DemoGirl

I just read about something and I had to share. Justincaseidie.com. That’s right, you read correctly. The site is called “Just in case I die dot com”. The premise behind the site is that if you don’t check in before a date and time you previously set, your chosen recipient will receive an email with whatever message you intend to send from beyond the grave. You could simply write, “I’m dead. Sucks to be me” or “I love you with all my heart. I wish I had told you before I was dead. Oh yeah, did I forget to tell you? I’m dead”. It’s totally morbid.

When I first read about Justincaseidie, I started laughing because it made me remember an email my brother sent to me when I first moved to San Francisco. You see, I didn’t know a soul when I moved here and I found my roommate on Craigslist. I get lost every time I walk out my front door and if I never came home, no one would really notice. So, the email basically said, in a ha-ha-but-not-so-ha-ha sort of way, “I guess we’ll know something happened to you if you stop posting to DemoGirl.com”. Yes, this is true. The way my brother (aka boss man) will know that I’m alive and well is if I post to this site. If a week goes by and I haven’t posted I’m sure he’d call to see if everything was fine, but I could be worm food at that point. So, when I read about Justincaseidie I laughed, but seriously…it’s a great idea. As of now, the site is bare bones and you only have the option to send out one notification. If they implemented SMS and IM so you could check in from anywhere, that would be great. For example, if I was going to go for a bike ride I could send a note to insertsitehere.com and if I didn’t check back in with the site by a certain time, my friends or family would get a message saying where I went and what time I was suppose to arrive home. After that it’s up to your loved ones to start looking for you, but at least they’d know where you went and what time you were expected back.

Reading Rafe’s post about Justincaseidie is what made me think how much this service is needed and I thought it was so important I wanted to touch on it as well. Just one thing, Ok? If someone decides to take this service up to a serious level, please don’t turn it into a freaking social networking site.

[via Webware]

Mixwit allows you to create a playlist of your favorite music and display it like an old skool mixtape.  It’s a bit like previously mentioned, Mixaloo, except this service is completely free.  You can do a music search right from the site and then fully customize the way your tape looks.  They have some retro skins to choose from but you can also upload your own artwork or use their template to create your own skin.  After you create your mix, you can send the link to friends or post it on your blog or social networking site.  Here’s my screencast tour of Mixwit:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m24s

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[via TechCrunch]

InFormEnter is a handy Firefox Extension that saves you the trouble of repeatedly typing the same information into forms. After you install it, you just need to set up your different profiles. A profile is where you store different information. For example, if you wanted to set up a profile for signing up for new web services, you would just add things like your first and last name, your email address, and maybe throw in a few hobbies or favorite movies. Whenever you go to a site where you need to enter in the information, just click on the little arrow you’ll see next to the form field and a box will pop up will all of your profile information. Simply select the text you want added to that field, and move on. Something like this is probably way more useful for someone like me who has to sign up for, at a minimum, about 5 websites a day. Here’s my screencast tour of InFormEnter:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 1m44s

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

Animoto is a service that helps you create amazing videos out of your photos with very little effort.  There are just a couple of steps involved because Animoto handles the creative side, resulting in really cool videos.  All you need to do is upload photos from your computer or grab them from one of the supported photo sharing sites.  You can drag and drop your photos into any order you like and even place a spotlight on specific photos which will tell Animoto that you want these photos highlighted in the video.  The next step is adding music.  You can upload music from your computer or select music from the Animoto music lounge.  Give your video a name and a brief description, and you’re done.  You’ll need to wait a while for the video to produce, but the end result is worth the wait.  You can embed the videos in your blog or social networking site, email them, export them to YouTube, or download them.  There are so many ways Animoto can be used – from promoting a product that you originally only had photos of to creating a fun music video of you and your friends on vacation.  Animoto is free for a 30 second video and 3 dollars for a full length, which I think is a more than fair price.  Here’s my screencast tour of Animoto:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 3m17s

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

[via TechCrunch]

Viscosity is a super cool abstract art creator that won the Best Art award at SXSW. It allows anyone to create beautiful pieces of abstract art in a matter of minutes or hours, depending on how much time you spend on the details. You can choose from a preset block of colors, which can be completely customized, and then you simply drag various brushes through the lines to create your art. If you’re into detail, you can also drag each point of color into a specific location on your virtual canvas. Besides creating art, Viscosity is a great place to just browse through other peoples art. There are some really amazing pieces to check out.

