Demo Girl

When I first moved to San Francisco I lived just 2 blocks from Golden Gate Park.  I would go running there about 4 or 5 times a week, usually taking one of the same 3 routes that I had discovered (yes, I discovered them, they’re mine).  By the time I got home I would assume that I had gone about 4 miles, but actually, I had no idea.  I did try mapping them out on a Google map once in hopes of figuring out exactly how far I was going, but there really wasn’t much I could do with that info, like track it and share it.  That’s where RunThere comes in.  RunThere allows you to create maps of your running and biking routes and gives you a way to easily send it to your own fitness blog.

After you sign up, you can start creating maps.  All you need to do is enter in a location, or select one from your saved locations, and then click along your route to add markers.  There are mile markers so you’ll know how far you’ve gone and you can enter in your time so you can track your pace.  Every time you go on one of these runs, you can simply click on “log run/ride” and enter in whether or not your ran or biked it, your time, add notes, set the date and time, and even add how you felt when you did it.  After you save it you’ll see that it’s automatically added to your fitness blog.

You can share your fitness blog URL with others (as long as you make it public in your settings) and add people as friends so you can cheer each other on.  Another nice feature about your fitness blog is that you can log treadmill runs too.  Not everyone is into running outdoors, so that’s a really great option and one that I looked for right away after signing up.  You can also create a profile, view other peoples routes, add comments or notes on routes, and search for routes based on location.

If you’re into group runs or bike rides, there’s an option to create an invitation to send out to your Facebook friends.  You can choose to plan a run, bike, walk, or swim, and even choose to have people bring their dogs along.

The only feature I would really like to see added is a way to log time spent on a stationary bike.  I have one at home and would like the option of adding the miles I put on that to my fitness blog.  They have the treadmill option, so it doesn’t seem like an insane request.

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

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Never a borrower or a lender… well, you know the saying.  But maybe there is a way to feel more comfortable lending out your brand new digital camera to your neighbor.  Rentoni helps you keep track of your lending and borrowing habits.

Sign up is free and you can quickly start adding items and people to your list.  Things are grouped into items lent or borrowed and the due date is listed next to the item.  You can also select to have your borrower or lender notified via email 48 hours before an item is due.
To see Rentoni in action, check out the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):

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[via makeuseof]

Who doesn’t love to get a letter in the mail?  It may not be the most environmentally friendly way to contact someone, but once-in-a-while it’s nice to get some correspondence the old fashioned way.  Snailmailr offers a service that will help you keep in touch with someone even if you don’t happen to have an envelope or stamp.

All you have to do is enter in the address information and then type up your note.  You can even add pictures, which will be printed out in rich color for no extra charge.  You can also feel good about using the service because Snailmailr uses recycled paper and invests in terrapress carbon offset credits.

The cost for sending a 4 page letter is $1, which incluces postage.  Snailmailr does put a small logo on the envelope, but you can get rid of that for an extra 15 cents.

To see Snailmailr in action, click on the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):

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Last week I reviewed Screenjelly, a service that allows you to create screencasts that can be sent to Twitter.  This week there’s a new kid on the block, Screenr, so I thought I’d give it a whirl to see  how the two compared.  A lot like Screenjelly, Screenr allows you to quickly and easily create screencasts which can be sent to Twitter.

BUT, Screenr also allows you to download your screencasts and upload them to YouTube.  Another feature Screenr is ahead with is allowing you to resize the recording window.  Screenjelly only allows you to record your entire screen…and that doesn’t make for a very pretty screencast.

Screenjelly allows you to keep your videos private, but Screenr doesn’t currently seem to have any privacy settings, except to just delete a video.  So if I create a video that I want to keep in my account for future reference, I have to also share it with the Screenr community.

Both services seem to have certain features that are missing from one, but present in the other.  Most important to me?  I’d like to see both products add better privacy settings.

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

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Better Twitter is a user script that runs using the Firefox Extension Greasemonkey.  It adds a retweet button to updates, enables auto-load to your Twitter stream, and shows in-line conversations of “in reply to” tweets.

You need to have Greasemonkey installed in order to install Better Twitter, but then you’ll be able to reply to tweets when viewing a single tweet, view “in reply to” conversations in-line, and more.

If you’re into more advanced features, you may want to check out PowerTwitter (previously reviewed here) although I found that it slowed Twitter down so much that I eventually had to uninstall it.

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

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[via Lifehacker]

Screenjelly is a handy tool that allows you to record your screen and then instantly tweet, email, or simply upload your creation. It gives you a great way to quickly show your Mom how to add her profile pic to her Facebook page, or to simply show off new features of your Web application.  Screencasts are extremely useful, and Screenjelly makes creating and sharing them easy.

