DemoGirl

I had sort of an epiphany this afternoon while thinking about how proud I was of myself for cleaning and organizing my closet last night. You see, one of the first things I thought was, “now I can see, at a glance, what is clean and what is dirty”. WTF?! At a glance? Why on earth would I think that? Because the Internet tells me to think about things that way, that’s why. It got me thinking about what I talk about with my friends, family, people I meet at a bar, whoever. It all brought me to the same topic: Internets. Immediately I started writing out this list, mostly just to amuse myself, and realized that I do some of these things. Does your reality revolve too much around what happens on the Internet? Do you understand that some people don’t have to force themselves to turn away from their computer? If not, you should try to get outside and literally smell the roses. Myself included. Here’s a quick list I made of possible signs that you need to get in offline mode for a while:

1. When you look at a menu at a restaurant you immediately start looking for keywords that refer to what you feel like eating.

2. When you and your friends go out the topic of conversation is always about how many hits you’ve been getting – and you’re not talking about your batting average.

3. When you meet a person in a non-tech field and they tell you what they do for work (IE: veterinarian, court reporter) you glare at them, tilt your head sideways, and think, “what in Gods name is their business plan and how on earth do they plan on getting funded?”.

4. You think Mike Arrington and Robert Scoble are famous.

5. You know who Mike Arrington and Robert Scoble are.

6. You spend your Saturday nights obsessively checking your blog stats instead of going to your incredibly hot and slutty girlfriends house.

7. You have 15 different email accounts.

8. Any time a new restaurant or store opens up in town you immediately accuse them of being a Digg clone.

9. If you can’t find something on Google search you automatically know that it ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT EXIST.

10. You yell at your mom for using MapQuest.

11. You and your boyfriend/girlfriend IM each other from one room away.

12. It blows your mind that some people don’t know what RSS is.

13. You won’t go to any restaurant unless it has at least 50 reviews and a 4.5 rating on Yelp.

14. You wake up in the middle of the night and check your email and blog stats.

15. You tend to go f**king ballistic in comment threads even if the topic has nothing at all to do with your line of work or any of your day to day life.

Pingg is a new digital invitation service that allows you to create stylish and professional looking invitations and manage your event with ease. First of all, pingg invitations are grown up looking. Even the kids invitations look professional. There are no banner ads and no clip art or cheesy designs. You can use what they call “surround send” to send your invites via email, SMS, have them accessible from your event webpage, and even create post cards to be sent out. Choose one method or choose them all, it’s your choice. You can also customize the design by using your own logo or image, which is great for professional event planners. You can add photos and YouTube videos to your webpage and your guests can subscribe to your “news” so they’ll be updated with any changes you may have. I received an email about pingg yesterday and immediately thought, “oh great, another Evite wannabe”. Not at all. It kicks Evite’s ass. I love it. It’s in private beta right now so you’ll just have to watch my screencast and wait for an invite. Here’s my screencast tour of pingg:

Flash Demo5m49s

Squidnote is a group greeting service that allows you to create e-cards in which a whole group of people can collaborate on.  As the creator, you  choose the template for the card and the heading.  You then add a message anywhere on the card and can also add photos or stock art.  Then just choose the date and time you want the card to go out and invite friends and family to add their own greetings.  They’ll receive a link in an email which will allow them to personalize it without signing up for anything.  These cards can be many pages long and can be created up to 6 months in advance.  It’s a fun service but I’d like to see more features like audio greetings and embeddable cards.  Here’s my screencast tour of SquidNote:

