When I logged into Gmail this morning I finally saw what I really wanted to see yesterday afternoon – “Buzz”. It was right where everyone said it would be, under my inbox tab.
After spending a few hours poking around and (unsuccessfully) searching for some help topics on exactly who can see what, I think I finally got the gist of Google Buzz. Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, I like it. I like it a lot.
To learn how to get started using Google Buzz, watch the screencast below:
First of all, let me say that I will try to make this my last post (for a while) about anything wedding related. It just so happens that I received a note from the founders of MyWeddingBinder yesterday and after using it a bit today, I really feel that it is a very useful tool. Since I spent so much time testing it out I figured it would be worth my time to go the extra mile and share my experience with you.
Disclosure: I am currently planning a wedding so please excuse me if I get over excited. I can’t help it.
MyWeddingBinder gives you a space to plan and organize the details of your wedding. Everything from your guest list, to your vendors, to the seating chart, to your budget – it’s all there to help you keep track of the madness that lasts just one day.
Now I know that there are a lot of sites out there that can be used to help you plan your wedding. The problem with most of these sites, however, is that they do not focus just on your wedding day – they focus on shoving ads down your throat (a bit extreme, but it’s pretty much true) for things like dresses and floral arrangements that most people can’t even afford. What I’ve found (and believe me, I have looked and looked) is that most wedding planning sites put your actual wedding planning in the background and pictures of extravagant ceremonies and merchandise in the foreground. And that’s why they’re free. So fine.
MyWeddingBinder is not free. In fact you can’t even set up a free trial account to test it out. There’s a fee of $29.95 to create your account, but once you’ve paid you have an ad-free, clean and organized space to plan out your special, and costly, day. At first I was a bit turned off by the fact that I couldn’t test the site out before handing over my credit card but then, after they were kind enough to let me use a test account for free, I realized that this is something that’s worth paying for. I’m not sure if it’s worth $29.95 yet, but it definitely made an impact. I think some additional features are needed to warrant the price tag. This is my wish list:
I want a way to customize the table set-up. As it is now there are only round tables available to create your seating chart.
Adding guests is a pain. You have to add them one at a time, click on “save”, and then click on “add guests” again. Maybe add an “Import your address book” feature.
How about a blog to keep your guests up to date on wedding day details?
A section to upload your inspiration photos
If you want to see all of what MyWeddingBinder can do, watch the screencast below:
Thinkmeter gives you a way to quickly get opinions and advice from friends, family and co-workers. You can ask for opinions on anything from what color to paint your kitchen to what to buy your Mom for her birthday – and you don’t even need to sign up to use it. If you do sign up you’ll be able to track responses and comments left by the people included in your decision campaign.
To see Thinkmeter in action, check out the screencast below:
Duffel is a trip planning tool that allows you to clip and save ideas and links for places you are planning on visiting or for a vacation that you dream of someday taking.
Creating a Duffel is simple: Select the location of where you want to go, give your trip a name such as, “When I win the lottery,” and then choose to make it private or public. Your Duffel will then be created and open preloaded with suggestions of where to stay, sightseeing attractions, and notes that can be edited.
If you added dates to your Duffel (you don’t have to add dates, which is helpful since most of my trips are wishful thinking) then you can drag and drop notes and activities under each day that you’ll be in a location to create an itinerary. You can also invite friends to join you on Duffel and allow them to collaborate with you. You can add other Duffel users as contacts so that in the future you can easily invite them to collaborate on a trip.
Probably the most useful aspect of Duffel is the bookmarklet. It allows you to add any Web page that you’re viewing to a Duffel and add notes, phone numbers, and addresses. So if I find myself on a Website for a luxurious hotel in Paris, I can simply click on “Add to Duffel” and add it to my “When Pigs Fly” trip. To see Duffel in action, check out the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):
Linkli.st allows you to quickly and easily create lists out of links that you find on the Web. You can share these lists with friends and allow others to add links to your list, which is great for collaboration. It’s free to use and only requires a sign-up if you wish to use all of the handy features.
You begin by giving your list a name – I called my first list, “Recipe Ideas for Thanksgiving,” which I filled with links to online recipes that I’m thinking of making for Thanksgiving. I made my list public and allowed others to add to the list. When you enable these features, other people can see your list and add relevant links to it. People can also reply to a list, which really just creates a new list which will be linked to the original list. The “reply” feature had me a bit confused at first, so hopefully when you see it in the screencast you’ll get my drift. There’s also a bookmarklet which enables you to add links to your lists, wherever you are on the Web.
You can share the URL of your Linklist with friends and grab the embed code for your own blog or Website. People can also subscribe to your different lists so they’ll know when you add something new.
Linklist doesn’t have set rules for how you should use it, and that’s one of the reasons I like it so much. Planning a vacation? Create an ideas Linklist and share it with your traveling companion. Want to show off a list of your favorite blogs? Create a favorites Linklist and share it with your Twitter followers. Check it out and if you create a Linklist, share it in the comments!
To see Linklist in action, watch the screencast below:
We here at DemoGirl have been working to get a fresh site up, but sometimes the collaboration process is a bit laborious. I’m thinking things might move along a bit more if we use something like Notable.
Notable provides users with the tools to quickly give or receive feedback on a Web project. You can sign up for the free service, or choose one of the paid accounts. Once you are signed up you can quickly capture pages or images — either with their Firefox plug-in, an upload or simply by using your browser — and save them to a workspace. You and the people you invite (or you can make the workspace public) can then start adding notes about the project.
Notes can be added to the screenshot by simply selecting areas with your mouse. You can also add feedback to the code or just the copy of a site or application. Comments can be made on the overall project or just on specific notes. And you can keep track of who is providing the feedback to your project. Notable seems like it would fit the bill for the small project we are working on — plus, it might be easier for Molzy to use Notable to tell me that my design scheme sucks.
To see Notable in action, click on the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):
Last week I reviewedScreenjelly, 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):
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):
If you use Google Calendar then you may have noticed the little green labs icon up near your settings. This is where Google is allowing you to test out some features that may or may not get pushed through as permanent fixtures in Google Calendar. As of now there are six features: Adding a background to your calendar, attaching Google Docs to an event (love that one!!), a world clock, jump to date, next meeting, and free or busy.
Once enabled, they sit on the right side of your calendar – and there doesn’t seem to be a way to rearrange them or move them to the left side. I’m not going to explain what each one does here – you’ll need to watch the 3 minute screencast if you want to find out. Or, you can just test them out yourself. I recommend doing the former
To see Google Calendar Labs in action, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):
I’ve been meaning to do a screencast of myebook for a while now. Well, it’s spring break and I decided to take some time and get down to the basics of myebook.
This site allows you to easily publish and share your own content online as well as read ebooks published by other people. You might be working on a novel, putting together a book of photography, making an escrapbook of your kids or even creating a record of your genealogy — all of these things and more can easily be created in myebook and then shared with friends or strangers.
It’s very easy to add videos and images into galleries and then all you have to do is drag them for placement in your ebook. It did seem a bit clunky when it came to entering basic text, but I didn’t have a problem when copying data from an odt file.
Overall, the site is cool and I could see many uses for it — including spending way too much time browsing interesting ebooks created by strangers. I do like the idea of sending someone to my myebook site rather then sending them my manuscript as a plain old text document.
To see myebook in action, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):