There’s not much of a learning curve with Screenjelly.  All you need to do is select the microphone you wish to record audio with (or select the option to not record audio) and click on record.  You’ll have 5 seconds to prepare yourself and then up to 3 minutes to record.  Screenjelly records your entire screen and there aren’t any editing tools so make sure that you have your screen all set up for what you want to record.

When you’re through recording you can instantly tweet out a link, send it via email, or upload it to your Screenjelly account.  Public videos can be seen on the Screenjelly homepage and you can even tip people who create useful screencasts using TipJoy.

You need to sign into Screenjelly using your Twitter credentials – and that’s where I ran into a problem.  Unfortunately, when I checked the box next to “keep this video private” I assumed that it wouldn’t be tweeted out to my followers.  The problem here is that when I later tried to “favor” the video (just to see what would happen) it automatically sent out a tweet saying something like, “I liked this video on Screenjelly”.  Not a huge deal, and I did receive a response from Screenjelly minutes after I tweeted my irritation explaining that “Forthcoming changes will prevent this”.  Still, I feel that there should be more settings in place to allow me to select whether or not I want to tweet videos out at all – which I probably won’t most of the time.  I don’t want to mistakenly tweet out a test video (which was what happened yesterday). If you want to try out Screenjelly and don’t want to give out your Twitter credentials just yet, then do what I did and create a fake account.  Works just fine.

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

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I first have to say, that I love the name of this Web site — JobSpice.  I don’t know why, but I just love saying it!

I’ve been lucky enough to have a job that I love and I’ve had that job for more than 13 years.  But if you are out there and you need to create a resume on the fly, JobSpice might deliver.

The Web site is very user-friendly, I think even my least tech-savvy relatives could use it with little instruction.  You can go to the site and create your resume in less than 30 minutes.  You don’t have to sign up for anything if you just want to save a copy of the resume to your computer.  If you want to keep a copy on JobSpice, creating an account only requires you select a username and password — no email to enter.  Then you can create a custom link that will provide people with access to your online resume.

To see JobSpice in action, check out the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):
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[via:  techcrunch]

Listia is a service that allows you to post items that you want to give away and then allows other users to bid on the item using a type of point system.

The idea is, that instead of using the ‘free’ section on a site like craigslist to get rid of stuff you don’t need,  you can post them to listia as to avoid numerous phone calls, email exchanges, and inevitable no-shows.  For example, let’s say I wanted to get rid of a bunch of old National Geographic Magazines.  I could post them on craigslist and give out my address to every person who said they’d be right over to pick them up, or I could post them on listia and have people bid on the magazines and only give my info out to the person who spent the time and the credits to win the auction.

When I say bid, I don’t mean with money.  You bid with credits, which you earn every time you post an item yourself.  You also earn credits by having people use your sign-up link when registering for the site.  If you run out of credits, and there’s something that you simply must have, then you can purchase additional credits for about 10 cents a piece.

When you sign up for your listia account, which is free, you’ll be given 500 free credits that you can use to bid on items that other users are giving away.  There is a slight catch here though – you get 50 credits right away but you need to post an item yourself in order to get the additional 450 credits.  Not a huge deal; I posted a dirty litter box that I didn’t want to clean and received my sign-up credits that way.

One slightly confusing aspect of the site, however, is that when you post an item you have to add how the exchange of the item will take place in the description.  There is no set place for this on the form and I found that most people didn’t have any description of how they would get you the item that they were getting rid of.  If I bid on an item I want to know if I’m supposed to pay for shipping, pick it up on a certain day, or if they’ll be shipping the item for free.  I really think there needs to be a set (and mandatory) form field for this information.  Getting whatever I used all of my precious credits on is a pretty huge aspect of this site running correctly.

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

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Dingbee is a web-based social calendar that lets you quickly add events and share them with your followers.  The set up is easy — just sign in or connect with Facebook Connect.

You can quickly add your own events and even set up recurring events.  If your events are public, your followers can view them and comment.  If you are using Facebook Connect, your public events will automatically be added to your Facebook Feed.  The trick will be to collect some followers — but once you have some, Dingbee could be a handy place to keep friends abreast of your social calendar

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

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[via makeuseof.com]

Have you ever been reading an article and found that there were multiple links you were interested in following?  I know, it can be time consuming to open each one individually — well, maybe not so much, but anything that can speed up this process is something I am interested in.  Which is why after reading this article at CNET today I went ahead and installed Firefox add-on Multi Links.

After the add-on is installed, just tell it what to do with the links you select.  You can open each one in a new tab, in a new window or add them to a bookmarks folder.  After that, it’s just a matter of a right-mouse click to select an area containing links.  If you are reading something and you don’t want all of the links in a certain area, you can hold down your CTRL or Shift key to draw multiple boxes around different parts of a site.

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

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