There are a lot of image sharing apps on the Web now. From TwitPic to Flickr, there are literally thousands of ways to share photos online. Likewise, there are hundreds of screen capturing apps for every platform imaginable, whether it be your PC or an iPhone. Plus, there are thousands of URL shortening websites out there too, making sharing a web URL easy on any network.
TinyGrab.com takes those concepts and puts them all together. With TinyGrab, you can capture a screen grab and share it with image hosting and then gives you a short URL for easy sharing. It’s one of those “it’s about time someone did that” apps that looks like it’s going to be nothing but popular.
Except that it has two major drawbacks: it’s for Mac OS X only (for now) and the service charges for use.
KeyOne Productions, the people who make TinyGrab, are promising a Windows and Linux version of the app soon, but aren’t giving an expected ETA on that yet. The price is ten pounds, which is roughly $16 in USD for the service. The fee is a one-time fee and users can sign up and try the service for free with ten grabs and shares.
Let’s look at how this all works.
Sign up on the TinyGrab website and the app is offered for download. Once the app is downloaded and installed, which is easy, you’re ready to go. Using the usual screen grab keys, Command-Shift-4, the capture is made and is automatically uploaded to TinyGrab in the background. The app turns green to show you that it’s ready and the short link is automatically copied to your clipboard.
With a paid account, you can augment this by mass-uploading photos or screen captures through FTP.
You can also log into your TinyGrab account and see uploads you’ve made, get the links for them, see the stats of visitors to them. You can delete or change past uploads as well.
Overall, it’s a great app, though it has some room to grow. Eventually, the service, if the PC and Linux versions come out soon, will become quite popular. The one-time price is not bad, so I suspect a lot of people will find it useful enough to be willing to pay that.
TinyGrab is a great app and worth checking out.
