DemoGirl

First of all, I have to say that the inspiration for this screencast came from this post I read this morning on Lifehacker. It’s all about 10 plug-ins that will make your IM experience with Pidgin, better. I read through it and quickly thought, “I had no idea there were plug-ins within Pidgin”. I just started using it a couple of weeks ago and I guess I didn’t really do enough exploring. So, I figured if I didn’t know about these plug-ins, maybe other people don’t either. I have to warn you, a lot of this screencast is just me talking and explaining text on the screen. But I find that listening to someone explain something gets it to my brain a bit quicker so hopefully this will be helpful to at least one person. Here’s my screencast tour of Pidgin plug-ins:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 6m11s

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HadToSay gives you a fun way to tell your love interest that you’re, well, interested. It’s completely anonymous and your messages can be sent via email or you can print out a card with a code on it that they’ll use to access your message. They can reply to your message without signing up for anything and you can both continue communications back and forth for as long as you like. HadToSay doesn’t have to be used strictly for telling a secret crush how you feel. You can use it to tell someone you’re already involved with that you’re thinking of them or print out one of the cards and slip it in their briefcase for them to find while they’re at work. If you’re fighting, you can use HadToSay to apologize. It may not be the brightest idea, but the excitement of finding one of those little cards just may make your partner forgive you. Do what you want with it but tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and I say don’t spend 4 bucks on a Hallmark card…print out one of the free HadToSay cards and surprise someone special! Here’s my screencast tour of HadToSay:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m6s

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[via KillerStartups]

Iminta is a service that wants to help you and your friends share what you’re into (hence the name) across the different social networks you belong to.  The difference between Iminta and other social networking sites is that your friends don’t have to belong to twitter to see your tweets and they don’t have to visit Yelp to see the latest restaurant reviews you’ve written.  Everything you do on these sites is updated to one place, Iminta, and you can subscribe to the RSS feed so you don’t even really need to return there either.  You can also select specific groups of friends to have access to your information.  So, if you don’t want your work buddies to see the videos you’re favoring on YouTube, then don’t give them access to that account.   Every site you belong to has different privacy settings so you’re not limited to all or nothing.  Iminta is currently in private beta but I have 4 invites for the first 4 people who ask for one in the comments.  Here’s my screencast tour of Iminta:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m40s

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

Speed Dial is a Firefox Extension that allows you to quickly access all of your favorite websites with a few clicks on your keyboard or mouse.  After you install Speed Dial you just need to enter in the URL for the sites you want to access.  These sites are all numbered so you can use keyboard shortcuts like ctrl and the number to pull up the appropriate site.  You can also quickly add sites to your Speed Dial by clicking on “Set as Speed Dial” in your bookmarks.  I know Firefox Extensions aren’t for everyone, but Speed Dial seems like it could really come in handy.  Here’s my screencast tour of Firefox Extension, Speed Dial:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 3m15s

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

I’m always a bit skeptical when I receive emails about new relationship or dating sites. Good thing I ignored my first instinct with GetinHerHead and went and checked it out. This service is very cool, useful, and easy to navigate. You start by signing up with basic info but you also include your partners name and email. This will automatically sign them up for the site. They just have to log in and change their password to something they’ll remember. Then you both go about your business adding things to your profile like favorite restaurants, wild and crazy dreams you may have, favorite spa treatments, and even all of your clothing sizes. You can add a wish list and star items on how bad you actually want them. The extremely useful and fun part is that everything you enter in will appear in your partners account and vice versa. You’ll see their profile and they’ll see yours. Any time you want to surprise them with a gift or a fun idea for a date, you can just look at what they’ve secretly been dying to do or buy and just like that – you’re the worlds best boyfriend/girlfriend. They’re in private beta right now but if I get any invites I’ll let you know. Here’s my screencast tour of GetinHerHead:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 3m47s

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Update:  Cole from GetinHerHead set up this link if you would like to try GetinHerHead now!

LetterMeLater allows you to create emails to be sent at any date and time you choose.  You can select what email address will appear in the “from” section of the email and there are no ads of any kind.  I sent one to myself and it was sent right on time and appeared to have come from my Gmail account.  There are a few reasons LetterMeLater could be useful:    1.    You’re a hothead and you tend to send nasty response emails to people without thinking first. (BAD IDEA)  2.    You need to set up reminders for yourself.  3.    You know it’s your friends birthday in a few days but you’re not sure if you’ll remember to send them a happy birthday email when that day comes.  While these are all good reasons, I think #1 is the best.  When you’re upset, it’s always good to write out the email and save it to send in a day or two after you’ve had time to cool off.  With LetterMeLater, you can schedule it to be sent in a couple of days but still be able to go back and make edits or delete it all together.  Also, Valentines Day is approaching and it may be a good idea to write out little sentiments or a cute poem to your significant other now.  Schedule it to be sent at midnight on Feb. 14th and your recipient will think you stayed up late just waiting to tell them how much you care.  Here’s my screencast tour of LetterMeLater:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 4m2s

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[via MakeUseOf]

Mezzoman gives you a great way to find a restaurant, or other type of entertainment, between two locations. For example, Jane wants to get some sushi and doesn’t want to drive all the way up Jack’s hill to meet him. Enter Mezzoman. Jane just needs to enter in her address and Jack’s address and Mezzoman will find sushi places right smack dab in the middle of where they both are. Alright, it’s not exactly in the middle, but you’ll get recommendations for places around the center point. It’s not rocket-science, but it sure is handy! Oh, Mezzo means half or middle in Italian – now do you get the name? Here’s my screencast tour of Mezzoman:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m33s

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[via Lifehacker]

Digsby is an application that allows you to combine your IM, email, and social networking sites into one neat little package. It requires a download and then you just need to add all of the services you want included in your Digsby buddy list window. From there you can chat just like you would normally on IM and you’ll get updated when you receive new emails or updates to Facebook or MySpace (currently the only two social networks included). For me, the best part of Digsby is the email integration. I didn’t even have to log into my hotmail account once yesterday. Digsby checked my mail every five minutes and I received a brief alert when I had something new. (Note: I added a brief PiP in this screencast. I know the audio sounds horrible for that portion and I’m working on it so please try to hold back on unleashing your fury on me.) Here’s my screencast tour of Digsby:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 4m30s

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

[via Download Squad]

If you read my post from yesterday, you’d know that I’ve been trying out Camtasia v.5 for the past couple of days.  While doing so, I realized there was a feature I never used in v.4 – PiP.  I’ve seen some screencasts that include PiP so I got to wondering about how it would look and if it was, in fact, useful.  So, I recorded this brief test screencast and I want you tell me what you think.  Now, it’s not something I would do all the time because I like to have things planned out a bit more and explaining things while looking into a camera and trying to focus on what’s happening on your screen is not easy.  So, here’s my screencast test of PiP:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 1m50s

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Some people like to have their online calendar, email, to-do list, news feed, wish list, and address book all rolled into one.  If you’re one of those people, please, do not keep reading.  For those of you who would simply like a place online to store email addresses and phone numbers, then Flexadex may  be just what you’re looking for.  Ok, it does a little bit more than that – but the beauty of Flexadex is that you get to decide what it does for you.  At first glance it may look like a very basic address book.  But Flexadex is set up so that anything you type into your entry is searchable.  So you could use it as a to-do list, a place to store friends and families birthdays, or even a place to store project notes along with contact information.  It’s really quite pleasant to use and to look at.  Here’s my screencast tour of Flexadex:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m9s

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

[via Lifehacker]