DemoGirl

I have a problem.  I’m addicted to real estate sites.  I’m constantly checking on what my home value is or searching to see if anyone has bought the house across the street.  If you are actually looking to buy a house or sell your house, though, Dwellicious may be a good tool for you.

Dwellicious  — like Delicious for real estate — is a real estate bookmarking site that helps you keep track of that house you saw on Craigslist or Zillow last week.  If you had an account with Dwellicious you would simply have bookmarked it –  it would have been added to your Dwellicious page which you could share with your mother who would criticize your taste.

Dwellicious is set up to work with many popular real estate sites, like Zillow, Yahoo, Craigslist, Trulia and many more. The cool thing about the site is that bookmark listings on your Dwellicious page are automatically updated whenever the property data changes — change in price, availability or the addition of photos.

Go ahead and check out the Dwellicious screencast below (best viewed fullscreen in HD):

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zeaLOG is a life tracking service that helps you to track just about anything you can think of in your day to day activities.  Whether it’s how many glasses of water you drink or how many times you dine out at a restaurant – zeaLOG will help you keep track.

It started out harmless enough – I created a log to track every time I go to the gym.  I also created one to track how many Diet Cokes I consume in a day.  Then, somehow, I found myself tracking how much water I was drinking, calories I’m consuming, and hours of TV I watch a day.  It’s a little addicting.

To create a zeaLOG all you need to do is enter in what you want to track.  Then choose the unit of measure (hours, ounces, pounds, etc.) for what you’ll be tracking.  For example, if I was tracking how much gas I was putting in my car I would enter in gallons here.  Then choose how you want to make your entries – by checking them once completed, by adding an amount every time you do something, or the current value of something you’re tracking.  This part really depends on what exactly you’re tracking.  You then have the option of making your zeaLOG public or private and you can allow others to join.

Every time you do something that you’re tracking, simply enter the data into the profile page for that activity.  If others have joined you then you’ll see their data as well.  It’s all nicely laid out in a chart and people can leave comments as well.

If a lot of people join then you may notice an overloaded chart like the one above, but you can change the date range and even remove people from the chart to get a better view.

At the moment, zeaLOG has me hooked.  I’m trying to make an effort to go to the gym more and trying to decide if I’m watching too much TV.  Only time will tell if I continue to log in and enter in my progress.

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

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[via VentureBeat]

I was browsing the Download Squad Web site today and they mentioned a nifty outline application called LooseStitch.

LooseStitch is a Web-based application that lets you easily create outlines and share them or allow others to work on the outlines with you.  You don’t really have to sign up — just create an outline name and provide your email address and LooseStitch will give you the URL for your outline.

Once you’ve created your outline, it is easy to start adding items.  You can set due dates for items, mark items as completed and easily shift the order of your outline items.  I really like the feature that allows you to invite other people to work on the outline.  This seems like it would work great for collaborating with my co-workers.

LooseStitch also gives you a link that you can embed in your own Web site or blog.  Your outline will appear and each time you update your outline on LooseStitch, those changes will automatically show up on your Web site or blog.  One thing I did notice is that when the outline is embedded in  your Web site, the items that you have “completed” do not appear crossed off as they do on the LooseStitch page.

It seems to me that there are lots of great uses for LooseStitch — working on your novel or term paper, planning your grandmother’s 90th birthday party, or collaborating with your colleagues on a project.  If you want to pay a bit of money ($24.95/year) you can get a pro account.  The pro account lets you manage all of your outlines from a single window.  You can also attach images, pdf files, audio and video — up to 100MB.

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

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P.S. Please ignore the ugly little window in the bottom right during part of the screencast.  My mistake after a long day of work.

Dabbleboard is an online whiteboard that allows you to draw messy circles, rectangles, triangles, etc, but immediately corrects your freehand into a smooth shape.

Besides basic shapes, you can also insert images, add text anywhere, and draw freehand.  You can select and store different shapes into your library for future use as well as entire projects.  Dabbleboard also allows real-time collaboration.  It’s a pretty handy tool, especially if you use whiteboards often.  To see it in action, watch the screencast below:

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Click Here To Watch Better Quality 2m49s

[via WebWorkerDaily]

Ididwork allows you to create a microblog to record all of the things you accomplish throughout your work day.  You can share this information with other co-workers and your boss.  You can also keep it private as a way to track how you’re spending your time.  However, if you look at the screenshot under “Your recent work” you’ll see that I’m not just using ididwork for actual job related work.  I’m also using it as a microblog for all of my daily activities.

When you visit the homepage, you’ll see that it specifies “Keep a history of your work, and share it with your team”.  You can share your work with your team by entering in the email address your co-workers use for their ididwork account and after they approve you, you’ll have a feed showing all of your, and their, daily work accomplishments.  You can also share this information with your boss and choose to have a report sent to them weekly or monthly.  This is all great if you have a small team of people and want to see what projects each person has been working on.  You can also tag all of your activities so you can see what areas you’ve been spending the most time on.  There are also graphs that break down your daily activity according to your tags.  I think it can be much more useful though, as a way to keep track of everything you’re accomplishing throughout the day.

