DemoGirl

Penzu is a great tool for anyone who really likes to write, but doesn’t necessarily want to blog about their romantic vacation with the entire world.  It gives you a way to keep an online journal that actually resembles a journal, right down to a plain white piece of paper.  Each entry has its own page and you can easily go back and make changes or delete them.  You can add photos to your entries, although placement of the photos needs a little work.  Another great feature is that you can share your journal entries right from Penzu.  Just click “share” on the current entry you want to share and enter in an email address.  You can choose to show your name or remain anonymous.

I know what you’re thinking, why wouldn’t you just create a blog and choose to keep the entries private?  Well, for one thing, that requires a lot more work than just typing on a blank piece of paper, which is really what a journal should be about.  With Penzu, all you need to deal with are your thoughts and getting them down while they’re still in your head.

As of now, Penzu is missing some features like being able to share entries with multiple email addresses and the ability to arrange your photos freely on a journal entry.  A couple of links on the site say “coming soon” so I can only assume that Penzu will have more to offer in the future.  Here’s my screencast tour of Penzu:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m55s

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[via Go2WEB20 blog]

As most of you may know, the way we monetize DemoGirl is by creating custom screencasts for various Web companies. Sometimes I need to keep these private and can’t share them on DemoGirl but when possible, I like to show you some of the things I’ve been doing — especially when I find the services actually useful. That’s where these next two sites come in:

UpTake is a service that wants to help make planning your next vacation, easier. It searches for hotels and things to do based on the type of vacation you want to take. For example, if you’re planning a trip with the family, UpTake has a family vacation theme as well as pet friendly, girls getaway, romantic getaway, and a theme if you just simply want to get away. It pulls results from 400,000 U.S. hotels and attractions and gives you reviews and ratings from different review sites all over the Web. You can also filter your search by amenity and price. If you’re planning your summer vacation and aren’t sure exactly where to start, I’d definitely give UpTake a look. Here’s a custom DemoGirl screencast of UpTake:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 1m42s

Ztail is a service that wants to help you figure out, “what’s it worth?”. What’s what worth? Well, it could be an old camera, a vintage tennis racket, or a pair of skis. It’s described as the Kelly Blue Book for everything, and I think that’s a great description. There are a couple of ways you can use Ztail – you can add your own things to the Ztail community and have other members tell you what they think it’s worth and see similar items on eBay to get a better idea of how much you could get for it. You can also browse through items people are trying to get value on and give your own opinion. If you’re a vintage roller skate expert, you may find a lot of people on Ztail wondering how much their old pair of skates are worth. I think everyone has some sort knowledge that they could share on Ztail and if people start posting their opinions and their stuff, I could see this being a great place to go before placing an item up on ebay or even before pricing your “valuables” to sell at your next garage sale. Here’s a custom DemoGirl screencast of Ztail:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m27s

(Disclosure:  DemoGirl.com was paid to create these screencasts for use by the company.  We were not paid in any way to write these reviews, or any other review.)