Snipd

You have to see this one for yourselves. We-based, truly unique manner of capturing text, images, even video from any web-page. Using it is so easy. The concept is quickly grasped given a visually creative design. Do check this out!

Props to Ron K for finding this one, and educational to see what can be achieved with $15k of venture capital. I immediately thought "aha... free porn distribution" and it turns out that adult content has indeed been a major area for this service. There was a plan to open a companion site, called "Stripd", to contain the adult material that was pouring in, but the link to Stripd on the Snipd site is not working so I guess that didn't work out. (source: Cnet.com) Snipd works by bookmarklet, which is a small piece of javascript code embedded in a bookmark which you create in your browser. Once you have that, you can copy anything you like from anywhere on the web, to your own personal area on Snipd. Video, Flash, bits of text, images, you name it. Very handy for grabbing and redistributing video clips, for example. So the most obvious question is, how does the service get around the fact that copying just about anything in this way is a breach of copyright? According to the terms of use, you can't use the service to copy anything that "infringes upon [a] third party's intellectual property rights or copyright." Which is more or less anything that doesn't already belong to you. And that renders the whole thing pointless, since the only items you're going to copy are ones that you didn't create. The site distances itself from legal action by making the users responsible for their own actions and declaring its right to decide whether something is legal or not. But if I read it correctly, it's dancing very close to the edge of current copyright legislation. And while I don't entirely agree with that legislation, I don't think I really want people helping themselves to everything I produce and distributing it via this site or any other. At least, not without asking. Anyway I decided to try this for myself, created the bookmarklet and registered at the site. Several attempts later, I still had no saved snippets and I gave up. It may be that the service isn't compatible with my browser and extensions. And I don't really feel like asking for help; the site has no forum for discussion or any guides other than the basic "how-to", and it feels kind of cold and empty. Which is bad for a social media site, I think. Despite the cool idea, traffic to the site has dropped significantly since its launch this time last year (source: Crunchbase). I wish I could be more positive but the service simply doesn't work for me, and I'm not about to change browsers. Hopefully someone else can try it out and post a further review. Sources: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_*******9484-2.html http://www.crunchbase.com/company/snipd