Demo Girl

I came across two services a week or so ago that were so easy to use that I wasn’t planning on making a screencast.  But after trying to verbally explain how one of them works to a friend of mine, I decided to take the time to share them here.

First up is Twitlet:  Twitlet is a javascript bookmarklet that allows you to quickly send out tweets from whatever page you’re viewing on the Web.  You can also share the page you’re viewing by adding #link or #this to your tweet.

Just sign up with your Twitter username and password and Twitlet will create a bookmarklet that you can use for posting your tweets.  It’s a very simple concept, but if you don’t want to install one of the many available Twitter clients, it’s a great option.  I used Twitlet last week without any problem but yesterday, while I was recording the screencast, I noticed that Twitlet wasn’t pushing all of my updates through to Twitter.  I’m not sure if it’s a problem because I use PowerTwitter (review here) or if it’s just a bug.

To see Twitlet in action, watch the screencast below:

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Next up is PrettyTweet:  PrettyTweet allows you to create a custom Twitter background with text and an image.  You can customize the colors of already available Twitter patterns and PrettyTweet can also instantly update your profile with the background you create.

Begin by selecting one of the available backgrounds on PrettyTweet.  Then all you need to do is add your photo, whatever text you want included on the left side of your profile, and adjust the colors to your liking.

To see PrettyTweet in action, watch the screencast below:

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Lizzer is a service that allows you to quickly search for and share links, photos, video, and more in email and blogs.  By installing the Lizzer bookmarklet, you can find and insert content into various services with just a couple of clicks.

After you sign up you can add or remove services that you want Lizzer to search from.  Included are YouTube videos, Flickr photos, Google blog search, Google and Yahoo! Web search, and Google News search.  You can also add your Flickr and YouTube ID to have the ability to have Lizzer search through your own photos and videos that you have tagged.

To use Lizzer, just install the bookmarklet and click on it whenever you’re writing an email or a blog post and need to add links or media.  You can do a search for the content you need and insert items right from the bookmarklet.

My only problem with Lizzer is the number of search results it provides.  In some cases I was only getting 4 or 5 Google search results, which is obviously a lot less than I would see if I was doing a regular Google search.

To see Lizzer in action, watch the screencast below (best if viewed in HD full screen):

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[via Mashable]

Trackle is a personalized online alert system.  It allows you to set up “tracklets” and be alerted for things like crime in your neighborhood, cheap airline tickets, new photos in your friends flickr photostream – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

After you sign up for an account you can begin choosing what you would like to be alerted about.  I chose crime in my neighborhood, craigslist postings for a treadmill in my area, cheap airfare to Arizona, and mentions of DemoGirl.  You can choose to receive your alerts in your Trackle account, in a daily digest via email, and/or SMS.

There are so many different types of tracklets you can set up and such a wide range of categories, that I can’t begin to list them all here.  You can also share the alerts you receive with friends via email or on Twitter.

To learn more about Trackle, watch the screencast below:

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[via TechCrunch]

Doris is a dead-simple task manager that helps you see what you need to get done, and then check them off your list.  She’s pretty new to the scene and has slightly limited features, but she’s already very charming.

Because of the way I’m speaking about Doris, you may think that she’s a real-life personal assistant – she’s not.  I just like giving life to things I find on the Internet, especially when they have such a lovely name.  In order to use Doris you just need to fill out a quick registration form and begin creating groups that you’ll add your tasks to.  By default you’ll have a group named today and a group named tomorrow, but you can change them to anything you want.  You could have a group for work tasks and a group for family tasks.  Then you simply add tasks to each group, which can be easily rearranged and moved into different groups with drag and drop.  There is also a task history and you can reinstate any task that you have previously marked as completed.  It’s so simple, I just had to create a screencast.

To see Doris in action, watch the screencast below:

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[via WebWorkerDaily]

A few days ago Gmail released a new feature in “Labs” called multiple inboxes.  It’s a handy way to see not only a preview of your inbox when you log into your Gmail account, but to also see a preview of certain emails that you apply labels to.

In order to use multiple inboxes, you need to go into the Labs section of your Gmail account and enable it.  Then you can change the settings to display a preview of mail that has specific labels attached to it.  So, I have a panel with my regular inbox, one with Google Alerts set for DemoGirl, and one with all emails that are labeled family.

