DemoGirl

Hopefully if you’ve decided to take on the task of preparing a Thanksgiving feast for your nearest and dearest, you’ve already planned out your menu.  But if you have someone like me in your family (a pain in the ass vegetarian) or if you’ve been asked to bring a side dish or dessert, you may need some ideas on what to prepare.

FamilyOven is a great place to start your search.  It indexes recipes from popular sites like Allrecipes and RecipeZaar and includes recipes submitted by the FamilyOven community.  You can browse by category, popular tag, or ingredient.  There’s a Digg-like feature called “chomp it” which basically means that you like the recipe.  When something is “chomped” it gets placed higher up on the result pages.  You can create a custom URL for your profile so your friends and family can easily find all of the recipes you submit and store.  At first glance, FamilyOven may look just like an ordinary recipe sharing and discovery site, but it really is a one stop spot to find and compare recipes from all of the best sites.  Here’s my screencast tour of FamilyOven:

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I feel like a lot of Internet radio/music players have been popping up lately.  There’s Jango, Deezer, Mixaloo, Songza, and now BoomShuffle.  As of right now BoomShuffle is pulling ahead of Jango, which was my favorite until about 4 hours ago.  BoomShuffle is like Internet radio that you have total control over, almost.  The biggest difference between BoomShuffle and something like Pandora, is that BoomShuffle allows you to create music mixes filled only with songs you choose.  They have a very extensive music library and you can create as many mixes as you want.  You do need to fill your mixes with at least 15 different tracks from at least 15 different artists otherwise you’ll only get a 30 second preview of your songs.  Oh no, they’re forcing me to create a huge playlist of music that I can listen to all day long.  Who cares?  I had no problem creating my mixes.  In fact, my first mix has over 40 songs in it and it only took me about 10 minutes to create it.  The catch is, however, that you don’t get to choose the order in which your songs will play.  You also can only skip over a few songs an hour – which is how they’re keeping themselves in the Internet radio category.  You can listen to other BoomShuffle members mixes and embed them on your website or blog.  They also have a pop-out player so you can navigate away from BoomShuffle without loosing your tunes.  Here’s my screencast tour of BoomShuffle:

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Songza is a music search engine that allows you to create playlists of your favorite songs.  You can search by artist or song and the results bring you various versions of whatever you’ve searched for.  These songs can be shared with friends and you can embed a small Songza player on your website or blog.  There’s also a link to related YouTube videos.  As of now there’s no way to sign up for Songza so you can’t save your playlist, but I still think it works great.

No, I’m not being sarcastic with the title to this post.  I love discovering new ways to listen to music online.  Right now my favorites are Jango, Pandora, and now Songza.  Here’s my screencast tour of Songza:

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Digg Labs is nothing new, but I’d never really taken the time to explore what it was all about until tonight.  Basically, it’s made up of 4 tools that help you look deeper into all of the activity that takes place on Digg.  All of the tools allow you to visualize Digg activity in real time and all look super cool.

Digg Swarm draws circles around stories as they’re being Dugg.  The users Digging the stories are momentarily attached to the circle and the more Diggs a story gets, the brighter the circle will become around the story.

Digg Stack lines up all of the stories as they’re being Dugg.  At the same time, the Diggers will fall from above and land on the story they  just Dugg.  The brighter the story, the more Diggs it has.

Digg BigSpy is a vertical view at stories being Dugg.  They fall from above at the time they’re Dugg and older stories will appear further down on the list.  The bigger the text for a story, the more Diggs it has.

Digg Arc is the newest tool in Digg Labs and also left me a bit more confused than I would have liked.  It creates “containers” around stories and shows the Diggers who Dugg those stories as well as other topics they have Dugg – I think.

I created this screencast to show you how I see these tools being used.  I may not be completely correct in my demonstration, but hopefully if I’m wrong you’ll let me know.  Here’s my screencast tour of Digg Labs:

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You may be wondering, wtf is DemoGirl thinking? Well, imho, I think lolcats are funny. They totally make me rotfl and lmao. Afaic, lolcats do actually make people lol. Idrk where lolcats came from and idc. It is Friday however, and that means you should be lyao – aight? You might watch this and think, aypi? That’s OK. I don’t really have one. Without further ado, here’s my screen dance of lolcats:

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Translation of above post:

You may be wondering, what the f**k is DemoGirl thinking? Well, in my honest opinion, I think laugh out loud cats are funny. They totally make me roll on the floor laughing and laugh my ass off. As far as I’m concerned, laugh out loud cats actually do make people laugh out loud. I don’t really know where laugh out loud cats came from and I don’t really care. It is Friday however, and that means you should be laughing your ass off, alright? You might watch this and think, and your point is? That’s OK. I don’t really have one.

