DemoGirl

I’ve been reading some chatter from a few of my friends on Facebook that they don’t really get Pinterest.  I know that they’re using Pinterest because before I turned off my email notification it seemed that they were pinning all the time.  All the time.

I started using Pinterest about a year and a half ago when I was planning my wedding.  I created some boards with different hairstyles, bouquets and centerpieces.  My plan was to share these with my sister so that she could add things and so on.  But I didn’t know how to do that so I ended up just using it for my own reference.   Actually, I didn’t put much time into figuring out how to collaborate.  And I’m thinking that maybe this could be playing a minor roll in the confusion some people are having.  I mean, sure, it’s fun to just start pinning every beautiful picture of a sunset or expensive handbag, but the real value in Pinterest is the social and collaborative aspect.  At least that’s my take on it.

Pinterest is a great place to find and share inspiration for just about anything – you just need to know how to look for it.  And how to organize it.  And what not to pin   Hopefully my screencast will showcase some of the coolness that Pinterest has to offer.

I’ve been using Facebook for years.  My Mom is even on Facebook, although she refuses to log-in because she thinks “it’s weird.”  She would “rather use Google.”  Whatever that means….Hi Mom!

Anyway, what I had not done was something that I believe to be a huge mistake.  I didn’t have a Facebook page for DemoGirl.  What? I know. Dumb.

DemoGirl puts food on the table, introduces me to awesome new people and recently, turned me into a celebrity judge!

So if you have a moment, and you really mean it, please like DemoGirl on Facebook.  I have years and years to make up for.  Another reason I should be exceptionally disgusted with myself?  I recently stumbled across an old screencast tutorial I made on just this very subject.

I’ve been running a Quickcast special for quite a while now, and it’s almost time to say goodbye.  I thought it would be a great way to find new customers and to give businesses a less expensive option for a screencast that only needed to cover one specific feature.  It did both of those things, but unfortunately, it also connected me with people who didn’t realize that my time is just as valuable as everyone else who is trying to run a business. And I am running a business. 

No worries though! The Quickcast was always intended to be just that, a special, and it will be around until mid-January and I’m sure it will be back again – think of it as the McRib of screencast specials…

It’s been an embarrassingly long time since my last post on the DemoGirl blog, and I hope blog silence will be a thing of the past. I have a pretty good excuse though; at least I think so…

As some of you may know, I started screencasting in blog form in 2006 – meaning I would find cool Web apps and create screencasts in place of blog posts to show them off. This “idea” of screencasting anything and everything I found and blogging about it was the brain-child of my two older brothers, who were actually paying me to do this. Seriously. They wanted me to screencast my butt off so that when it started to catch on (only took about 3 years…) I would already be ahead of the game and we could get right into becoming a professional screencasting business. After about a year of learning the best way to capture the very best assets of a Web app, and in a short amount of time, I got my first paying gig. Not so long after I did work for these guys, they were bought by Google and became the foundation of a little service known as Google Voice. I will forever be indebted to the team-formally-known-as-GrandCentral for giving me tips about how to work with clients and how to make a better screencast. They are what I would call “dream clients”.  I hope the screencast I did for them never, ever makes an appearance.  Remember, this was the beginning and I was still learning to fly.

Now I know what you’re thinking, and no, I’m not leaving the screencasting business any time soon. This is not a goodbye to screencasting post. It is, however, a goodbye and a thank you to Centercloud, the company that paid me to screencast for so many years. Centercloud is owned by my brother, completely family run, and is primarily a software development company. They’ve been in business since I was in diapers and continue to rock. But we realized that DemoGirl was becoming more and more of my thing and not really a way to sustain an entire company. Our pricing model was aimed at start-ups who had little cash (not too little ) and needed a great video to get their product noticed. While their dream of starting a custom screencast company really did succeed, they decided to let it go. Thankfully, they let it go to me! So, thanks to Tom, Joe and Mo. You guys were great to work with and I’ll see you at Christmas.

And if you, my dear readers, are looking for drama and back stabbing, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Family comes first and this was a very friendly split.

So that’s the latest from the DemoGirl newsroom. In other news, I’m still busy making screencasts and I have a killer special going on now.

