grabup
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Create GrabUp-style functionality with Dropbox and Jing
Before Snow Leopard was released, we were enjoying GrabUp for super-simple sharing of screenshots. It was a great little utility: After a brief setup, it automatically sent any screenshot to its servers (or your own) and added the resulting URL to the Clipboard. It was fast and very useful. Snow Leopard killed it by changing the naming convention of screenshots. The developers haven't fixed it (in fact, Google now throws up a danger warning when I try to access the site) and it looks like they aren't going to. We posted a fix not too long ago, and today we found another approach on the Dropbox wiki that uses Dropbox and Jing. You get free online storage for up to 2GB of screenshots, and an easy way to get the URL of your screenshot where you need it in a hurry. Here's how it works. First, download and install Jing (it'll work with the free version -- more on that later) and get a Dropbox account (again, the free version will work). Once your Dropbox install is all done, create a destination folder in your Dropbox's Public folder -- maybe "screenshots," for example. Now it's time to fill in the Jing preferences. Read on...
Dear Aunt TUAW: Snow Leopard killed GrabUp, Auntie fixes it
Dear Auntie TUAW, I love GrabUp. GrabUp is my BFF. It automatically uploads my screen shots to the GrabUp web site and copies the URL to my clipboard. If GrabUp were a girl, I'd marry her like *snap* that. But Snow Leopard has killed GrabUp. It doesn't work. My darling is dead. I tried TinyGrab as well and that isn't working either. Frankly, between you and me, TinyGrab has issues. It's slow and does not work all the time. I miss GrabUp :( Love and kisses, Your Nephew J. Darling J, My heart goes out to you. I too am a GrabUp aficionado! Because I love you (and all my nephews and nieces) and because I really needed to get GrabUp working again for my own use, I put together a work-around for you! (Here is the zipped command line utility) Download, unzip, switch off GrabUp, and run this at the command line. Grabupper looks for new screen shots on the Desktop using the Snow Leopard screenshot naming standard. When it finds them, it uploads the data to the GrabUp website, copies the URL, pastes it to your clipboard, and lets you know when the URL is ready to use. The grabupper utility uses a few shortcuts for expedience. It only looks on the Desktop, and it only looks for names starting with "Screen shot". The reason I mention this is because you can change the screen shot prefix using defaults write com.apple.screencapture name prefix, but if you do so, you'll have to update the utility source code to match that prefix. You'll find the source code over at GitHub. It works like this. A notification observer looks for com.apple.carbon.core.DirectoryNotification events, which are associated with the screen shot updates. When these events trigger, the file manager searches for new screen shots that are less than 5 seconds old. When it finds one, it converts the file to JPEG format (Auntie loves using non-compatible TIFFs for book illustrations), and uploads them to GrabUp. Once GrabUp returns a successful upload response, the code extracts the URL string and writes it to the system pasteboard. It then spawns a system process to alert the user (system("say 'You Are Ell is ready'");). Isn't that just adorable? Here's hoping this will hold you until GrabUp becomes Snow Leopard ready! Hugs, Auntie T. UPDATE: Based on suggestions by TUAW co-blogger Joachim Bean, the source and executable have been updated to use the defaults written to com.apple.screencapture, both name and path. Thanks, Joachim!
GrabUp
GrabUp is an interesting little app that adds a new wrinkle to OS X's built in screen capturing functionality. When you install the prefpane, it allows you to add the GrabUp menu item to your menu bar. GrabUp just sits waiting for you to invoke it (by hitting Shift - Command - 4). Once you hit the key combo a crosshair pops up, letting you select part of your screen to capture. So far this is pretty standard stuff. The image is saved to your desktop and uploaded to GrabUp's server (like this) and the URL is automatically copied to your clipboard. The idea is that this will make it very easy to share screen captures over IM or email since no account is needed. The app just uploads the image and returns a unique URL.It isn't as robust as Skitch or ImageWell, but its beauty is in its simplicity. You don't need to have an FTP login or Flickr account to upload your picture to the web, and that is pretty compelling. The only question I have is: does it scale? What happens when thousands of people are using this app?Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
