Demo Girl

1. No more coffee. (Yes, I’m drinking a cup as I write this.)

Now, I’m not saying that I want to give up all caffeine, because I love tea and tea doesn’t give me the crack-head side affects that coffee seems too.  Normally, I’m a 2 cup per day, but sometimes 3 or 4, kinda gal.  Besides the fact that it’s just not good for me, it’s a crutch that I’d like to be rid of.  I got a juicer for Christmas and made some beet/carrot/apple juice the other morning – holy cow! I felt so awesome.  I didn’t have any coffee and was productive all day.

2. Work on improving my writing.

I always did fairly well in English when I was in school.  In fact, English and Home Ec. were just about the only classes that I really cared about.  Science and math may as well have not existed, as I didn’t always make it to those classes.  I know I told my parents more than once that those subjects had no business being taught to me because I would never need them.  Well looky here, Ma!  I’m a writer!  Actually, this is where I’m still failing.  My grammar is terrible as is my actual writing style.  My sister is a fantastic writer and I can’t help but feel that she should be doing what I’m doing and I should be baking cupcakes.  Alas, I may not be the best writer, but I do love it.  Who doesn’t want to be great at what they love doing?

3. Solve problems on my own.

Sure, I know a lot about web applications and screencast software (not really) but I don’t know squat about much else in the technology world.  Whenever I can’t figure out how to use some sort of software or program, one of my brothers will usually receive an IM that goes something like this:

“Umm…are you there?  I can’t figure out this stupid piece of S#@T!!  Help!”

After they solve the problem for me and I climb down off of the furniture, I usually feel a bit embarrassed.  After all, if I just did some more research I could probably solve my own problems.  It’s very easy to have someone else tell me the answer, but I’m going to do my best to try and work these issues out on my own first.

4. Spend more time with my family.

This doesn’t really need an explanation, but seriously, I’m a 45 minute plane ride away from my entire family (there are A LOT of us) and I’ve only been home once this year.  San Francisco is fun and all, but I think I can leave it more than once a year.

5. Participate more in the blogging community.

I read a lot of blog posts and have a lot of opinions about what is written in those posts.  I’m ashamed to say that I rarely ever leave comments.  It’s horrible, I know!  I get so depressed when no one comments on one of my posts and here I am committing the same offense.  I hope to make myself more visible in the blogging community and share my opinions with the people I so greatly respect.

6. Put more money into my savings.

DUH.

7. Spend more time being “artistic”.

Before I started this gig I used to do a lot of painting and drawing.  I haven’t picked up a paintbrush in almost two years.  I don’t know if Internet has absconded with my creativity or if I’m just using a different medium, meaning screencasts and writing.  I recently received a really nice art set and I hope to put it to use over the next year.  Oh, and just so ya know, I have “artistic” in quotes because I don’t know if you can really call what I do, “art” .

8. Achieve inbox zero.

I have 3,524 3,536 emails in my inbox.  ‘Nuff said.

9. Find a purpose for Molzy.com

A few months ago I bought the domain Molzy.com.  I chose Molzy because that’s my username on almost every social networking site I belong to and a nickname I acquired some years back.  Also, these two women have had their hands on Molly.com and MollyMcDonald.com for as long as I can remember and I don’t think they’ll ever give them up.  I haven’t asked, mostly because I can’t afford to offer them anything of monetary value and because I don’t know what I would use it for just yet.  Hopefully, in 2009, I’ll start posting meaningful content to my personal blog.

10. Do my part to make this world a better place.

I know I can’t end world hunger, shelter the homeless, or heal the sick all on my own.  I can, however, volunteer, run a marathon or two, and make an effort to learn more about what’s going on in the world around me.  If this list was in some sort of numerical order, most important being #1, then this would definitely be at the top.

Most of all, I hope that you and your family have a very safe, healthy, and happy 2009!  I’ll see you next year.

My good friends Sarah Lane and Martin Sargent were kind enough to have me as their guest on their very special, second episode of This Week in Fun (TWiF).  If you’re unfamiliar with TWiF, I urge you to check out the first show here.

Basically, TWiF was a substitute for TWiT, the outrageously popular show by Leo Laporte.  Since Leo is away on vacation, he was kind enough to let Sarah take over the helm at the TWiT cottage.  I had a great time, but if you know me well,  then you’ll probably hear the terror in my voice.  Thankfully, since I’m close with both Sarah and Martin, I relaxed after a bit and they let me hang out for the duration of the show.

