Tim April 26th, 2007
I’m going to be doing a series of short posts on products found online that can make your life easier. To begin we are checking out a service called PDF Filler which will convert pdf documents to images and allow you to put text anywhere on them and then print them. If you have to fill out these documents on a regular basis you’re no stranger to this problem. PDF files do not by their nature allow you to edit the form fields, requiring the user to print it out and use a typewriter (if they’re neat) or fill it out by hand (if they’re lazy like me). PDF Filler comes to the rescue with their product. Take a look and see how it works in this demo.
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Tim April 16th, 2007
Forlater has a very simple service that actually comes in quite handy. Setup an email to be sent in the future. This could be used to remind yourself of important events or memos, or you could also decide to send yourself an email 2 years from now as a sort of time capsule for the web. No fancy signups or web 2.0 graphics. Just a basic service that builds on a simple idea. Let’s give it a try.
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Tim April 10th, 2007
The web market for budgeting software online is crowded to say the least. We’ve covered MoneyTrackin’ before and other big players like Wesabe and Billster are doing many things right in this space. So it’s commendable to see a new startup take on the task of helping the common user budget their money.
Plan2Spend focuses on this task, money in and money out, find out where it’s going and help manage that flow. It’s a simple idea but one that requires great execution to compete in this marketplace. I’m giving their service a trial today to see if they live up to the promise to “Say goodbye to overdraft.”
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Tim April 5th, 2007
After a short (ok, maybe not so short) break here at DemoMarks as we move to a new server there’s nothing that takes the edge off more than a nice glass of wine. What better way to ring in the new season here at DemoMarks than by reviewing the latest entry for winos in the Web 2.0 arena. Cheers!
BuyersVine bills itself as the middleman that connects buyers directly with Wineries. To help consumers they’ve added in the ability to tag wine and search it, comment on it, and even added in WineVideos for those less sophisticated (yes, that would be me). Today I’m going to demo all the features that come with the sign-up and see how it ranks against Cork’d, Vinorati, and other players in this field.
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Tim March 7th, 2007
One of the goals of DemoMarks is to save you the hassle of signing up for new services and subjecting your email address to even more spam. That’s all well and good but maybe you’re sick of my writing or the screenshots aren’t aren’t as good as feeling the pulse of the web app as it beats in the palm of your hand. Today I’m going to demo a small product that can come in quite handy when signing up for that next service.
2Prong is an email spoofing system that takes inspiration from apps like Mailinator and MyTrashMail but it has a lot more to offer in a slick interface. The idea is simple, get a fake email address that is disposable and receive the “verification email” for signing up to prove that the email address is valid. After that, you don’t ever come back and you don’t have to receive more junk from companies. 2Prong has added some extra features that will allow it to never get blocked by sites and provide quick copy and pasting for signups. Let’s take a look at the service.
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Tim March 5th, 2007
Publishing websites online is a heated market for web 2.0 applications, mainly because of the chore desktop applications like Frontpage and Dreamweaver can be to create content. Zikle has entered this playing field with a slick drag-and-drop interface and the promise to make website creation “easy as pie.” Thats a lot of promise so I’ve decided to jump in and see what we’re working with.
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Tim March 2nd, 2007
There’s been a lot of excitement recently with the developments coming out of Adobe, especially regarding the news that they would be bringing Photoshop online as a free, ad-supported application. Adobe also recently released another online application called Kuler which, despite the rediculous name, is a great for creating and sharing color schemes. The web is already ripe with Color Scheme Generators but if anyone knows color it’s Adobe so one would expect a quality product from them. We decided to see how they match up.
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Tim March 1st, 2007
Today’s demo probably needs no introduction if you’ve been paying attention to the major tech blogs and social sites. Joost, formerly code-named The Venice Project, is the much-famed startup of Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (founders of Skype and Kazaa) which aims to bring television content to the web via streaming and p2p technology. Earlier in February they closed a deal with Viacom giving them access to many major content providers like MTV and VH1.
All of this sounds very promising but as the owner of a less than spectacular broadband connection I’m all too familiar with the amount of bandwidth needed to make streaming television and movies look seamless to the enduser. Plus, as all the hype builds around the secrecy of this project I’ve become more skeptical that perhaps in this case the magic might be in the mystery of the product. I recently managed to get my hand on a beta token and got permission to demo the product here so today we’ll be giving it a run for its money and see if Joost lives up to the hype.