Right now there aren’t too many features on ididwork.  I would like to see the ability to log activities from your mobile phone, and a way to share certain activities with certain people.  For example, if I’m planning a party with “Judy”, I could create the tag “party” and every time one of us completes a task and tags it “party” it will show up in our shared feed and we’ll know what to move onto next.  I know this makes it sound like ididwork is a task manager, but that’s not where I’m going with this.  I think of it as a microblog of what I’m getting done paired with the ability to see what people I’m involved with are getting done as well.  To see what I mean, watch the screencast below:

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Click Here To Watch Better Quality 2m26s

[via TechCrunch]

Presdo is an online scheduling application that helps you to quickly, and attractively, schedule events with a group of people.  It’s very minimalistic from the get go, only requiring you to type in what you want to do with your guests before bringing you to another page where you can add locations and more event details.  It understands basic commands like “dinner with Jerry next week at 8pm” and remembers contacts you’ve added in the past.  You can add a location by entering in the exact address or you can do a search based on the type of place you’re looking for and the location.  Your guests can suggest different times and you can message back and forth from your event page, all without them having to sign up.  All of your events are listed on one page and you’ll be notified any time someone has made a change.

I really, really hate using the word “sexy” when referring to Web applications, but I’ll make an exception for Presdo.  It’s especially weird to refer to it in that way because it’s an online scheduling application — who knew scheduling dinner with friends could be so hot?  Here’s my screencast tour of Presdo:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 3m3s

Want this screencast on your site?  Click here to get the code for this and other DemoGirl screencasts!

[via TechCrunch]

Twiddla is a tool that allows you to mark up Web pages, images, or start fresh on a blank canvas. They provide you with the basic tools you’ll need like shapes, clip art, and a drawing tool but you can also upload your own media. You can visit Web pages from within Twiddla and mark those up too. There’s a chat feature so you can collaborate at the same time. Twiddla sessions can be left open to the public so anyone can join in or you can make them password protected and invite specific people. There’s a bookmarklet so you can mark up a Web page on the fly and you can add Twiddla buttons to your site so your visitors can have some fun too. It’s really easy to get started and you can try it out first in the sandbox. Here’s my screencast tour of Twiddla:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 4m39s

Want this screencast on your site? Click here to get the code for this and other DemoGirl screencasts!

Drop.io, a service that allows you to create your own private file drop spaces, has added a nice new feature called drop.io voice.  The service itself is simple – you can upload multiple files and create a private or fully collaborative space where notes and more files can be added.  Now, however, after you create your drop you’ll see a phone number with an extension in your space.  You can call the number at any time from anywhere, enter in your private extension, and record a message.  The audio file is almost immediately uploaded to your space as an MP3 file.  If you share that space or even just the number and extension with someone then they can also send voice messages to the drop space.  You’re given 100 MB of storage for free in each drop space which equals out to about 400 minutes of talk time.  If you’re not familiar with drop.io, check out my previous screencast here, although I did include a quick run through of how to use the entire site again in this screencast.  Here’s my screencast tour of drop.io voice:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m56s

Want this screencast on your site?  Click here to get the code for this and other DemoGirl screencasts!

Squidnote is a group greeting service that allows you to create e-cards in which a whole group of people can collaborate on.  As the creator, you  choose the template for the card and the heading.  You then add a message anywhere on the card and can also add photos or stock art.  Then just choose the date and time you want the card to go out and invite friends and family to add their own greetings.  They’ll receive a link in an email which will allow them to personalize it without signing up for anything.  These cards can be many pages long and can be created up to 6 months in advance.  It’s a fun service but I’d like to see more features like audio greetings and embeddable cards.  Here’s my screencast tour of SquidNote:

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I don’t know what they’re feeding the Google Maps team, but I wish they’d send some of it my way. There are some new features that have been released over the past couple of weeks, and I thought I’d show them to you just in case you’ve missed them. First off, Hybrid view is out and Terrain view is in. You can still view the “Hybrid view” but it’s not called that anymore. It’s actually just the default view when you click on Satellite. Second, you can edit default marker locations on Google Maps now. Those markers never seemed to be dead on when it came to marking a location, so this could prove to be very useful. The last feature, and the newest, is collaboration in My Maps. Now you can create a map and allow friends to edit and add things to it. This is great for people planning a vacation or mapping out hiking or biking trails. Like I said, I don’t know what those guys at Google are on but the way they push out new features I think they may be eating the same magic gumdrops as the guys at Zoho. Here’s my screencast tour of Google Maps updates:

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