Thanks for having me on the show guys – you did a great job.  Let’s hope these are just the first two of many episodes of TWiF!

You can watch the show here.  [via odtv.me]

Juice is a Firefox Extension that delivers relevant videos, photos, and news right to your sidebar.  Juice also allows you to store videos and photos in your sidebar to view later.

After you install Juice, just highlight any bit of text that you want to find more content on and drag it and drop it to the right.  Almost instantly your sidebar will pop open with related Wikipedia articles, YouTube videos, and news stories.  You can watch videos right from the Juice sidebar and save them to view later.  You can also drag any images or videos into your sidebar to save for future reference.

To learn more, watch the screencast below:

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Click Here To Watch Better Quality 2m54s

Notify.Me allows you to receive updates from your favorite blogs or websites via IM, SMS, email, or with their new desktop application which runs on Adobe Air.

After you sign up you can submit your mobile phone information so you can receive updates via SMS.  You can also add your account info for Pidgin, Adium, Jabber, and/or GTalk.  You decide how you would like to be notified so you can skip these steps entirely and move onto the last step, which is adding the feeds of the sites that you want to be notified about.  NotifyMe gives you topics that you can choose from like culture, news, people, and tech or you can manually add a feed URL.  There’s also a NotifyMe bookmarklet so you can add sites on the fly.  This is especially useful if you’re tracking something like a job posting or an apartment listing on craigslist.

There is also a desktop application that will update you in real time with headlines from the sources you plugged into your NotifyMe account.

All in all I think it’s pretty handy for receiving real-time updates, especially the desktop app, but I don’t think I’m ready to give up my regular feedreader just yet.  To see NotifyMe in action, watch the screencast below:

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Click Here To Watch Better Quality 2m18s

Telonu is a service that allows you to post “tells” or reviews about a company you currently work for, previously worked for, or wished you worked for.  Not only that, you can also ask questions like, “When’s the last time you got a raise?”, or, “Are we allowed to wear jeans to work?”.  Telonu also creates the same atmosphere for schools, brands, and people.

After you create a free account, you can choose to post reviews about any company or person you like.  You can choose to have your “tell” associated with your nickname, your real name, or remain anonymous.  You can follow people or companies and write on their “whiteboard” which is essentially like writing on someones wall in Facebook.  There’s also a question and answer section, which is a great way to get information about a company you may like to work for, from an inside source.

Telonu seems like a clever idea, but I’m not so sure why I should trust any of the reviews or answers to peoples questions.  Since you can remain anonymous, what’s to prevent people from completely lying about a company or, even worse, writing a horrible review about someone they don’t even know.  I think people should be held accountable for what they write and publish on the Internet, even if it’s just by forcing them to at least use a nickname.

To see Telonu in action, check out the screencast below:

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Click Here To Watch Better Quality 4m29s

[via DownloadSquad]

I’m off on my first vacation in who knows how long, and I’m not bringing Internet with me.  No Internet, no PC, no cell phone.  Actually, I don’t think my cell phone would work anyway.  If you’re looking for me, I’ll probably be here:

There’s also a chance I’ll have been eaten by him:

If I haven’t been eaten by a giant iguana or some sort of sea creature, and if I can get my ass out of that hammock, I’ll see you in in a week.

Mr. Tweet is a service that wants to help you create more meaningful and effective relationships on Twitter.  It calls itself “your personal twitter assistant” and after using it briefly, I completely agree.

First, you need to follow Mr. Tweet on Twitter.  Then you need to be patient, and wait.  You’re waiting to receive a direct message on Twitter from Mr. Tweet with a link to your report.  It took about four days for me to receive my message but I hear it’s quicker for some people.

Your report contains a link to people in your network who Mr. Tweet thinks you should follow based on their popularity, relevance to you, and the likelihood of them following you back.  There were 200 people that Mr. Tweet thought I should be following but I haven’t had time to check them all out yet.  There is also a link to a report with people who are following you on Twitter, but you’re not following back.  Mr. Tweet thinks that it would be a good idea for you to follow them back, and so far, I’m shocked that I wasn’t following a lot of the people who were on my report.

To see just what kind of information is in a Mr. Tweet report, watch the screencast below:

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Click Here To Watch Better Quality 2m34s

[via Mashable]