Another interesting web add-on I looked at today is snap “preview anywhere”. It is essentially a service, you enroll a web site URL, it generates a line of JavaScript that goes in the HEAD of your site’s pages (or better the single header template file).
But what does it do?
It adds a function so that every hyperlink in a page can be a graphic preview to its destination. So when you mouse rollover a link, you can see, before you click, a small window version of that site, and it may convince you whether or not it is worth really following through with that click.
As a test, I “snapped” CogDogBlog today, so a previous post has a link to http://www.openaugment.org/. In the old web, you’d have to make some guesses based on the hyperlink’s text itself, the context in other content, and perhaps some guesses by seeing the URL in the browser status bar, to decided IF you really want to go there.
With snap, you also get a visual preview:
I’m playing with it to see if its worth keeping around and/or using elsewhere.
Obscure footnote: I vaguely remember that the snap.com URL was some front end for NMC — of which I found some relict proof in the Internet Archive. Did NBC drop the snap.com domain?
A linktribution to Quentin at Teaching Hacks.com for turning me on to this.
Wow, thanks for the visual stimulating little goodie there Alan. I did the oh-so-easy install on my blog and it runs great. Now I just have to put it on my forum and it will be really fun. I think by far the best use for this tool would be a social bookmarking site. Delicious is trying, but those little images just aren’t as attractive as the Snap previews.