Snapito

Snapito is a simple web tool created by Cazcade Ltd, a startup in Brighton, UK. This tool will create high quality screenshots. Simply enter the url of the site you want to screenshot and click the settings cog to reveal additional options.

You can choose the screenshot size (desktop, tablet, mobile) and the type of screenshot you want (full length, large cropped, medium cropped, small cropped, thumbnail).

Even if you have Photoshop and know how to create a full length screenshot, it's time consuming. This tool will create a screenshot while you switch browser tabs and work on something else.

One thing I did notice, if your site lazy loads images, any images below the fold will not show up. If you change the delay setting in Snapito, it will work. I found that setting the delay to 10 seconds seems to work well.

The tool is free to use. If you need to generate screenshots for more than 100 unique urls or want to use their API, check out their site for more info.

Frame

Frame is a free tool created by Lab25, which is built and run by Paul Aikman, Armin Solecki and Grant MacLennan from Glasgow, Scotland.

If you need a product shot of your site in the image, Frame will save you time and will generate the image in a matter of seconds.

As soon as you arrive on the site, click the "Get Started" button. You will be presented with an option to choose desktop, Android, iPhone, etc.

Choose the photo you want to use, then upload your image, resize and reposition your crop area. You can download the image or copy the and share the url on social networks.

This couldn't be more true especially through social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Users will not hesitate to vocalize their opinions if you didn't test out your software and pushed out an alpha version as your beta (or beta as live). Opinions not only can be harsh and ruthless, but they can spread out there pretty fast.

If you're launching a product on your own or if you're a small company, you may wonder where to begin. This is a great ebook in a SlideShare presentation by Centercode containing 100 tips for beta testing that can help keep things organized.

The ebook outlines planning your test, recruiting and selecting testers, handling Non Disclosure Agreements (nothing worse than a tester tweeting about your secret killer product), communicating with testers, handling feedback, etc.

As much as I appreciate the features WordPress offers, I have been thinking of moving my portfolio site for a few reasons.

I already have a site that a friend and I update that's also a WordPress site (socksonanoctopus.com). For that site, it's updated daily with content in addition to updating plugins, cleaning out spam comments and other things that come with managing a WordPress site. And I planned on writing more on my portfolio site, but never really had enough time to do that between full-time work, updating the other site, brushing up and learning some new skills, blogging for this site just never happened. And if there's anything that I don't like most is having an item to do and not getting it done.

Instead of letting my site collect dust, I thought, if I moved my site to a different blogging platform, then that would stop me from constantly changing the theme and tweaking it so much and actually write. Not that I don't like taking a peek at how something was coded in a theme or how a layout was done in CSS. I certainly enjoy it, but a goal of mine was to write more in 2014 rather than tweaking themes all the time.

Another reason for moving to Silvrback is because it seemed to cover the basics of what I was looking in a replacement platform. The bio page is pretty nice. It's like a mini resume/LinkedIn so there's no need to write a lengthy bio page just so it doesn't look so empty and then a separate project/portfolio page.

The move wasn't too painful. Some of the items I had listed in my portfolio I didn't transfer over because it seemed similar to others I already listed in my portfolio or it was outdated/didn't exist anymore. Plus, I didn't have that much content to transfer over.

One thing I did have to get used to was writing in Markdown instead of writing in HTML. Sometimes I still catch myself typing HTML.