RedZee is a search engine that finds the most relevant search results in the form of images. These are not just screenshots of the website though. The images are of the relevant articles to what you’re searching for. You can easily scroll through them to, hopefully, find exactly what you’re looking for. RedZee will grab up to 100 results but it’s not clear to me how they’re getting these results and how they decide what is most relevant. I couldn’t find much information on the site about how they gather their data. Anyway, it’s a fun way to switch up regular old Google search and their mascot (a red zebra) is utterly adorable. Here’s my screencast tour of RedZee:
The Read it Later Firefox Extension allows you to quickly save web pages or links to read later without having to add them to your regular bookmarks. After you install it and add a couple of buttons to your bookmarks toolbar, all you need to do is right mouse click and choose “read this page/link later” any time you find something you want to read but can’t do so at that exact moment. It’s all stored in your “reading list” and will be marked as read and discarded after you’ve read it. If you don’t want to discard the item, you can easily add it to your bookmarks, submit it to Digg, add it to del.icio.us, or pretty much any bookmarking site you can think of. Everything you need is in the two Read it Later buttons. Here’s my screencast tour of the Read it Later Firefox Extension:
I don’t know what they’re feeding the Google Maps team, but I wish they’d send some of it my way. There are some new features that have been released over the past couple of weeks, and I thought I’d show them to you just in case you’ve missed them. First off, Hybrid view is out and Terrain view is in. You can still view the “Hybrid view” but it’s not called that anymore. It’s actually just the default view when you click on Satellite. Second, you can edit default marker locations on Google Maps now. Those markers never seemed to be dead on when it came to marking a location, so this could prove to be very useful. The last feature, and the newest, is collaboration in My Maps. Now you can create a map and allow friends to edit and add things to it. This is great for people planning a vacation or mapping out hiking or biking trails. Like I said, I don’t know what those guys at Google are on but the way they push out new features I think they may be eating the same magic gumdrops as the guys at Zoho. Here’s my screencast tour of Google Maps updates:
Secret Santa gift exchanges have been around for quite some time. Too long, some may say. The biggest problem with Secret Santa’s is that no one puts any thought or effort in the gift they’re getting for a random co-worker they only speak to once a year. How are you supposed to know what to get “Frank” from accounting if you don’t even know who “Frank” is? Well, Elfster can solve that problem. It’s simple: Elfster allows you to create a group gift exchange, invite people to participate, and lets participants create wishlists and “don’t get me that!” lists. Elfster even does a random drawing of names and emails everyone the name of the person they’re buying for. You can then log into Elfster and see what that person does or does not want. Price limits can be set and you can even turn it into a gift exchange party planner with directions to the party and special instructions. It can all be kept anonymous, so everyone gets what they want and still not have any clue who bought it for them. Pretty groovy. Here’s my screencast tour of Elfster:
TringMe is a web based messaging service that allows your blog or website visitors to instantly leave you a voicemail or even call you with just one click. There’s nothing to download and your visitors don’t need to sign up for anything in order to leave you a message. Just install the voicemail widget or the Click to Call widget on your site and viola – now your blog readers can call you at home and tell you how much they hated your latest post. Actually, you can set up to receive calls and voicemails however you like. You can choose to be notified via phone and email, GTalk and email, or just by email alone. If you have a Facebook account, you can add the TringMe widget to your profile as well. TringMe seems like a good idea but I’m not sure if I would use it on my blog. It’s unclear how they are going to deal with spam and I for one don’t need any more spammers in my life. I will, however, try out the Facebook application. TringMe is in private beta right now but I have 3 invites for the first 3 requests in the comments. Here’s my screencast tour of TringMe:
You may have noticed that the posts on DemoGirl slowed down a bit last week. One reason is that I went away for Thanksgiving weekend and the other is that I’ve been busy doing custom work for various companies and simply haven’t had the time to make any screencasts for DG. Sorry!
One of the recent projects I worked on was for the updated offline features for ZohoWriter. I’ve been doing work for the guys at Zoho for months now and it’s really been a great experience. You can check out the demo here and read more detailed articles about the updated ZohoWriter here, here, and here.