After I set up my different panels I decided I wanted to also get a preview of mail from one of my other Gmail accounts.  This takes a little bit of tinkering around with filters, but it’s pretty easy to do.  I thought this may be useful to you, so I decided to make a screencast.

After I patted myself on the back and then thought loudly, “Damn I’m Smart! Go Molly!”  for figuring out how to do this little task, I stumbled upon an article written by Josh Lowensohn from Webware.  In his article he describes, step by step, almost exactly what I am showing you in my screencast.  I just thought I would disclose that piece of info, since Webware is probably a far more read blog than DemoGirl.  So, Josh, I guess great minds think alike!

To see Gmail multiple inboxes in action, watch the screencast below:

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Blu is a Twitter desktop application that makes most other Twitter desktop applications look like, well, not so pretty.  It’s only Windows 7 and Vista compatible so some of you may have to just watch the embedded screencast to see its beauty.

After you download and run it, all you need to do is sign in using your Twitter credentials.  You’ll see your twitter stream, which automatically updates every 2 minutes or so, and you can update right from blu.  You can also instantly reply, dm, and retweet directly from the timeline.  When a tweet is a reply to another tweet, you’ll be able to “flip over” the tweet to see the original conversation.

You can also favor people you follow on Twitter and their tweets will also appear in your “Faves” so you’ll be able to keep up with what your favorite people are doing.

My two issues with blu:  You can’t resize the Twitter stream window and there doesn’t seem to be a way to see replies to my tweets.  The latter of those two issues causes me to return to Digsby, my IM/Twitter/email client of choice, previously reviewed here.

To see blu in action, watch the screencast below:

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[via WebWorkerDaily]

GrubHub is a restaurant takeout and delivery service that finds restaurants in your neighborhood who are open and ready to serve you some grub.  It’s currently only available in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, and New York, so my apologies if you’re not one of the lucky ones who gets to take advantage of this extremely simple but useful service.

All you need to do is enter in your address and GrubHub will spit out a list of restaurants who not only have takeout, but who also deliver to your exact address.  There are menus listed for all of the restaurants and many allow you to order online, right from GrubHub.  In fact, if the restaurant has a logo present, GrubHub actually makes some money!

You can save menus to your “menu drawer” to find again later, read and write reviews, and share reviews via email, on Facebook, and Twitter.  You can also keep track of previous orders so you can reorder the same thing without any hassle and resume incomplete orders.  There are also sections for you to leave special requests for items you’re ordering and delivery instructions.  I’ve used GrubHub twice (the last two times I ordered delivery) and both times it worked great, without any problems.  I simply ordered my food online, and 30 or so minutes later my food was here.  I never even had to pick up the phone.  GrubHub sent me a confirmation email with a delivery time estimate as well.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of reviewing GrubHub before.  I’ve known about the service for quite some time and I guess I just assumed everyone else did too.  But after reading my friend Allen’s post here about how he had just stumbled upon the service, I felt that I should share it with my wonderful readers here as well.

To see GrubHub in action, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD fullscreen):

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SlinkSet gives you a way to create your own public or private social news and link sharing site.  It gives you and your friends a way to share interesting stories with each other in a private environment or lets you create your own “Digg-like” site where stories are voted up or down and commented on.

Creating your site is really quick and easy:  Choose a username and password and choose a name to be included in your URL.  Then just choose a name for your site (mine was Screencast News) and you’re done.  You also have the option of making your site public or private.  You can then customize the way your site looks and add additional features like custom sidebar HTML and categories.

You can also invite members to your site and make them admin, moderators, or just members.  If your site is private, as mine was during this demo, you need to invite people to become members and then give them specific permissions.  You and your friends can then start adding content to your site.  Just add a title and a link if you’re sharing a story from another site.  You can also add a description if your post is a discussion.  Users can vote stories up or down and comment on them.  Yes, think Digg.

At first glance, I was immediately excited at the thought of creating my own space to share stories and thoughts with a specific group of people.  I thought of work, collaboration, and privacy.  SlinkSet doesn’t appeal to me as much for a public news site, but for a place for me and a select number of friends to share specific content.  I have Twitter to share whatever pops into my head with 800 + followers.  SlinkSet is what I would use if I wanted to share funny (and sometimes inappropriate) links and discussions with people I’m close with.

To see SlinkSet in action, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD full screen):

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[via MakeUseOf]