Demo Girl

SuperCook is a recipe search engine that helps you make a meal (or snack/dessert) out of what you have on hand in your kitchen. First of all, it works. Second of all, it helps you input items into your virtual kitchen which is also a big plus. Most of the recipe suggestion sites I’ve tried out give me results that still require me to make a trip to the store. SuperCook gave me hundreds of recipes that I could make with only what I entered into my virtual kitchen – and believe me, it’s not a lot. Every time you add or remove an item, your recipe list automatically updates with new results. When you click on a recipe, you’re brought to the where it originated but you can save all of the recipes to your SuperCook account. Time to go make some peanut butter, banana, chocolate chip cookies. Here’s my screencast tour of SuperCook:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m21s

Want this screencast on your site? Click here to get the code for this and other DemoGirl screencasts!

[via Webware]

Instapaper is a bookmarking site that does absolutely nothing else.  Seriously.  That’s why it’s so awesome.  From sign up to posting to your Instapaper account, it’s completely effortless.  Now, I really want to talk about the sign up process.  I have to sign up for numerous services every day in order to see if I’d like to cover them on DemoGirl.  Sometimes the hoops I have to jump through are just plain ridiculous.  In fact, if there are too many hoops, I’ll just skip it.  In order to sign up for Instapaper all you need to do is enter whatever text you want into a little box.  That’s it.  You can use a username, an email, a curse word, whatever your little heart desires.  You’re automatically logged into your account after that.  You can then add a password, but it’s not required.  AMAZING!  I decide how much privacy I need.  Ok, now onto what Instapaper does:

Let’s say you’re working but you come across a great article that you want to read later.  Just click on the Instapaper bookmarklet in your browser toolbar and go about your business.  You don’t have to type anything in, save it to a specific folder, add tags, send it to friends, blah, blah, blah.  It’s automatically saved to your Instapaper account where you can read it later, delete it, or skip it.  There are no adds on the site, flashy colors, or anything else to distract you from what you want to read later.  It’s simply straightforward and wonderful.  Here’s my screencast tour of Instapaper:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 1m38s

Want this screencast on your site?  Click here to get the code for this and other DemoGirl screencasts!

[via TechCrunch]

Have you ever tried to hunt down a great steakhouse in Dallas that also spins hip hop?  How about a hotel in Miami that only uses red sheets and has a 13th floor?  Well, Circos may just help you find a restaurant or hotel that caters to your bazaar requests.    Circos is a “me-centric” search engine that lets you choose every last detail that’s important to you in a restaurant or hotel.  You can request everything from the type of food to the ambiance.  Circos will crawl the web to find the perfect match.  It searches through blog posts, review sites, and forums and presents you with a list of results – each one having a “report card” grading how well each term you chose is matched.  You can compare each result to find one in a specific neighborhood or within your price range.  Circos is currently only available in 16 major cities but does have plans to expand beyond restaurants and hotels in the future.  Here’s my screencast tour of Circos:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 3m28s

Want this screencast on your site?  Click here to get the code for this and other DemoGirl screencasts!

SproutBuilder helps you create a slick flash widget, called a Sprout, that you can publish on almost any web page.  These Sprouts can be pages and pages long and include things like YouTube videos, Feed Readers, music, photos, Yahoo! Maps, almost anything you can think of.  You can link various items on your Sprout to different URLs and anyone that views it, can publish it too.  Any time you update your Sprout it will automatically update – no matter where it is.  I’m telling you, it’s exciting.  It took up a lot of my evening last night and some of my morning today.  To see an example of a Sprout, check out Marshall’s post here.  To see how to make one, check out my screencast tour of SproutBuilder here:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 4m32s

Want this screencast on your site?  Click here to get the code for this and other DemoGirl screencasts!

[via RWW]

Morning Coffee is a Firefox Extension that lets you organize all of the sites you visit, by the day you want to visit them. For example, if one of your favorite blogs is only updated on Tuesdays, then you would add that to your Tuesday Morning Coffee, and so on. If you want to wake up to a particular site every day, then you can add it to your every day Morning Coffee. After you install it you’ll see a new Morning Coffee button in your browser toolbar. Clicking on that button will bring up all of the sites you’ve added, depending on what day it is. It’s very easy to set up and can even be used to help you focus by not allowing yourself to visit certain sites every day. Of course, you can always type in the URL manually, so it’s obviously still up to you to stay focused. Here’s my screencast tour of Morning Coffee:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m36s

Want this screencast on your site? Click here to get the code for this and other DemoGirl screencasts!

