DemoGirl

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):

[wpvideo xqDTKHUA]

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):

[wpvideo EV9Z15lk]

I am not a fan of Evite.  The problem is, almost everyone I know continues to use it even though there are so many other services out there that deserve a chance.  Here’s one.  Here’s another.  Oh, and yes, another.  Today I’m going to show you another great service that deserves some attention – Paperless Post allows you to create online invitations that resemble actual stationary.  The invites are highly customizable and your friends don’t need to sign up for anything in order to respond.

When your friends get the invite delivered to their inbox, they’ll be able to click on a clean, white envelope and the invite will pop out for them to read.  They can RSVP and, depending on the settings you used when creating your invite, they’ll be able to see who else is coming, who isn’t, and who hasn’t responded.

As the creator, you’ll be able to see who has opened the invite and not bothered to respond yet – just like Evite!

To learn more about Paperless Post and to see it in action, watch the screencast below (best if viewed in HD in full screen):

[wpvideo 4LRTuZV1]

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):

[wpvideo f7WOZjuy]

[via VentureBeat]

First of all, let me give you a little bit of background as to why I have such beef with Evite:

It was two days before New Year’s Eve and I finally decided to send out invites for the New Years party I had planned on having for at least a month.  That part was my bad.  I’m a procrastinator, but thankfully, so are my friends because most of them didn’t reply to the Evite until the day of the party.  The problem?  Evite went down for planned maintenance on New Year’s Eve.  So here I was, all dressed up with enough food for 10 people (but also 30 people because I didn’t really know who was coming) yelling at my boyfriend to make phone calls to see if anyone was coming at all.

The funny thing is, that originally I created my invites using Pingg, which I previously reviewed here, and was really excited to NOT use Evite when my boyfriend told me that I should really use a service that people are familiar with.  I should have known better.

This is where Atomeet comes in.  Atomeet is another event/party planning service that is both free and easy to use.  You begin creating your event right from the homepage and your guests don’t need to sign up for anything in order to RSVP.  You can add fun colors and themes to your event page and guests can write on the event page wall, but that’s about it.  Do you really need much more when trying to organize something like a group dinner?

If you don’t find that Pingg or Atomeet are the right fit for your event, also check out Anyvite which I previously reviewed here.

To see Atomeet in action, watch the screencast below:

[viddler id-42ff5077 h-451 w-545]

Click Here To Watch Better Quality 3m2s

Bandsintown is a really cool site that shows you when your favorite band is going to be playing at a venue in or around your city.  It also recommends artists it thinks you’ll like and allows you to connect with other people in your city that are going to the same show.

When you sign up for Bandsintown, you’ll have to tell it some of your favorite artists and where you’re located.  From that information, it will create a “recommendation cloud” filled with your favorite artists along with ones it thinks you’ll like.  All of the artists that appear in your cloud are playing in or around your city in the near future.  You can add shows you’ll be attending to your calendar and see what other Bandsintown members are going.  There’s also a widget that you can put on your blog or website that displays the shows you’ll be attending, the shows your favorite artist is performing at, or the upcoming shows at a specific venue.

Thanks to Marshall for putting Bandsintown back under my radar!  To see how it works, watch the screencast below:

[viddler id-3a94b46b h-451 w-545]

Click Here To Watch Better Quality 2m28s

When I was in my early twenties, I did a lot of random traveling/moving with a good friend of mine.  First it was Mammoth Lakes, CA, from there it was Maui, then Massachusetts, and so on.  Each time we moved to one of these places, we had no place to live and stayed in hotels or with friends until we could find a place to rent.  The same took place when I moved to San Francisco last September – I had to stay with a friend in a very tiny apartment until I could find my own place.  Staying in hotels is costly and some places we traveled to didn’t have a lot of hostels to choose from.  We were all about meeting new people and learning about the places we were living in, so something like AirBed & Breakfast is a service that would have saved us a lot of time and money.

Basically, AirBed & Breakfast allows you to post a spare couch, room, or futon and set a price of how much per night someone must pay in order to stay with you.  You can also include breakfast, which is sort of like a bed and breakfast – hence the name.    Travelers will be able to view your profile, which includes the basic info, but you can also add a link to your LinkedIn profile.  You can also choose to turn your listing on or off at any time.  If someone decides to book your place, they’ll pay AirBed & Breakfast your fees plus a 12% booking fee, which is how I’m guessing AirBed & Breakfast is going to monetize the site.  You’ll receive your payment via PayPal or check after your guest leaves.

I know that some people may seem skeptical about using something like AirBed & Breakfast.  That’s fine.  I don’t think they’re targeting skeptics.  They’re targeting people like me (or my former, younger self) who love meeting people, travel, and know how to be cautious when staying in a unfamiliar place.  It’s really not that much different than staying in a hostel somewhere in a room full of strangers, except for the fact that you can read comments from other people who have stayed with someone on AirBed & Breakfast.  I’m looking to go to Europe sometime in the very distant future, and if I’m on a tight budget, I’ll definitely be coming back to AirBed & Breakfast.  To learn more, check out the screencast below:

[viddler id-69b31343 h-451 w-545]

Click Here To Watch Better Quality 2m50s

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:

[viddler id-7293a59b h-451 w-545]

Click Here To Watch Better Quality 2m26s

[via TechCrunch]

Resnooze is a reminder service that sends you nudges about things you need to get done on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Knowing that there are a lot, and I mean a lot, of reminder/to-do applications out there, I was a little hesitant to give Resnooze a try.  I’m really glad I did because this is one that I may actually begin using.  To start using Resnooze, you just need to enter in your email address and then type what you need to be reminded of.  This can be anything from reminding yourself about a weekly conference call to setting up a reminder to go to the gym every day.  Resnooze will send you a little note about what you need to get done and you can choose to change how often you’re reminded or ignore it, which is essentially like hitting the snooze button.  If you’re a blogger, you can also put a “Resnooze This” button on your site and when your visitors click it, they’ll be able to set up a reminder to come back to your site.  You can also send reminders to your friends as well, but they’ll need to approve the Resnooze email first, before they see your initial reminder.  If you want to see Resnooze in action, then watch the screencast below:

[viddler id-e20aeb62 h-451 w-545]

Click Here To Watch Better Quality 3m

[via Go2Web20 Blog]

Yesterday, in Southern California, there was an earthquake. Yeah, I know, big shocker. Some of you may know that I’m originally from Southern California and all of my immediate family lives there as well. I’m up in San Francisco now so I didn’t feel a thing and didn’t even hear about it on the news. I read about it on Twitter. I read about it from the people I follow on Twitter, one of them being my brother. Since he posted to Twitter, “I just felt an earthquake” I figured he was alright. But when I tried to call my Mom to make sure she was Ok, I just got a message that her phone line was down. That made me feel better. All I kept thinking was, “how do I get this woman to understand that she should use Twitter!”. Hopefully these two screencasts will help her, and your friends and family, understand what a great tool Twitter can be (when it’s working).

The first screencast is more of an explanation of Twitter, and how it can be used to connect with friends and family members:

[viddler id-e94da0a1 h-451 w-545]

Click Here To Watch Better Quality 2m15s

This screencast will give anyone new to Twitter the tools to get started updating, finding friends, and sending private messages:

[viddler id-954985cf h-451 w-545]

Click Here To Watch Better Quality 2m58s