2/4/09 Update: Snap Shots went down like a lead ballon. Didn't work for folks. 5 Bonus Points also to Boris for alerting me to the dark, dark underbelly of the widget. Snap Shots are no more. I'll have to find a much less evil way of rewarding followers of the blog than Snap Shot Shares! Cheers!
Three announcements:
- I'm trying out Snap Shots, which allows you to take a sneak peak at links on my blog before clicking. More details about this below.
- Snap Shots has a feature called "Snap Shares" which gives me a percentage of the ad space on the Snap displays. Because I'm grateful to the visitors and participants to TSON, I'm dedicating my Snap Shares to the top three sites on the Bonus Points Leader Board. Each of the top three will get a week's worth of Snap Shares where their blogs and links will be plugged. Since Rocket Scientist is in the BP lead, she will be getting the first round of Snap Shares.
- I made sixth place on the "Top Ten Coolest People You Meet" list on the Nonfiction Lover blog. (Being new to blogging, I appreciate the back-pat.) Because the blog author, Hava, didn't put me on the "Top Ten Creepiest People You Meet" list and because her blog is a must read for book lovers, she is now on the Bonus Point Leader Board. I've also added her to the blog roll.
Curious about Snap Shots? This widget enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.
Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.
Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.
Cheers.Go Cardinals!
Posts
I'm confused. What does this do exactly?
ReplyDelete(And thanks!)
There's a new little icon (looks like a dialog bubble) that appears next to most of the links on the blog. When you hover over the icon a preview of the link pops up so that you don't have to necessarily click the link to see what it is about.
ReplyDeleteNope, it doesn't show for me. I wonder if it works with Firefox...
ReplyDeleteBe happy that it doesn't show. Brian, snapshots are an evil, evil flashy internet abomination, and condemn the user to at least the fourth circle of Dante's hell.
ReplyDeleteIf you have a link in your blog (and I thouroughly approve of links in blogs), I will mouse over to find where it leads to - is it another blog, which I will open in a background tab to read later, or a wikipedia article which I might have already read? Is it maybe a link to youtube, which I cannot watch now, because I have no sound at the university?
And then I mouse over, often while continuing to read, and suddenly this stupid window sproings up and obscures your words of wisdom. Also, they take a second to load. A second! Oh, the humanity!
Well, actually they don't, because I have blocked the evil, evil snap, after it annoyed me sufficiently in the past. So you may disregard my rant ;)
Slightly more useful addendum:
ReplyDeleteI don't like using the "opt-out" of the lair of evil called snap.com, because it opts out using a cookie, and I am one of those paranoid^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H cautious people who delete their cookies from time to time. So I simply use my adblocker to block http://shot.spa.com/* and http://snap.spa.com/*.
For a couple of other opinions on why those popups are evil (and popups are always eil, period) see "3 Reasons Why Snap Preview is Ruining Your Blog, and Hurting Your Readership" and "Is Snap Preview the most hated Web 2.0 function ever?" by the Guardian.
Doesn't work for me at BHAAS,(you made me think of BHAAS with your TSON, kind of like it) I am using Firefox.
ReplyDeleteBoris, I wish it was easier to discern what you think, always keeping your cards close to the vest! Perhaps a class in assertive communication would help. :)
ReplyDeleteFrom what I'm gathering, I've employed an evil widget that people can't see or use. Well, corn!! Technology is supposed to make my life easier. Double corn!
Thanks for the head's up all.
Bob, the world needs more acronyms! Just think of all the letters we're saving.
Really? Sorry, I did not want to be obscure. So here is the straight and narrow:
ReplyDeleteI don't like any kind of flash or javascript things that distract me from the content of the site that I want to read. But on the other hand, I am technology-savy enough that I know how to block that stuff myself, so I didn't want to state my case too strongly, because, you know, it doesn't really affect me anyway. Also, even if I could not block it, I like your blog enough that I would sigh, grit my teeth and get on with reading it (and fire off the occasional snarky comment).
So I am happy to hear that you took my advice to heart, and I'll try to be more clear in the future!
I appreciate it Boris. I'm new enough to blogging that I'm sure I'll load this site up with plenty of garbage gadgets and wing-dings then find out over time what works and doesn't.
ReplyDeleteBut your point is excellent that it is the content that drives a blog. A great reminder for me.
I'm fortunate to have a tech-savy reader among the readers to keep me on the straight and narrow.
Cheers.