I realize that winning the Best Art award at SXSW was probably a really proud moment for Jeff Weir (creator) but I would like to present him with “The Tool I Will Most Likely Use To Slack Off At Work” award. I highly recommend you do the same. Here’s my screencast tour of Viscosity:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 5m4s

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

[via Webware]

The Awesome Highlighter is a great tool for anyone who wants to point out specific text on a website that they’ve shared with a friend or co-worker. There’s nothing to install and you don’t even need to register in order to use it. You simply enter in the URL for the site you want to share, highlight the text you want noted, and save it. You’ll receive a shortened URL that you can send off to your friends or co-workers. If you do sign up for a free account, you’ll be able to keep track of your highlights and return to them later if you need to make changes. You can also post your highlighted page directly to Twitter. The simplicity of The Awesome Highlighter is what I like the most about it. It does just what it says it’s going to do. Here’s my screencast tour of The Awesome Highlighter:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m

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

Why Twitter? That’s a question I used to ask myself all the time, and until January of this year I pretty much didn’t. I knew how to sign up and use Twitter, that wasn’t the problem. I didn’t get what the point of it all was. You’re sitting on a train right now? Who cares! You’re hungry? So eat! Seriously, it’s these common misunderstandings that may make some people wonder why they should Twitter. Sure, you can use Twitter to let your followers know that you woke up this morning and put your underwear on before your pants but there’s more to it than that. This video put together by the extremely creative folks over at commoncraft did a great job explaining Twitter in plain English. It’s really worth a look even if you do know what the heck to do with Twitter:

Songza is a music search site that I’ve reviewed in the past and actually used on and off for the past few months.  Honestly though, I’ve used it more off than on.  I think that’s going to change today because (finally) you can now create a Songza account and save your precious playlist.  Yes, Songza really made my day today.  Besides the obvious wonderfulness that is your very own Songza account, you can also post a song directly to Twitter without leaving Songza.  Here’s my screencast tour of Songza:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m52s

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

[via Download Squad]

CustomizeGoogle is a Firefox Extension that does just what you’re probably thinking it does.  It allows you to completely customize your Google search experience.  You can remove ads from Google searches, filter search results to not include specific websites (like that pesky about.com), block Google Analytics cookies, and add other search sites to your search result page so you can easily compare results.  CustomizeGoogle does a whole lot more so I highly recommend taking a look.  Here’s my screencast tour of CustomizeGoogle:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 3m

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

[via Digital Inspiration]

If you’ve ever spent any time reading tab (tablature) online, then you must know how completely annoying most of the available tab sites can be.  Huge ads, pop-ups, user comments all over the place – it’s just a mess.  I can speak from experience because I used to spend hours online reading tab and playing guitar and finally I just started printing it out so I didn’t have to look at all of the nonsense surrounding the content I was after.  Well, my prayers have been answered and when I find the time to start playing regularly again, I’ll be reading all of my tab in tabBasket.

TabBasket gives you a place to store all of your tab and it’s completely free of ads and nonsense.  All you need to do is copy the tab from one site and paste it into your tabBasket account and it will be displayed in a much more peaceful environment.  TabBasket also gives you access to lyrics and YouTube videos right from the page on which you’re viewing the tab.  If you have Guitar Pro/Power Tab files on your computer, you can upload them.  I really can’t say enough good things about tabBasket.  Seriously, if you read tab, please give it a look.  Here’s my screencast tour of tabBasket:

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 KillerStartups]