Friends and family who know me are well aware of my “little problem” when it comes to driving directions. Basically, my sense of direction is so bad that I get lost any time I turn off of my street. This fact was proven once again a couple of weeks ago when I was driving home from an event and was so turned around that I could have been in Texas and not known the difference. It was late at night and I started to panic after about 45 minutes of driving around – absolutely nothing looked familiar. I’m not big on stopping and asking for directions (especially in the neighborhood I was in) because it makes me feel like an idiot, which probably makes me an even bigger idiot. Finally I called a friend of mine and I told him the intersection I was at and he Google Mapped me home. What if no one was home though? What would I have done? I would probably still be driving in circles.
Today, all of my fears of getting lost in the ghetto again have been laid to rest thanks to the “get me the heck outta here!” service from Dial Directions. All you need to do is dial the letters DIR-ECT-IONS on your cell phone and tell the nice lady on the other end where you want to go and your current location. A text message arrives almost instantly with directions from MapQuest. You can also specify major chain stores and be given directions to the one closest to your location. You can even create directions to an event on Dial Directions and then tell your friends to call the number and say the name of the event. They’ll be given directions from where they are to the location you plugged into the Dial Directions website. Normally I only post screencasts on DemoGirl but in this case I thought I’d share this demo video they put together so you can see just how cool this service is. Just so ya know, I did try it out and it worked great.
There are some people out there who seem to be walking dictionaries. They like to use big words and can instantly spew out the definition of any word you throw at them. It’s annoying. I’m not one of those people but when I do hear a word that I don’t know the meaning of, I will almost always do the typical “define: insert big confusing word here” Google search. However, I think I’ve found something better.
Definr claims to be “an incredibly fast dictionary” – and it is. Just go to Definr.com and start typing in the word you want defined and Definr will use auto complete to make the search faster (especially if you don’t know exactly how to spell it). That’s it. Your definition is displayed and you can continue on your way. The reason I like Definr so much is because you don’t need to go to Definr.com in order to use it. You can use one of their tools and look up any word you come across while browsing the Web. Here’s my screencast tour of Definr:
Jooce is an online desktop where you can store files, watch videos, listen to music, chat with friends on various IM clients, etc. It’s aimed at people that don’t have laptops of their own and spend most of their online lives at cybercafes. The idea is, that you can go to any computer and log into your Jooce account and have access to all of the files, media, and chat services that would normally be stored on your computer. You’re given two Jooce desktops when you sign up – one is private and one is a public space that you can use to share files and media with your friends. I tried out Jooce all morning and I must say, it’s pretty sweet. Unfortunately, I don’t have much use for it but I can see them doing really well with the users they’re going after. They’re in private beta right now but I have 4 invites up for grabs if you leave your name in the comments. Update: I’m all out of invites. I’ll keep you posted if I get more. Here’s my screencast tour of Jooce:
Badoo is a place to meet singles online create a multilog, or a “multimedia log”. To get started, you need to answer profile questions and then you can start uploading videos or photos and writing blog posts. Every time you add something to your multilog you’re given the option to send out notifications to friends and family about your new post and you can set strict privacy levels to each post. Uploading one of my screencasts only took about 2 minutes and I like that I can keep certain posts password protected. There’s another side to Badoo, though. When you click on your contacts, your immediately shown a list of every person that has viewed your profile. When you view someone’s profile, they’ll know it. You can immediately start chatting with these freaks other community members and they’ll expect you to give them your email address and they may tell you repeatedly how beautiful you are. You can also search for people on Badoo and narrow it down to find singles in your area with a specific body type and hair color. Is it a social network, a place to blog, or a dating service? I suppose you’ll have to decide how you want to use Badoo, should you decide to do so. Update: Upon further investigation of the site, I found that you can rate members photos (basically if you think they’re hot or not) and I had a ton of disturbing IM’s waiting for me. I’m sure there are plenty of people who’ll flock to Badoo for these reasons alone, but I won’t be back. I think they’re sneakily misrepresenting themselves. Here’s my screencast tour of Badoo:
