DemoGirl

I’m super excited to announce a first on DemoGirl (insert suspenseful drum-roll here). App Happy: iPhone App Reviews for Everyone.  Or something like that.  Ok, so now that I got that out of the way, and you’ve all had a chance to put on a fresh pair of underwear, let me explain:

This past weekend I got my hands on an iPhone, rigged up a mini-iPhone recording studio, and went to work.  I chose the WordPress iPhone App because I use WordPress on a daily basis and, in all seriousness, it is a super useful App for anyone who uses WordPress.

Technically this is not a screencast.  But, I am recording the screen of the iPhone and our mission remains, to help everyone understand and see how to use fun and helpful applications – Web-based or, now, mobile.

Please watch the video below and let me know what you think in the comments.  Is the lighting terrible?  Is it too hard to see the iPhone in action?  Am I in desperate need of a manicure?  Or do you think this is the most amazing thing you have ever seen in your entire life?  Your feedback is so important to me and I thank you in advance.

ShowMeWhatsWrong gives you the power to force your not-so-tech-savvy friends and family to show you what their problem is.

All you need to do is head over to ShowMeWhatsWrong, enter in your name and valid email address and click on “Generate”.  You’ll get a link that you can send to your troubled friend and all they need to do is click on it to get started.  From there, they just need to enter in their name and click on “Record”.  ShowMeWhatsWrong will begin to record their screen (they’ll be screencasting and not even know it!!) and they can go through the steps that are giving them problems.  When they’re done they just need to click on “Stop”, and automatically ShowMeWhatsWrong will upload and email you the video.  They don’t have to do anything else.  Seriously.

From there it’s up to you to decide how you want to move forward to help your buddy.  You could call them up and try to explain what they’re doing wrong, or you could create a screencast using Screencast-O-Matic (the creators of ShowMeWhatsWrong) and show them what they’re doing wrong.

To see ShowMeWhatsWrong in action, watch the screencast below:

[via Lifehacker]

Creating multiple profiles in your Netflix account isn’t new – but it’s something that I found myself setting up for my (soon to be permanent!) other half yesterday.  He was logged into my Netflix account checking to see what I had coming up in my queue, but then he started clicking on watch instant videos and I realized that he was  going to muddle up  my recommendations!

Then I remembered about creating profiles in your Netflix account.  I quickly set one up for him and told him to rate, review, and watch as much as he wants…logged into his profile.  Of course, then I realized it may be useful for you to see how easy it is to set up profiles for everyone in your family.  See how below (please excuse my hideous voice, I have an awful cold):

ShowtimeFu is a really simple site that helps you do pretty much one thing:  See what movies are playing nearby at any time during the day.

All you need to do is enter in your location and click on search.  ShowtimeFu will show you every movie playing nearby with showtimes and theaters.  You can filter your search by what time you’d like the movie to begin and/or end, select specific movies and select specific theaters.  With each listing you’ll see how long the movie is, the average rating on RottenTomatoes and the time you should expect the movie to end.

If you click on the movie title you’ll get more info from IMDB, trailers, and the theaters where you can see it.  You can also get a map of where the theater is located.

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

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[via TechCrunch]

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]

Clicker helps you find and save video that’s available to watch online, from sources all over the Web.  It’s in private beta now but I received an invite and thought I’d show you around.

After you sign in you can immediately start searching for your favorite TV shows, movies, music, and Web originals to save to your playlist.  When you find what you’re looking for (using TV as an example) you can add an entire season or just a single episode.  If you add an entire season then every time an episode is available to view online, it will be dropped right into your account.

Clicker is also part wiki – meaning that you can edit the show descriptions, tags, and add notes and character descriptions.  These edits are reviewed by the Clicker staff before publication.

After you watch a video that you have in your queue playlist it will automatically be placed in your “watched video” section so you can find it again.  On the Clicker about page they note that Netflix will soon be added so I assume that you’ll be able to also store movies available on “Watch Instant”. You can sign up to get an invite to the service here.

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

[wpvideo azJybfNa]

Last week I reviewed Screenjelly, 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):

[wpvideo 4kWIhLR2]

Screenjelly is a handy tool that allows you to record your screen and then instantly tweet, email, or simply upload your creation. It gives you a great way to quickly show your Mom how to add her profile pic to her Facebook page, or to simply show off new features of your Web application.  Screencasts are extremely useful, and Screenjelly makes creating and sharing them easy.

There’s not much of a learning curve with Screenjelly.  All you need to do is select the microphone you wish to record audio with (or select the option to not record audio) and click on record.  You’ll have 5 seconds to prepare yourself and then up to 3 minutes to record.  Screenjelly records your entire screen and there aren’t any editing tools so make sure that you have your screen all set up for what you want to record.

When you’re through recording you can instantly tweet out a link, send it via email, or upload it to your Screenjelly account.  Public videos can be seen on the Screenjelly homepage and you can even tip people who create useful screencasts using TipJoy.

You need to sign into Screenjelly using your Twitter credentials – and that’s where I ran into a problem.  Unfortunately, when I checked the box next to “keep this video private” I assumed that it wouldn’t be tweeted out to my followers.  The problem here is that when I later tried to “favor” the video (just to see what would happen) it automatically sent out a tweet saying something like, “I liked this video on Screenjelly”.  Not a huge deal, and I did receive a response from Screenjelly minutes after I tweeted my irritation explaining that “Forthcoming changes will prevent this”.  Still, I feel that there should be more settings in place to allow me to select whether or not I want to tweet videos out at all – which I probably won’t most of the time.  I don’t want to mistakenly tweet out a test video (which was what happened yesterday). If you want to try out Screenjelly and don’t want to give out your Twitter credentials just yet, then do what I did and create a fake account.  Works just fine.

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

[wpvideo caCo4KQn]

Magma gives you a way to discover, collect, share, and comment on videos from all across the Web.  It’s in private beta as of now, but I got an invite and took it for a spin this morning.  So far, I really like what I see.

When you first log into your account, you’ll see the top rated videos followed by the newest added to the site.  Videos are rated by their presence on the Web – meaning how many views and comments it’s received and the attention surrounding it.  You can add any video you like to your own channel and organize them by adding them to categories.  Available channels at the moment include Hulu, Dailymotion, Digg, Vimeo, YouTube, and CollegeHumor.  That just names a few.

You can follow channels and people on Magma, so you’ll always know when there’s new content to watch.  One of the coolest features is that each video has its own page that shows you total views and comments from all across the Web.  This allows you to view detailed statistics of each video.  You can also comment on this page as well.

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

[wpvideo chRl5tN4]

Robo.to allows you to create a virtual business card, complete with your own video avatar.  It gives you a place to share your flickr photos, your location, and your other online identities, as well as updates to Twitter and Facebook.

After you sign up for an account (which is currently invite only) you’ll be able to pick a username which will act as part of your Robo.to domain.  You can see mine here.  You can then record a couple seconds of video that visitors will see upon arrival to your site.  You can record multiple videos but the last one you record will be the first one that appears.

You can point out your location on a Google map, add your latest flickr photos, and choose to push updates you create on Robo.to through to Twitter and/or Facebook.

I had fun yesterday and today testing out Robo.to – but it is definitely invite only for a reason.  My flickr photos won’t show up.   When I update to Twitter only the text goes through so no one would have any idea what I was talking about since there’s no link to my Robo.to page or video.  There are also some much needed features missing like the ability to delete a video, control which video appears first when someone visits your Robo.to page, and some sort of privacy setting if I don’t want just anyone to be able to see my page.  If these features exist, I could not find them.

If you want to see Justin’s Robo.to page, click here.  It’s cleverly done, and should give you an idea about what type of video you can create to act as your “calling card”.

To see Robo.to in action, click on the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):

[wpvideo 2rAXOjOi]