DemoGirl

Stupeflix is a fun site that helps you  create movies out of your images and video.

All you need to do is add your media and Stupeflix does most of the “editing” for you.  You can add text and music to your movie and download it when you’re done.  The entire process should only take a few minutes, but could take more if you want to add a lot of media and/or detail to your movie.   All of this is done within the Stupeflix Editor, and you can choose how much work you want to put into it – you can choose transitions and colors, or you can have Stupeflix do it for you.

When adding media you have the choice to upload your own, add URLs to images on the Web, or you can choose images from Flickr.  There doesn’t seem to be a limit to how much media you can add or the length of the final video – which is really nice.  When you’re done editing your video you can choose to have Stupeflix produce a large video that is YouTube ready, a medium size video which is iPhone ready, or a large or medium flash video.

Stupeflix is free to use and doesn’t require any downloads.

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

[wpvideo twsh0TwB]

I have to admit that I don’t have a Wii and I’ve never played Guitar Hero or any other game of that ilk. But every now and then a girl needs to take a break from work and online music game JamLegend provides a fun alternative to waiting on the front porch for the FedEx guy.

JamLegend is a game that seems to have one mission — to drive me insane. I normally shy away from video games; I’m afraid I might sit for hours in front of a screen just trying to better my score. I decided to ignore the inner-voice that was telling me to “stay away from games” and I’m glad I did.

You don’t have to sign up for an account in order to play JamLegend. Just choose a song and then pound out a 1, 2 or 3 on your keyboard along with the beat. Sounds easy enough… but beware, it is a bit addicting. The site makes it easy to share songs with your friends on Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. You can duel your friends or join the live showdowns. You can even upload music from your own library

If you have a few minutes and you want to forget about the voicemail light blinking on your phone, check out the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):
[wpvideo pRmmPmYW]

Friday has arrived, and not a moment too soon. I don’t want to bore you with complicated applications that will help you work better – I want to show you some tools that require very little brain function that you can use over the weekend. In this quickcast, I’ll show you 4 applications that do just that.

SuperLame gives you a super cool way to add caption balloons to your photos. The entire process is fast and really enjoyable. You can even choose to have the balloon outside of the original image.

SensibleUnits is a ridiculous application that shows you random items that are the same size of whatever measurement you type into the search box. For example, if you type in 25 feet, you may get results such as, 1.7 London buses stacked one on top of the other. Another interesting fact is that 500 lbs is also the same weight as 45 average domestic cats. Good to know.

Epicurious has a new “Seasonal Ingredient Map” that shows you exactly what’s currently in season in whatever state you live in. I just learned why lemons are so darn expensive in California right now – they’re in season in December. That just doesn’t seem right for some reason. What about all the poor kiddies and their summer jobs as lemonade stand owners?

Bradicon needs very little explanation because it only does one thing. It turns almost any image into an icon. The entire process is quick and the only thing you need to do is select the image from your computer. From there, Bradicon instantly turns it into an icon that you can download. [via Lifehacker]

To see these 4 applications in action, watch the screencast below:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 3m45s

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

Cubescape is a site designed to make you the least productive person at work today. Seriously, it will. That is unless you have my job, in which case playing with sites like Cubescape is required. In a nutshell,  Cubescape lets you create 3-D art by simply dropping cubes onto a canvas. You can even blow cubes up, which can be more fun than dropping them. You can replay the entire construction of your masterpiece and save it in the Cubescape gallery. In all seriousness, Cubescape would be a great tool for anyone in the creative field that needs help getting those creative juices flowing. Here’s my screencast tour of Cubescape:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 2m46s

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

[via Lifehacker]

So, first off, I’d like to ask my crummy old guitar teacher for my money back.  If I had know about the site I’m about to share with you, it would have saved me a lot of frustration going to lessons instructed by a grumpy, washed up musician (sorry, but he was mean).  Songsterr helps you learn how to play and sing songs, chord by chord.  The chords and lyrics are given to you and Songsterr plays them over and over until you decide you want to move on.  You can also set it on autopilot and it will play through the entire song.  In all seriousness, this won’t replace a human instructor (if you have a nice one) and there are only a handful of songs available on the site, one of them being a most hated of mine – Hey There Delilah.  If you don’t already know your fingering for the chords, you won’t have much luck learning anything here either.  But, this is a brand new service and the “coming soon” features sound very promising.  I recommend giving it a look if you haven’t picked up your guitar in a while and just want to learn a new song.

If learning a new language is your thing, you definitely should take a look at babbel.  Babbel gives you all the tools to learn how to speak Spanish, French, German, Italian, or English.  Everything is taken care of here, even the hardest for me – p-r-o-n-u-n-c-i-a-t-i-o-n.  You decide what types of words you feel like learning that day, and babbel will start your training.  It starts with a photo describing the word and a nice voice saying the word for you in the language you selected.  After you hear 6 words it moves on with the audio and photos separated.  You just match the audio with the correct photo and you can move onto step three – spelling.  Again, you’ll only see the photo and all you need to do is type in the first letter of the word (I think they should make you spell the whole word, but that’s just me).  Your lessons are stored and you’re encouraged to retest yourself in a few days.  There are a lot of language learning sites out there, but this is by far the best I’ve come across.

Viscosity is a super cool abstract art creator that won the Best Art award at SXSW. It allows anyone to create beautiful pieces of abstract art in a matter of minutes or hours, depending on how much time you spend on the details. You can choose from a preset block of colors, which can be completely customized, and then you simply drag various brushes through the lines to create your art. If you’re into detail, you can also drag each point of color into a specific location on your virtual canvas. Besides creating art, Viscosity is a great place to just browse through other peoples art. There are some really amazing pieces to check out.

I realize that winning the Best Art award at SXSW was probably a really proud moment for Jeff Weir (creator) but I would like to present him with “The Tool I Will Most Likely Use To Slack Off At Work” award. I highly recommend you do the same. Here’s my screencast tour of Viscosity:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 5m4s

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

[via Webware]

(Note: The audio got all screwed up when I added video to the screencasts, so please bare with me until I get the problem sorted out. Thanks!)

By the end of the week I’m always looking for something a bit lighter and more fun to post on DemoGirl. I come across a lot of sites that I wouldn’t normally cover in a screencast but would still like to show you. That’s where quickcasting came from. I decided that on Friday’s I would share a few time wasters or just plain-old-fun Websites in very quick screencasts. I’ve added video introductions to this demo as well, so let me know what you think. Included in this weeks quickcast is netdisaster.com, dailymugshot.com, and mylivesignature.com [via Digital Inspiration]. Click the link below to watch the quickcast!

Click Here To Watch The Quickcast 2m37s

If you ever feel like you’re about to freak out because you have some song stuck in your head but can’t seem to remember the name, then SongTapper may be just what you need. Yes, I know you can just enter in a few lines from the song into Google search and probably find your answer there. That is not nearly as fun as beating the rhythm of the song on your space bar and receiving your results without having to enter in one line of text. SongTapper allows you to do just that. The site design is nothing to write home about but there’s nothing to sign up for and it actually works. All you do is click on a link and then start tapping the rhythm of the song on your space bar. SongTapper will spit out some results and you can even listen to what your tapping sounded like. If SongTapper didn’t get your song right you can enter in the name and artist to help train it. Unfortunately, the reason a person would visit SongTapper is because they don’t know the name or artist so that step seems totally pointless to me. Other than that, it’s a fun way to find out the name of a song without doing a Google search and it actually got my songs right 3 out of 4 times.