You may not see it at first glance, but Gmail has updated some features and released a “Newer Version”.    When you first log in it looks like business as usual but if you see “Older Version” in the top right hand corner, you’ll know you have some updates.  Most noticeable is how you manage your contacts.  From your contact list, you can quickly view their vcard, send an email, start a chat, and view recent conversations.  When you hover over a name in your inbox, you can take the same actions.  In Gtalk, you now have the option of adding a photo from your Picasa Web Album to your friends profile.  The new updates aren’t going to make you run around the office screaming and high-fiving your co-workers, but it’s nice to know that Gmail is continuing to improve.  Here’s my screencast tour of Gmail Updates:

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Faves is a Topics network that wants to help you find, share, and store content that you find interesting.  You start out by selecting topics that you want to be informed about.  Everything that other Faves members have favored that fit into your selected topics, will show up on your homepage.  These Faves can be voted up or down enabling you to find the most popular content.  As you scroll through stories, they’ll be marked as read so you won’t keep getting the same stories over and over.  Every time you vote on something, it will be saved so you can find it later.  There are friends to be made on Faves, but you don’t have to be friends with anyone in order to find content you want.  Adding things to Faves is easy with their bookmarklets and you can even choose the image you want associated with it.

BlueDot just relaunched as Faves, and I think they did a great job.  It was July 2006 when I created a screencast for BlueDot and a few weeks later they invited me to their launch party.  Wasn’t that sweet?  When I saw they had relaunched as Faves, I quickly went back to my screencast of BlueDot to see the differences.  Whoa!  Not only has BlueDot improved with their new name and site, but my screencasting has definitely improved as well.  Now, I never ever toot my own horn.  In fact, it’s usually the opposite.  But watching the screencast for BlueDot (it’s not even in Flash!) made me want to crawl under my desk and hide.  If you decide to check it out here, note that at the time I was using a twenty dollar microphone and sound like I didn’t have a clue as to what I was talking about.   Here’s my screencast tour of Faves:

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( source:  CenterNetworks)

Crazy Blind Date is a new type of dating site from the folks at OkCupid. It wants to give adventurous and curious people a new way to meet. By adventurous and curious, I mean that you get about 30 minutes notice before a date and you have no idea what they look like. You start by answering very basic questions and giving up a very brief description about yourself and what you’re looking for in a potential match. You’ll also be asked to choose dates and times when you’re available and to choose neighborhoods in which you’re willing to travel to for your date. CBD only sets you up in public places and you communicate with your date through them using SMS. 30 minutes before your date you’ll be sent a text and you can choose to say yes or no. Make sure if you say yes you actually show up though, because it’s just not nice to stand someone up who’s desperate enough to use CBD.

There were a lot of people leaving comments on this article about CBD, saying that they didn’t think that any good looking people would ever use the site and that it’s a breeding ground for stalkers and other online predators. Well, I suppose going out with someone you met in a bar after downing a bottle of tequila is much safer. Not. I wouldn’t mind seeing a feature for people who aren’t looking for a romantic relationship, but just some new friends to go to happy hour with. When you’re new to a city (like me) it can be intimidating to go out and make new friends – and frankly, I’m just as picky about what kind of friends I have as to the kind of person I’m dating. How fun would it be to get a text at the end of a long work day saying that 3 people you’ve never met want to meet for drinks down the street? Here’s my screencast tour of Crazy Blind Date:

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(source: Webware )

Drop.io is a service that allows you to upload files and media instantly to your own space.  You can make your space private so only you have access or make it fully collaborative and allow others to add files, notes, and links.  You’re also given your own email address for your drop space so you can add files by simply emailing them.  There’s no sign up process and is free to use with 100 MB of space.

I came across Drop.io after reading Allen’s post where he had a chat with the founders.  He also created his own video demo that you can view here.  Here’s my screencast tour of Drop.io:

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Jottit is a tool that allows you to build a wiki-style website, instantly. You can try it first, without having to sign up or choose a title and tagline for your website. Just enter some text into the text box on Jottit.com and if you like what you see, you can claim your page. You can set privacy levels so only you can view and edit the site or allow others to edit your work. There’s also a revision history so you can go back and see all of the changes that were made.

I found Jottit after reading this article and wondered why I hadn’t heard of it before. It’s a fun little tool that definitely deserves a screencast. Here’s my screencast tour of Jottit:

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