Flash Demo2m53s

Technorati relaunched yesterday with a new look and a search and discovery tool called “The Technorati Percolator” .  The purpose of The Percolator is to bring you the most significant posts from blogs and main stream media.  The more popular posts rise to the top in The Percolator, making them easier for you to find.  Along with The Percolator came some confusion on my end as well as my buddy Allen, which he demonstrates in his video at the end of this post.  I decided to take the questions he had about the new Technorati and try to find some answers for him.  The problem is that there aren’t really any answers about what all of these new features are, where the data comes from, and what my benefits are anywhere on Technorati.  The help pages haven’t really been updated and the blog post about the launch was, in my mind, not written in a way to help new users .  Since it’s my job to find out how to use a service and then demonstrate it for you, I find it frustrating when I can’t find informative help pages, especially on such a well known site.   But, I didn’t let that stop me.  I’m usually pretty good at simply figuring things out on my own.  In fact, I usually read directions and help pages after I’m done with something just to see if I was right.  I get some sort of sick satisfaction out of knowing that I didn’t need anyones help.  So, that’s what I did in this screencast.  I looked over Technorati and made some assumptions of what I thought the new features meant and how they came to be.  I have absolutely no idea if I’m right.  This entire screencast could be wrong and I could be showing you how to do the backstroke when I’m supposed to be showing you how to do the sidestroke.  Am I completely off base?  Let me know what you think in the comments.  Here’s my screencast tour of the new Technorati:

Flash Demo2m59s

Say-hey-hey is a dating site that wants to eliminate boring profiles and phony pictures that can sometimes be misleading when trying to find a date online. The whole site is video based so, theoretically, what you see is what you should get. You can upload videos you already have on your computer or record one with your webcam. Instead of filling out long questionnaires about what you’re looking for in a person or what you like to do on first dates, you just choose a bunch of pre-selected tags that describe what you want. You can also be honest about what kind of relationship you’re looking for – friends, dates, hook-ups, or even marriage.

The problem I have with Say-hey-hey are the videos on the homepage. They all seem to be videos recorded on the street or in clubs. That’s fine. I’m assuming Say-hey-hey hit the streets with a video camera to get some interesting content up for their launch, but there is something very wrong here. Just have a look at the women and the men and let me know what you think. It just doesn’t seem fair, if you know what I mean. Here’s my screencast tour of Say-hey-hey:

Flash Demo2m58s

If you ever find yourself in the predicament of needing to find a restroom, and fast, then MizPee just may save you some embarrassment. MizPee is a service that will show you toilet facilities closest to you, let you know the hours of operation, and even if you need to purchase something in order to use it. The toilets are also rated, on a 1 to 5 toilet roll basis, and MizPee users can leave comments explaining why it’s the most disgusting place to do your business or if they love it so much they like to take their morning coffee and donut in with them. The mobile version of MizPee is most useful, for obvious reasons, and since it knows businesses hours of operation, it won’t send you toilets that are closed. Here’s my screencast tour of MizPee:

Flash Demo2m29s

[via Webware ]

The other day I was going over some old screencasts I had done on Screeniac.com and I tried to visit some of the websites I had reviewed.  Sadly, some of them no longer exist.  You know what?  Their memory can live on forever thanks to the screencasts I’ve done.  It’s almost like when someone passes away and you watch a slideshow so you can remember what they used to look like or what they used to do.  Not a good analogy?  Well, how about a library of web 2.0?  Instead of just floating around for all eternity in the Techcrunch DeadPool, some of these companies can say, “Hey look!  I did that back in ’07″.  When it’s all about Web 20.0, you’ll be able to watch an old screencast and think, “Ha!  They used to use passwords?  It’s all about brain scanning now!”.

I decided to figure out just how many screencasts I’d done.  Turns out that between Screeniac.com and DemoGirl, I’ve done 416.  That number is a lot smaller than I’d like but I have also done a lot of work that you’ll never see on this site.   Is there anyone who’s done more?  Can I call the Guinness Book of World Records now?  Are you wondering if there’s a point to this blog post?  Well, there really isn’t.  I just think it’s cool that I’ve done more screencasts than you.

On a side note, I’m going to be attending a live taping of my friends show, Infected by Martin Sargent, today and everyone’s invited.  It’s a beautiful day here in San Francisco and what better way to spend it than hanging out with some Revision3 people getting drunk in the middle of the day?  It’s at 200 Capp St. at The Uptown Bar and the doors open at 2:00pm – the show starts at 2:30.  If you live in the San Francisco area and are over 21, I highly recommend you get down there.