DemoGirl

Scr.im is a neat little tool that allows you to create an original URL that you can share on Twitter, Facebook, forums, and anywhere else that you don’t want to publish your real email address.

All you need to do is enter in your email address on the scr.im homepage and enter in a custom URL which will lead people to your real email address.  If you don’t care about a custom URL then scr.im will create one for you.  Whenever you need to share your email in a public forum, just enter in your scr.im URL.  The link will bring people to another page where they need to pass a captcha (a not-so-annoying captcha) in order to see your real email address.  If you’re a regular target of spambots because of posting your real email address on the Web, then you may want to give scr.im a look.

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

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[via MoMB]

Freckle is a time tracking application that will help you track all of the time you’re spending on projects.  It also allows you to track the time you spend on unbillable aspects of a project, like research or phone calls.  With freckle, you’ll see how much time you’re spending on a project, how much time you have left to finish, and how many hours to bill your client for.

When you sign up for freckle (there is a free 30-day trial) you’ll choose a username which will also be part of your unique URL.  So my URL is demogirl.letsfreckle.com.  Whenever I need to sign into my freckle account, I’ll need to go to that URL, not the freckle homepage.

Logging time is pretty simple – enter in a number for hours or minutes (freckle will know what you mean) and then create a project name or type in the name of an existing project.  It doesn’t even really have to be a project.  You could track the amount of time you just spent answering email.  Then add tags or notes for your project.  These will  help you see what you’re spending the most time on during the day as well has help you when trying to figure out how many hours to bill a client.  If you don’t want the time you just entered to be tracked as billable hours, then just place an * at the end of the tag.

You can also collaborate with co-workers in freckle.  As the owner of my freckle account, I can simply choose a username and password for someone I work with and they’ll receive an email with login information.  Now you’ll see who is working on what and how much time they have left to finish a project.  If two people are working on the same project, you’ll see what each person has been working on and how much time they’ve been spending on any given task.

Each project has it’s own summary page where you’ll see all of the activity of the people working on it.  You can easily archive projects and reactivate them and download the entries as a CSV file.

Freckle has different plans you can choose from with pricing ranging from $12.00 a month for one user and up to 10 projects, to $98.00 a month for a large amount of users and infinite projects.  You can sign up for a free 30 day trial so you’ll know what works best for you.

The only thing I really saw missing from freckle is a way to set a timer to run and actually track your time for you.  It’s fine that you can enter in your time but that still leaves the task of using another application that acts more like a timer.  I’d love to see this feature integrated into freckle.

To learn more about freckle, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):

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[via WebWorkerDaily]

A lot of my friends from high school, and even earlier, have found me on Facebook.  It’s a great way to see what each other has been up to and possibly even begin a new friendship, as adults.  With the good, there is also the bad.  Some of these friends don’t understand (or maybe don’t care) about your privacy when doing something as simple as tagging you in a photo.  Yes, I’m talking about the photo they find of you from 10 years ago where you’re  in a hotel room after prom, beer-bonging a bottle of champagne.

Sure, the two of you may laugh at it, but will your straitlaced boss or your fragile Grandma be laughing?  Unless you have a boss like mine, I’m sure they wouldn’t.  Once you are tagged in a photo, everyone who is your friend, and the friend of your jerk-friend that tagged you, will see the photo.  You didn’t put the photo up, but it’s still being blasted out to all of your Facebook friends simply because you were tagged.

As of now, there isn’t a way to approve all photos where you are tagged before they are posted.  I don’t know why – it seems like a very easy fix.  There is a lengthy discussion page on the matter here.  Why not just have an option to opt-out of allowing people to tag you in photos?  Why can someone post an image of a cheeseburger, and tag me as said cheeseburger?  As a vegetarian, I find that offensive and gross.

In the meantime, there is a way to get the tags removed quickly with a few changes in your settings.  To see how, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):

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Start.io allows you to create a custom homepage, filled with links to all of your favorite Websites and blogs.  You can customize the way your page looks and even choose to be notified when a site you have listed has new content.

When you create your start.io account, you’ll choose a username which will be included in your homepage URL.  From there, all you need to do is create groups and add links to each group.  For example, I created a group called “Music” and added links to my Blip.fm account, MixTape.me, and Pandora.  When I click on my home button in my browser (I set my start.io page as my homepage) I’ll now have access to all of my favorite Websites and blogs.  I can click on a link and be brought to Twitter, Facebook, etc.  You can also choose to have start.io put a little marker next to any of the sites that have new content since the last time you visited.  It doesn’t give you a preview – it just lets you know that there’s something new to look at.

You can customize the way your page looks with one of their available themes and, if you’re so inclined, edit the CSS to give it more of a personal touch.  You can also create your own theme from scratch.

The only beef I have with start.io is that when I click on “Logout” it brings me to another page which states, “Are you sure you want to leave?”.  Yes, I’m quite sure I want to leave which is why I clicked on Logout to begin with.  It’s a very minor detail, and I’m afraid that start.io is receiving a lashing from me because of all of the other sites that do this as well…I just can’t keep my mouth shut anymore.

Other than that, I’m quite happy having start.io set as my homepage .

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

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[via Download Squad]

MixTape.me is a service that allows you to create playlists out of all of your favorite music as well as discover playlists that other MixTape.me users have created.  It’s completely Web-based and there’s no sign-up required in order to use it, although I recommend signing up to really get your hands dirty.

