I sometimes use the Goo.gl URL shortening service, albeit very rarely. Today I noticed that it created a rather handy screenshot of the webpage that I shortened a URL for. Got me thinking. Wooo.
I had once in the past looked for a service which took full screenshots but found nothing great. I tend to resort to minimizing a page as much as possible and hitting Alt-PrtScrn, usually with pretty poor results. Goo.gl does it so much better.
Now, I have no idea if the thumbnail and screenshot will survive for ever, but it might just do. Here is the example I did today;
I created a short URL to Tweet the story HMV Closing Down? using Goo.gl. It created goo.gl/tNNl0 and provided this screenshot;
As you can see, it is the full length of the page. And, it is still active. There is not much I want to add really.
Oh, Goo.gl also produces QR codes. Look:
So if you need a QR code, no need to go to another service. Does it track the QR code clicks? No idea. I guess so … not sure how those are reported though.
The live URL for the screenshot is: https://www.google.com/webpagethumbnail ?c=41&r=4&s=300&d= http://www.essexportal.co.uk/ ….. and the URL for the QR code is http://chart.googleapis.com/chart?cht.… (both trimmed to display on this blog post) but if they stop working my broken link checker will tell me.
OK, This was a failure.
Well, Google does not host the image for much longer than it takes to see it. I now get a
“400. That’s an error. Your client has issued a malformed or illegal request. That’s all we know.”
message.
On Google+ Mat Bennet said this:
FireShot chrome plugin: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/capture-webpage-screensho/mcbpblocgmgfnpjjppndjkmgjaogfceg?hl=en
Not tested it yet myself. Installing …. now.
OK, spammers have once again spoiled the show. The only way to stop the spam is to switch off the comments.