Thanks for sticking with me over the years. I’m not going anywhere. Unless it’s a tropical island…

I’m baaack!!! Hey, I know it’s been a while, but DemoGirl has been really busy. That’s a good thing for business, but not so great for our blog. Let me see if I can remove some of the dust with this post.

A little while back YouTube announced that it is giving users the chance to make some simple edits to ABU (Already Been Uploaded) videos. No, you can’t make major edits, but you can trim time off the front or back end of your video. You can also rotate, stabalize, play with color and add effects or audio. My kids dig the effects they can quickly add to their Lego and zombie movies.

To check out some of the simple things you can do to your YouTube videos, watch the
screencast below:

October is just about gone and my kids are already dressed in Halloween costumes and holding a vigil in anticipation of the beggars’ celebration.

Molly and I have hardly had time to look up from our computers since she wrote her September recap — actually, Molly did find a bit of time to escape on her honeymoon and left me holding the bag. I was happy to hold it for her, but there was a lot of work in that bag.

We are so grateful for the recent surge in requests for custom screencast and quickcast services. Below are a couple of recent projects that we’ve been given permission to share. I’m really going to try to squeeze in at least one “for fun” screencast on our blog in November.

Bizness Apps

Any New Books?

I can hardly believe that it’s already October.  I meant to get this post up last week so that it would technically be posted in September but, well, we’ve been really busy!

As you may have noticed, our blog posts have dropped off considerably in the past month.  Probably the biggest reason for this is that I went through a HUGE life-changing event.  In case you didn’t hear me posting about it over and over again on Twitter:  I GOT MARRIED!! Yes, I finally did it and I’m thrilled to be the wife of such a huge Web celebrity   So there ya have it – feel free to keep calling me Molly McDonald but I’ll also respond to Molly Sargent.  Some of our friends have decided that we should just be “The McSargent’s” which I think is peachy.

Since DemoGirl is almost exclusively run by family, we were all extremely busy planning, traveling and drinking much more than usual.  My wonderful partner on DemoGirl, Mo, was my Matron of Honor and she did a kick-ass job running the show.  My brother Tom, also known as “The Boss” was generous enough to let us all take 5 days off to travel to Mammoth Lakes, where the wedding took place.  Of course, we still had work to do for our clients.  Lots of it.

It seems that our $99 quickcast special has become quite popular and we’re still creating lots of completely custom screencasts too.  Here are few of our more recent projects that we’ve been given permission to share with you.  Please take a look and check out their services (you can tell them DemoGirl sent you) and let us know what you think!

Dooid.com

Giftee.me

Xpences.com

Also, if you’re looking for tutorials to share with your not-so-web-savvy friends and family members, check out my work on Butterscotch.com. I make how-to screencasts there every month giving you tips and tricks on how to do everything from protecting your privacy on Facebook to how to navigate the brand new Twitter interface. They have a lot of great shows for people with every level of technical expertise.

The original DemoGirl is very busy planning the wedding of the century, and she’s got a long list of things that need to be handled. One Web site she might want to check out is Divvyus — the site offers a simple application where you can quickly create a shared task list.

There is nothing to sign up for, but you must keep track of the URLs for your Divvy (as the lists are called). You’ll receive a public URL that can only be used to claim tasks and mark them as done. You will also get an admin URL where you can edit, add or claim tasks.

Divvyus might be helpful for my baby sister…um, I mean for DemoGirl to start delegating those wedding tasks.

To see Divvyus in action, watch the screencast below:

Envolve is offering Web site owners the chance to bring “Facebook style chat” to their sites.

There are a few different pricing options, as well as a free plan that allows for up to 5 connected users at a time.  If I understand the pricing correctly, any of the paid plans allow for an unlimited number of connected users but limit the number of monthly “sessions”.

I took the free plan for a spin and it was so easy to set up.  Just enter in a few items — like your URL — and then you are given the code to place in the html of your site.  The free plan doesn’t offer extras like real-time stats or the ability to customize the color, but it will give you a basic idea of how the chat could work on your site.

To see Envolve in action, watch the screencast below:

[Via: ReadWriteWeb]