You can begin by creating a playlist, which is done with a simple mouse-click.  Name your playlist and then you can search for the songs you wish to add to the playlist.  You can drag and drop songs right into any playlist you like.  There is also a neat feature called a “quick playlist” which allows you to drag songs into sort of a temporary playlist.  This is useful if you don’t want to create a new playlist from scratch – and you have the option of saving it as a playlist later or clearing it and starting over.  You can also create links to songs, share the embed code and URL of playlists with friends, as well as email playlists for others to enjoy.

There’s also a social aspect to MixTape.me, and frankly, this is where I can see the service becoming quite addictive.  You can view profiles of other users, see their playlists, favor their playlists, follow them so you’ll know when they’ve added something new, and see the users they’re following.  You can drag and drop individual songs from other users playlists into one of your playlists.  Seriously, I could go on and on.

MixTape.me is a project of Adam Pash, Editor of one of my favorite blogs, Lifehacker.

To see MixTape.me in action, watch the screencast below (Best viewed in HD in full screen):

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Tired of opening multiple browser windows or tabs to keep track of what is going on on Facebook or Twitter?  Want to grab a quick map to locate a restaurant you are reading about?  RoamAbout v2.0 is a great add-on to help you do these things and more.   DemoGirl has previously covered RoamAbout, but they just launched v2.0 and we thought we’d revisit this cool add-on.

It’s currently in beta preview mode for Firefox and I grabbed my private download from TechCrunch.  Once you’ve downloaded and installed RoamAbout 2.0, you can start customizing your apps menu.  There are 47 apps to choose from, including Google Maps, YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter.  When you click on an app from your menu, a small window pops up to let you do what you need to.  You can also enable notifications on some apps, like gmail, so you are notified when you have a new message.

The open bar, which sits on top of your status bar, will display your feeds.  You can see current twitter updates, facebook updates, or view news feeds.
I really like this add-on, but if I don’t want to see everything that is going on, I can simply close the apps and open bar.  Then I just need to click on the RoamAbout symbol to open it up again.  Just note that your status bar must be open in order to see that symbol.

To see RoamAbout 2.0 in action, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):

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Having trouble remembering how you spent that $60 you just got from the ATM yesterday?  We found a simple Web site that can help you get a grasp on how you are spending your discretionary income.  Spendingdiary lets you easily keep track of items in categories created by you.

You can log in daily to enter in your spends for the day. Enter a category and amount for each item and that information will be stored for you.  Each day will show you a breakdown of how you spent your money.  You can quickly generate reports by day, week, month or a custom date range.  These reports can also be saved to your computer as an csv file.

Many of us have recently realized that it is crucial to keep track of every single penny and Spendingdiary is a great way to get started.
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We here at DemoGirl found something fun for your St. Patty’s Day — WeFollow.  WeFollow is a twitter directory that makes it easy to find the top twitter users for popular (and even not so popular) twitter tags.

The site is easy to navigate and fairly straightforward.  The Homepage lists some of the top twitter tags and the top five twitter users for those tags.
You can also find the top 100 twitter users across all tags or do a search for a specific tag.  It’s actually quite refreshing to see that there are currently more people following Barack Obama than there are following Britney Spears.  I’m just saying….

So how can you get on the WeFollow site?  Well, first you have to add yourself to the directory and there is a place to do that on the WeFollow home page.  Click the link to go to your twitter account and send out a tweet with up to three tags you want to be listed under.
Then, go out and scrounge up some more followers.  I currently have 10 followers and am #3 on the #screencast tag.  Awesome!!

I enjoyed checking out WeFollow and I hope you enjoy the screencast.

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I’d like to welcome the newest editor and screencaster to DemoGirl.com:  Maureen McDonald (aka Mo).  Besides being a fantastic writer and a long-time employee of our parent company, Centercloud LLC, she’s also my big sister!

I’ve been living/working at her place in sunny Thousand Oaks, CA for the past week teaching her everything I know about screencasting.  She’s only a week into learning how to use the software and has already published 2 screencasts to DemoGirl.com!  You can see the first one here and the second here.  It took me 3 weeks to publish my first screencast, almost 3 years ago.

Mo has a few more obstacles to work around than me – she has two energetic (and adorable!) children, a husband, and the job of providing support for the Centercloud customers.  She’s been in the technology game for 12+ years so I have a lot to learn from her as well.  We hope that her wide range of knowledge will expand the types of screencasts we publish here.

As with anything we publish here, we greatly appreciate comments and feedback.  Just remember that she is just getting started – so be nice…she’s my sister and I will show my teeth if necessary .  You can follow Mo on Twitter here.

Sure, multitasking might be OK on the subway where you answer email on your phone, eat your breakfast and try to finish the latest page in your suduko book.  But multitasking isn’t always the best way to be efficient.  That’s where ForceDo comes in.  ForceDo is a handy little Web site that helps you maximize your time by forcing you to focus on specific tasks.   After completing a simple sign-up process, you are ready to begin setting up (and completing!) tasks.

The first thing you’ll probably want to do is create lists — this is a good way organize the different tasks you create.
When you are ready, enter in a task.  You can set a specific amount of time you think you’ll spend on the task and also set its priority.
ForceDo also allows you to set up fun sounds to indicate when you’ve started a task, ended a task or just give you a little cheer along the way.
One cool little feature is that you can set your tasks up so that your Twitter account is updated when you start or complete a task — just make sure to do this in the lists section.
I am really excited to start using ForceDo for my business and personal tasks.  Perhaps this will be a new era where I actually complete one task before starting another.

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

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