DemoGirl

If you’re a marketer and it’s your job to send out emails to get new users/viewers, do me and the people paying you a favor – watch this video. You can really just listen to it and go about your business as not much is going on visually, but it’s pretty right on as far as what I expect out of an informative email from a marketer. It comes from New Media Sandbox and goes into usability, which I lightly touched on last week. My story made it to the front page of digg and I was slowly ripped a new one by the digg community. That’s fine, I appreciate all of the helpful and friendly feedback. (I’m completely serious.) I’m only mentioning it because usability is very important and it shouldn’t stop at your Website, it should continue on through the way you communicate with your potential users as well.

It’s worth a listen and maybe you can pass it on to the person you hired to do your marketing.

Well, the cat got let out of the bag a day early (or did it?). Aviary, a suite of image editing applications, has a blog post about their newest addition, Dodo. The post is dated April 1st, so it’s pretty clear that the only Dodo is the one who believes this application is real – and I’ll admit, I was a Dodo for a few minutes today. Check out the screencast and you’ll see why I wish this “Web-based time machine” was real (or is it?):

[via CenterNetworks]

If you’re curious about features in the Flock Browser but don’t want to download it without knowing a bit more, then check out this great screencast done by Liz B. Davis. I learned a lot about Flock without having to install it. Thanks Liz!

YourLi.st gives you a simple way to set up reminders to be sent to your email.  The best part is that you don’t have to register for anything in order to use it.  Registration isn’t even an option.  All you need to do is enter in your email, add some event details, and choose when you want it sent.  It’s kind of like that infomercial for the Ronco Rotisserie, “Set it and forget it!”  There are also two handy bookmarklets – one for quickly setting reminders for things like eBay auctions and one for sending Webpages you want to come back to later, to your email.  Here’s my screencast tour of YourLi.st:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m24s

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

I sign up and navigate through a lot of different Websites and services every single day so I can create screencasts to help my readers decide if they want to try them out or not. In doing this, I notice every little detail from arriving to the site, to locating my account settings, to signing out. It’s my job to know where the help pages are, how to change a password, and how to generally navigate through whatever site I’m currently creating a screencast for. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ditched a service that I actually thought was kind of cool, but navigation was so horrible that I didn’t want to share it with you here – And that’s the topic of the screencast today.

I want to know if I’m crazy or if the very minor issues I’m showing you really do matter. I don’t think enough start-ups realize that it’s not only important to have a functioning site, but a functional site as well. What do you think? Let me know what issues bother you in the comments after you watch the screencast below:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 3m19s

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

I’m a little bummed out this morning. It seems that craigslist is blocking crgslst. LAME. I just want to point one thing out — yesterday I was looking on craigslist for an apartment (no roomy, don’t fret I’m just looking for fun). While I was there I also checked out scooters and cars. This morning, I quickly went to crgslst to search for a desk. Too bad I couldn’t search for one because I received this message: “Help! Craigslist has blocked our beloved service. Please help by sending an email to blocks-b10101@craigslist.org on our behalf.”. The reason I went to crgslst this morning and not craigslist is because crgslst is better to search for things, like a desk, quickly and I can come back to my searches. I’ll still visit craigslist because it has some things that crgslst doesn’t. Please kids, can we play together nicely like our Moms and Dads always taught us too?

So, first off, I’d like to ask my crummy old guitar teacher for my money back.  If I had know about the site I’m about to share with you, it would have saved me a lot of frustration going to lessons instructed by a grumpy, washed up musician (sorry, but he was mean).  Songsterr helps you learn how to play and sing songs, chord by chord.  The chords and lyrics are given to you and Songsterr plays them over and over until you decide you want to move on.  You can also set it on autopilot and it will play through the entire song.  In all seriousness, this won’t replace a human instructor (if you have a nice one) and there are only a handful of songs available on the site, one of them being a most hated of mine – Hey There Delilah.  If you don’t already know your fingering for the chords, you won’t have much luck learning anything here either.  But, this is a brand new service and the “coming soon” features sound very promising.  I recommend giving it a look if you haven’t picked up your guitar in a while and just want to learn a new song.

If learning a new language is your thing, you definitely should take a look at babbel.  Babbel gives you all the tools to learn how to speak Spanish, French, German, Italian, or English.  Everything is taken care of here, even the hardest for me – p-r-o-n-u-n-c-i-a-t-i-o-n.  You decide what types of words you feel like learning that day, and babbel will start your training.  It starts with a photo describing the word and a nice voice saying the word for you in the language you selected.  After you hear 6 words it moves on with the audio and photos separated.  You just match the audio with the correct photo and you can move onto step three – spelling.  Again, you’ll only see the photo and all you need to do is type in the first letter of the word (I think they should make you spell the whole word, but that’s just me).  Your lessons are stored and you’re encouraged to retest yourself in a few days.  There are a lot of language learning sites out there, but this is by far the best I’ve come across.

Crgslst gives you a way to browse ads on craigslist through a much cleaner interface and throws in a couple of useful features as well.  When you search on crgslst, you can search multiple cities, save items you want to come back to later, and save previous searches.  Very useful indeed, and it looks much prettier than it’s vowel filled friend — But there are a few categories missing, most importantly (to me) the “free” category.  Really though, crgslst is still a baby and it seems that more useful features are on the way.  Here’s my screencast tour of crgslst:

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!

I come from a very large family.  Let me give you some stats:  4 brothers, 2 sisters, 8 nieces, 3 nephews, 1 Mom, 1 Dad.  Yes, I’m Irish.  The point is, that when we want to plan a weekend when we can all get together, it’s a complete mess of emails (we aren’t all that into the phone).  There are lots of event planning services out there but none of us want to create profiles and sign up for new services – we just don’t have the time.  A basic service that allows you to quickly see what weekend everyone is free and lets you do all of the actual planning is what we need.  Enter Which Weekend.

Which Weekend is the most simple tool I’ve come across for trying to find the best weekend for a group to get together.  You’ll notice that I didn’t say “planning” a weekend trip.  It’s used for one thing, figuring out which weekend everyone is free.  One person is the administrator and they send out the initial email to everyone with a date range to choose from.  The recipients just need to click on a link in their email and they’re automatically logged in.  From there, they just check off the dates they’re free and then they can get back to doing whatever they were doing.  The planning of the trip is up to the group but often the biggest hassle is finding a time when people can get together.   Here’s my screencast tour of Which Weekend:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m27s

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

I remember first trying out PocketMod a little less than two years ago (just about when I got into this business) and I thought it was pretty nifty, but for some reason I completely lost track of it.  Thankfully this article slapped me back in time and brought me back to a newer version of PocketMod.

Basically, PocketMod is a tool that helps you build an 8 page mini book.  It can contain whatever kind of information you want and it’s all printed out on one sheet of paper and is then folded into a cute little book that you can slip into your pocket.  PocketMod is filled with pre-set forms like calendars, writing guides, and even a reference to help you learn Morse Code (you NEVER know!).  Here’s my screencast tour of PocketMod:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 3m47s

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

…and here’s a video from PocketMod showing how to fold it all up into a neat little package:

[via Lifehacker]