their directory. While gleeme makes it easier for you to create your page, it doesn’t allow you to add just any old site the way that MeVu does. Here’s my screencast tour of MeVu:

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(source:  Mashable)

Gleeme gives you a way to share all of your online profiles, from the different networks you belong to, in one place.  It’s called a vcard, and it can contain as much or as little information about you and your online life.  All you need to do to get started is enter in your username for the various networks included in the gleeme index.  You can also include various IM accounts, a map, and contact information.  All of this is stored in one spot and you’ll receive your own URL as well as a gleeme ID.  People that know your gleeme ID can go to gleeme.com and enter it in to access your vcard.  You can also order a cute pocket stamp with your gleeme ID on it and stamp the back of your business cards, a cocktail napkin, someones forehead, whatever.  Here’s my screencast tour of gleeme:

Flash Demo2m40s