EveryBlock works like a news feed for your neighborhood.  It gives you daily local information like business reviews, restaurant inspections, news, classified listings, etc.  It’s all based on neighborhood or zip code so you really know what’s going on in your specific neighborhood.  All of the news is listed as it is gathered by day.  They grab relevant content from Flickr, Craigslist, Yelp, and local newspapers and blogs and classify it by neighborhood.  Did I mention EveryBlock is only currently covering NYC, SF, and Chicago?  Here’s my screencast tour of EveryBlock:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m19s

Want this screencast on your site?  Click here to get the code for this and other DemoGirl screencasts!

[via Download Squad]

RSS is something that most people hear or see on a daily basis. Everyone should know what RSS is and how it can help you to aggregate all of the content you find on the Websites you visit every day into one place. (Yes, Mom, I’m talking to you.) RSS means Really Simple Syndication. That basically means that RSS gives you a really easy way to syndicate all of your favorite Web content into one place. This magical place is called a feed reader. A feed reader is where all of your content is sent so you can read it later.

I understand that most people reading this site know what RSS, feed readers, and that little orange button you see on almost every Website out there is. If so, this screencast isn’t for you. For those of you who hear RSS thrown around and secretly want to click on that little orange button, but really have no clue what it is, then you may want to take the next three minutes to see how non-scary it all is. Here’s my screencast explanation of RSS:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 3m10s

Want this screencast on your site?  Click here to get the code for this and other DemoGirl screencasts!

So, as of a couple of days ago, my phone is not receiving text messages.  I know, I know, call my service provider and sort it out.  Well, it’s really not all that important to me at the moment and I really don’t feel like talking to those guys right now.  I did, however, do a Google search for a Web based solution.  What I found was Joopz.

Joopz allows you to send and receive text messages right from the Web.  You can create a contact list to be stored with all of your friends numbers and create groups for sending out mass text messages.  I tried it out on my friend Michelle and it worked like a charm.  I just entered in her number, entered my message into the text box, and pressed send.  About a minute later I got her usual hello, I responded, and so on – all from my Joopz account.  The third message from her ended up being “who is this?” because I didn’t come up as “Molly” on her phone.  My phone number was shown as the sender and I don’t think she knows my number.  I actually don’t think it’s that uncommon for people to not know their friends actual numbers nowadays, so a nice feature addition could be to allow you to add a name instead of your phone number.  Joopz is free to use for 10 outgoing messages a month and unlimited incoming messages.  It’s just $2.95 a month or $19.95 a year for unlimited messaging and a complete message history.  One big reason I chose to test out Joopz is because even though it’s meant for text messaging, it doesn’t require any sort of text message activation, which I obviously can’t do since that’s the problem I’m having right now.  Here’s my screencast tour of Joopz:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 3m22s

Want this screencast on your site?  Click here to get the code for this and other DemoGirl screencasts!

PlanJam is a service that wants to help you plan the ultimate date or outing with your friends.  You begin by entering in the zip code or city you want to go out in and then choose what type of activity you’d like to participate it – romantic, girls just want to have fun, guys night out, etc.  You’re then presented with numerous types of activities to help narrow down your search.  You can choose from adventure, entertainment and events, nightlife, and food and sweets.  Once you find things that interest you, you can drag and drop them into a little planner and it will even tell you how much time you should allow for the entire evening and about how much money you should be prepared to spend.  You can share the plan, save it for later, and even view maps for all of the locations you’ll be visiting.

I created a screencast of PlanJam in October, but since then the site has gone through a redesign.  They have also created 3 screencasts of their own showing you how to use PlanJam and explaining the features.  There was really no point in me making another screencast when theirs are done so well, but I thought I should definitely include them here on DemoGirl.    Click here to watch the PlanJam screencasts.

Minimap is a neat little Firefox add-on that opens up a map in your sidebar where you can store addresses, view traffic, and get directions using Google, Yahoo!, or Windows Live Local.  You can right click on any address on a web page and choose to immediately map that location in your Minimap or drag and drop addresses to view and store for later reference.  There’s also a Google search bar on the map so you can search for locations in your Minimap.

I’ve been using Minimap for the past week or so and have found it very useful.  I thought it would be best if I shared it with you!  Here’s my screencast tour of Minimap:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m59s

[via Download Squad]

Want this screencast on your site?  Click here to get the code for this and other DemoGirl screencasts!