DemoGirl

It’s Friday and that means it’s time to share a couple of sites with you in the quickest way possible – A Quickcast!  The first site I’ll show you is Hottnotes.  Hottnotes is a sticky note program for your computer.  It’s completely free and is pretty easy on the eyes.  The second site I’m going to share with you is Waitable.  Waitable allows you to set price drop alerts for products on Amazon.  You can choose to be alerted via email and/or text message.  It takes seconds to set up an alert but I’m not sure if it works yet because the shoes I want have not dropped in price (and probably never will).

Stick a rusty fork in me, I’m done.  Have a great weekend and click the link below to watch the Quickcast:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 5m14s

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

[via Webware]

If you simply must be all up in your friends online business then FriendFeed is going to make you flip your lid. FriendFeed turns all of your friends activity, across 28 social networking sites, into a feed that you can use to track their every move online. There’s not really all that much to explain here. Actually, I think I just did. Ok, it’s also cool that you can add friends to FriendFeed that aren’t members as long as you know their username on a particular service. There’s also a pretty nifty bookmarklet that allows you to share things on FriendFeed with one click, including images. The only catch is that these items are only posted to FriendFeed and not to any of the other sites you belong to. Here’s my screencast tour of FriendFeed:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 3m55s

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

Viddix is a service that lets you upload your videos and then create cuepoints out of Web content that appear beside your original video. These cuepoints can be text, images, links, polls, RSS Feeds, or HTML. This can be useful for a number of reasons: You’ve created a video and want to add photos representing the topic you’re addressing, you want to get feedback about your video (this is where the polls would come in), or you may want to upload your travel video and embed maps alongside it to show where you’ve been. Your original video is completely uninterrupted so you can really add any sort of content without worrying about disturbing anything.

Viddix is in Beta and could use a help section as well as better navigation throughout the site. It’s extremely easy to add content to your videos but it’s not quite as easy to find your way from point A to point B. I’d still recommend fiddling around with it though because once you get past the initial navigation problem, it’s a fun way to change up your videos. Here’s my screencast tour of Viddix:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m54s

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

[via KillerStartups]

I think it would be safe to say that I have a wee case of Mac envy.  Now don’t get me wrong, I do love my brand-spanking-new Dell laptop but whenever I look at a friends Mac I just think “ooh…precious”.  One feature I’m especially mesmerized by is the pretty dock where all of the desktop icons sit.  So, this morning I decided to go on a hunt for a similar dock for Windows and about 2 minutes into my Google search I came across RocketDock.  RocketDock gives you quick access to all of your icons and definitely resembles the Mac dock (although the icons do not).  It also allows you to store minimized browser windows on the dock for easy access and if you use Vista you get real-time window previews.  The look and feel is totally customizable and you can auto-hide it any time you like.  Here’s my screencast tour of RocketDock:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 3m53s

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

(Note: The audio got all screwed up when I added video to the screencasts, so please bare with me until I get the problem sorted out. Thanks!)

By the end of the week I’m always looking for something a bit lighter and more fun to post on DemoGirl. I come across a lot of sites that I wouldn’t normally cover in a screencast but would still like to show you. That’s where quickcasting came from. I decided that on Friday’s I would share a few time wasters or just plain-old-fun Websites in very quick screencasts. I’ve added video introductions to this demo as well, so let me know what you think. Included in this weeks quickcast is netdisaster.com, dailymugshot.com, and mylivesignature.com [via Digital Inspiration]. Click the link below to watch the quickcast!

Click Here To Watch The Quickcast 2m37s

If you ever feel like you’re about to freak out because you have some song stuck in your head but can’t seem to remember the name, then SongTapper may be just what you need. Yes, I know you can just enter in a few lines from the song into Google search and probably find your answer there. That is not nearly as fun as beating the rhythm of the song on your space bar and receiving your results without having to enter in one line of text. SongTapper allows you to do just that. The site design is nothing to write home about but there’s nothing to sign up for and it actually works. All you do is click on a link and then start tapping the rhythm of the song on your space bar. SongTapper will spit out some results and you can even listen to what your tapping sounded like. If SongTapper didn’t get your song right you can enter in the name and artist to help train it. Unfortunately, the reason a person would visit SongTapper is because they don’t know the name or artist so that step seems totally pointless to me. Other than that, it’s a fun way to find out the name of a song without doing a Google search and it actually got my songs right 3 out of 4 times.

