I read a lot, my work depends on it. And the hourly dose of dopamine didn’t kick in until I shared what I read on Twitter. But sometimes, just sharing a link to an article is not enough. Not many people on my timeline will click everything and read through. That’s why it would be great if I could share the really epic part.
This is not a problem if I am using Google+ or Facebook. I can just paste the text in the status field, enclose it in quotes and call it a date. But thanks to Twitter’s 140-character limit, that’s nearly impossible. Sometimes I barely have enough room to add my own comments.
But where there is #FirstWorldProblem, there is a programmer and his basement startup working on a solution. In this particular case, we’re still far from a perfect fix, but you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the options below (number 3 will amaze you). Okay, okay – that’s enough trolling bait for today.
1. PullQuote for Chrome
PullQuote exists only as a Chrome extension. You need to create an account to sign up, and strangely there is no option to link a Twitter account right away. You do it later, after finishing your first tweet.
PullQuote doesn’t just let you share your created images to Twitter. You can submit quotes to your collection without sharing, copying text or short links.
Here’s how it works: after you’ve installed the extension and created an account, the text selection action will display PullQuote’s options as a pop-up window (popups can be disabled and some options can be accessed by clicking on the app’s icon). From here choose tweet and a new window will display with the text placed over a blank image. You can choose a background color (only 3 options), enter text, choose your Twitter account and send.
Thoughts: Customization options would be appreciated. You cannot change the text style, create new paragraphs, or add any text or dots. It’s funny when the app calls itself DragQuote and there is no way to give the author attribution or specify the title of the page. All you get is the domain name.
If you spend more than 5 hours a day looking at your watch, you may have problems http://t.co/olFeuR8loy pic.twitter.com/I39XM8ypeY
– Khamosh Pathak (@pixeldetective) March 6, 2015
2. Storming.me for the web
Storming.me is a side project of Karan Goel But don’t let that put you off. It’s a simple web application based on simple technology (you can look up the code on Github).
There is no plugin or extension for Storming, you will have to go to the website and paste the text in. But it offers a lot of control. You have rich text format so you can add titles, lists, etc. There is an option to remove the watermark of the web page and an icon to change the background color to look like a forwarding message button. Like the website’s design, the colors are flat and modern, inspired by Google’s Material Design guidelines.
Lumia 640, 640 XL and the Future of Windows 10 on Mobile – http://t.co/WkeyydUeUez pic.twitter.com/h4rwlnMxZP
– Khamosh Pathak (@pixeldetective) March 6, 2015
Thoughts: The site is a bit buggy but if you’re looking for full control over the text you place inside the images, then Storming.me is for you.
3. OneShot for iPhone
OneShot is what I’m most excited about. In my life as a technology writer, I come across a lot of apps and services. Some are great, most of them are not. Then there are things I want that don’t exist. I keep an Evernote note about all my apps and website ideas that I will one day work on when I finally learn to code (as you always do). One of these ideas is similar to OneShot/PullQuote (I own the textshot.in domain, that’s how much I want this to happen). Share text as an image, as easily as possible.
Only OneShot makes this much simpler than I could have imagined. The designer of OneShot has a great Medium post where he basically proved all the ideas I had about my app wrong. The average person is clearly not a fan of iOS 8 extensions.
So OneShot relies on something that is second nature to all of us; Screenshots. We shared them on Slack and WhatsApp group chats.
Here’s how it works: you go to the browser (it works in apps too), display text on the screen, and take a screenshot. Then you open the app, crop the screenshot, select the background and here’s the cool thing, you can highlight the text in the image as if it were real text. It’s sickening that they pulled this out. Response to screen touches is immediate, and you highlight every word.
Once done, the app will OCR the text in the image and suggest 3 links the app thinks the text came from. You can select the source or provide a link if it’s wrong. The title of the page will be added to the image.
Then tweet and send. All OneShot you send is stored in the app.
Thanks for this @viticci. This fat man appreciates the wake-up call. http://t.co/N0XJKXtBpc pic.twitter.com/aN8iEgZaWK
– Khamosh Pathak (@pixeldetective) March 4, 2015
Thoughts: While the background color picker is slick, I’m not a huge fan. You need to drag your finger to select the color. This gives you a lot of options but my mind doesn’t work that way. I’d be happier with an old fashioned color picker for solid colors instead.
The app only supports Twitter, I hope more social networks will be added soon. Also, may we get extension support in a future release, for us nerds? After all, this app is about magically highlighting text from an image, automatically importing a link, and sharing it on Twitter. Could it get any weirder?
Snapshot of your text
What are some of your text snapshots? (Yes, I’m trying to make it happen.) Share your tweets in the comments section below.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
