Video, Photo & RSS Snap Shots

Since I last covered Snap - the visual interactive search engine, they've added many enhancements to their preview bubble and also improved their search engine visualization. Here are a couple of the most recent Snap shots available:

Snap Web Classic - Is the traditional search engine result page (10 blue links) but with Snap Shots enabled. Now you can decide how you prefer viewing the search results. If you like preview and find them useful you could switch to Web Enhanced which is more innovative in terms of previewing results and which also supports keyboard up and down arrows etc.

RSS Shot – When a link to a site has a RSS feed, instead of a PreviewShot it will show the headlines & excerpts of the latest stories. This should increase the engagement of your readers. The RSS Shot feature isn't enabled yet for all Snap users but it should be fully released in the near future. I noticed this on some blogs and it's very useful but now there isn't a way to have a quick PreviewShot. Maybe they should add a PreviewShot tab in the bubble.

Video Shot and Photo Shot - Now supports all major video and photo sharing sites (YouTube, Metacafe, Google Video, Xanga Video, Revver, PhotoBucket, Flickr, PicasaWeb…)

A zoom feature was added-look for the little magnifier glass at the top right corner of the bubble.

Related Searches - Those will be displayed instead of the search box and should provide users with suggestions to searches that are related to the site being previewed. The "related searches" feature is not fully released and can be spotted on some blogs.

According to VP Product Jay Meydad, additional types of Snap Shots will be released soon. Stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: photo shot rss shot snap snap shot web 2.0 video shot

Vote for Web2Spot on Snap contest !!!

Snap came out with the "Extreme makeover contest" for improving their Snap preview widget. They're giving away cash for the best ideas that are submitted. The contest ends on March 15, 2007. First prize takes $2500, second prize $1000 and third prize $500 plus the two best comments will receive $500.

Right now my idea has 5 votes which isn't that bad and I really think its a good idea. Go check it out, add your own ideas and vote for me. Thanks.

Technorati Tags: contest snap web2spot

Snap dilemma...?

My feelings are mixed when it comes to Snap and their Snap Preview Anywhere (SPA) product. I think that in general the product is genius and that it has many advantages. I do agree with snap that "all parties win" - the user gets a better experience, the publisher keeps the user on their site longer and they get an incremental monetization opportunity. And Snap get more exposure and awareness of its search engine.
On the other hand and mostly what bothers me is the "pop-up" effect. Nothing to do about it - I can't ignore the feeling of a small window popping up and covering a part of the reading area. It's a bit annoying to me.
I do have two suggestions for Snap. First, I would consider widgetizing the bubble. What I would like to see is a dedicated window frame on the blog sidebar for example, showing me the previews on the side and not the way it pops up now. There is a problem with my suggestion when the Snap widget isn't seen when the page is scrolled down.
My second suggestion may solve this problem and is related to the first one. As part of the options given to the end-user in the bubble why not let the user determine where on the page would he like the bubble to pop-up. Or even better, why not make the Snap bubble dragable - is this doable??

By adding Snap icon trigger as part of their new features I think they came very close to perfect and convinced me to add SPA to Web2Spot. Last week a few other enhancements were released:
You can customize the bubble color theme and logo and add a SPA on/off badge to your blog allowing the end-user to turn on or off the previews.

Now you're asking yourself why I'm covering Snap on Web2Spot when my blog is dedicated to Web 2.0 companies that are made in Israel? So, actually there is a relation because Snaps vice president of product Jay Maydad is originally from Israel and before moving to the US Jay worked for ICQ. This one's for you Jay. :-)

Technorati Tags: image search snap spa