WhyGoSolo may be just the place to go if you have just moved to a new city or want to do something exciting that your regular friends aren’t interested in trying. I signed up a few days ago and started creating my profile only to suddenly get really bored creating yet another profile on yet another social networking site. This morning I decided I should take another look to see what the site was really about. Boy, I’m glad I did. The name of the site really hits home for me because I find myself pretty much always having to “GoSolo” when I want to try things out in the city. Being new to a place and working at home can really put a damper on your social life and WhyGoSolo wants to try and fix that.

You begin by creating a profile and you can choose as much or as little information about yourself to be included. Besides a profile page you’re also given a place to blog, add photos, create groups, and post community listings. Groups and community listings are really what makes WhyGoSolo stand out. You can create a group for whatever you can think of – biking enthusiasts, local artists, music lovers, anything niche. I joined The Wing Women group which is meant to connect women who’d like to meet other women to hang out with within their city. You can also create listings for activities you want to try out but possibly don’t have anyone to do them with. When someone is interested in your activity (ie: biking Golden Gate Bridge on Friday) they can send you a handshake which is just like saying hello. The handshake is how you’ll connect with the person planning the activity and it’s their decision to accept or deny it. If you make plans and you don’t show up then it will be noted in your “flake-out score”. The flake-out score will help other members know if you’re reliable or not.

While I really like the idea of WhyGoSolo, it needs more members. I didn’t see any real worth while groups in the San Francisco area which means that until more people sign up, I’ll still be going solo.

Deskload is a tool that allows you to organize and save your bookmarks in a way that resembles your desktop.  These bookmarks are represented by icons and can be arranged in any order you like.  You can create multiple Deskloads, customize the background of each one, and you can access your Deskloads from any computer.  There is a Firefox Extension to make adding sites easier and you can import your bookmarks from your computer.  The current feature set for Deskload is not really all that mind blowing but there are plans for sharing and the ability to read RSS Feeds which will definitely make this a lot more useful.  Here’s my screencast tour of Deskload:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m37s

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

[via Digital Inspiration]

As most of you probably know, the way we monetize DemoGirl and keep the screencasts I make for this site free for you to view, is by creating custom screencasts for various companies.  The only major flaw in that plan is that sometimes I don’t have time to make screencasts for DemoGirl because, well, I don’t have the extra time.  If you’re a blog editor I’m sure you must know how much it pains me to see, in some instances, days between posts on this site.  In those days I have most definitely come across various sites I’d like to share with you but I don’t always get the chance.  That is where my question to you comes in.  How would you like to read brief blog posts about sites I come across but can’t necessarily cover in a screencast?  Would you mind not always having a screencast example or do my words offend?  Now, I don’t want you to think for one second that this would be a regular thing – in fact it would probably be irregular.  I just can’t help but feel a twinge of guilt and sadness when I don’t get to share anything with you for a few days and thought I would ask your opinion.  I would like to add that I will not be rewriting press releases or writing about any old service that ends up in my lap.  I will still only share things that I like or think may come in handy.  So what do you think?  Should I stick to screencasts at all times or may I share my awful grammar with you every once in a while?

Pixton is the most amazing thing I have ever come across on the Internet. Ok, maybe not the most amazing, but it is so freaking awesome that I couldn’t help but share it. What is this amazing thing I’m talking about? Well, I’ll tell you what it’s not – It’s not something that will help you get any work done, plan events with friends, or get a date. In fact, it will keep you from doing all of those things. Pixton helps you make the coolest comic strips ever. That’s right. All this ranting and raving is about a user generated comic strip maker. The best part is that there isn’t really any actual drawing involved. There are pre-sets for everything and you can manipulate each body part into lots of different positions. I was going to make a screencast showing you just how cool Pixton is but thankfully they’ve already done it for me. Here are three screencasts that will show you how to use Pixton and help you see why I am totally freaking out. I suppose I could also be freaking out because I just chased a pint of ice cream with a pot of coffee. In any case, Pixton is a great way to end a long work week. Happy Friday!