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Tim February 28th, 2007
Here at DemoMarks we rate sites, review them, and pass on all the details. Yet, the discussion is a bit one-sided. Sure we offer the ability for users to comment and alter the ratings, but we’re the one’s doing the site reviews and therefore controlling what gets rated. Ratepoint takes site ratings and reviews to a more social level by allowing users to make friends and find people with similiar tastes based on the sites they’ve rated. It ends up being a great way to find out about new sites that match up with your interests. I’m all about making friends and finding new sites so I’m grabbin’ shotgun for some Ratepoint cruisin’.
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Tim February 28th, 2007
I remember the days when I use to keep track of a ton of bookmarks just so I knew which sites I enjoyed and wanted to watch. I would surf from one website to another just to see the latest content. Ah, those were the days. If you’re reading this with a grin on your face, it’s probably because you’re already familiar with RSS (Real Simple Syndication) and if you’re still staring at the screen wondering what in the world I’m talking about, read on my brothers and sisters.
There’s no shortage of information on RSS, gathering feeds, and the abundance of feed readers available, so I won’t bore you with all those gritty details. Basically it’s a way for you to get all the latest updates from a website in one location (your feed reader) instead of navigating to each site. There are many people that still don’t know about RSS or find the jump from reading on the web to browsing a feed reader too confusing. Feedmailer is just one company that is likely to change that.
Feedmailer allows anyone to subscribe to feeds through their email address, getting the latest content from their favorite sites delivered directly to their inbox. For many users this makes a bit more sense, after all everyone uses email these days, why require a feed reader to deliver the content? It’s a free, ad-supported service and I wanted to find out if it helped bridge the gap between RSS and the average user so I’m testing Feedmailer out today.
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Tim February 27th, 2007
Moneytrackin’ is an online expense calendar and planner that offers the ability to input transactions, set up recurring transactions, import data from Excel, and view reports in a few formats. I’m about as good with money as I am with women so I’m always ready to take on the task of managing my finances, but the web world has yet to offer me a one-stop solution to budgeting and finance that I can actually use without difficulty. I decided to see if Moneytrackin’ was the key to my future financial success or not.
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Tim February 27th, 2007
Lately there have been a lot of online apps that are challenging the desktop publishing market. We recently featured Letterpop which allowed the creation of newsletters with relative simplicity. Today we’re going to demo vFlyer, a startup that recently came out of beta and launched a host of new features including widget support.
vFlyer’s market is aimed squarely at the online marketplace advertising the ability to transform dull text-based Craigslist and Ebay ads into vibrant HTML flyers and track the results of your campaign. The service will also post your listing in a number of online marketplaces and offers the ability to download and print PDF flyers for an offline campaign. Let’s see what they’ve got cooking up under the hood.
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Tim February 26th, 2007
One of the more difficult aspects of building a website is integrating forms, gathering the data submitted by them, and generating reports based on that information. Wufoo, a Y Combinator funded venture by Infinity Box Incorporated seeks to make the creation of forms including surveys and invitations a process that doesn’t require the need for scripting and HTML knowledge. In fact, the generated forms and reports can be built and viewed without ever writing a single piece of code.
Keeping with the general theme here at DemoMarks of “I’m too damn lazy to write code.” we’ve decided Wufoo could possibly fulfil all our needs for form-building applications, so we’re sampling their offerings today.
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Tim February 25th, 2007
Update: Ning has relaunched their site with version 2 and a host of features to allow even novice users to go beyond cloning a create an entire social network at the click of buttons. For a full writeup check out TechCrunch’s report and watch this video for the new features.
Have you ever had this idea for a great web application? Something with tagging and google maps and possible a digg like voting system built in, or maybe something complete different. Problem is, you’re not a programmer and don’t have the money to hire one just to find out if your idea would be successful or not.
Well I’m not a programmer either and lucky for you and me, Ning has made a product that makes building a web application something that takes a matter of minutes (No, I’m not kidding). The idea intrigued me so we’ve decided to give them a run for their money and make a Web Application Review Site using their service. Here goes nothing!
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Tim February 25th, 2007
Letterpop is a an online newsletter creation application. Think Microsoft Publisher for the web. From their site LetterPop is described as “the best way to create and send newsletters online and in print for families, businesses, friends, churches, schools, or any other organization. No matter who you are, or who you want to communicate with, LetterPop can help you do it quickly, easily, and with style.” We agree and decided to demo it here at DemoMarks.
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