Kwuot. Um, what?

Ted / 27.Dec.2007

Kwuot is a new web service that re-implements (Ajax style) the combination of "Take Screenshot" and The Gimp's select-cut-paste.

How Do I Internet

So here's what Kwuot does: you enter in a URL, it will take a shot of the page as an image, and then you can select a segment out of that shot to paste into your content. The anchor tags in the HTML you're taking an image of carry through as an imagemap.

This is a clear-cut case of either lazy or incompetent developers. Extracting the content from a block of HTML is a real bitch. First, you've got to clean the DOM to something sensible. Then, you need to figure out how to separate the boilerplate template code from the actual content. You need to get rid of ads, header, footer & nav links. And you need to do it all in one pass over the DOM for it to perform reasonably fast.

I know this because I have wasted weeks of my life on this very problem.

I Can't Get Kwuot To Work. It Hangs On "Grabbing A Medium Screen Shot..."

Of course, it's a few orders of magnitude easier just to take an image of the page, and have the user select the content area. Sure, it's not parsable or otherwise useful, but Arrington doesn't know that.

After all, Web 2.0 isn't about having computers solve problems, it's about having people solve problems with computers. Isn't it funny, too, that 9 out of 10 problems that users are solving with computers in Web 2.0 are problems that were created by computers in the first place?

UPDATE: How do I spelling? It's actually Kwout. What is it with Web 2.0 product names?

add to del.icio.us, digg it, rabble reddit kwuot

25 Comments

A Classic quote and one to be saved forever! Shhh...genius at work here. "After all, Web 2.0 isn't about having computers solve problems, it's about having people solve problems with computers. Isn't it funny, too, that 9 out of 10 problems that users are solving with computers in Web 2.0 are problems that were created by computers in the first place?"

william sager / 27.Dec.2007 at 10:53am

Does this site even exist? You don't link, kwuot.com is a domain-squater ad site, kwuot.net doesn't exist, and Google's best guess is that I meant "kuwait". What?

gr / 27.Dec.2007 at 11:23am

i think its kwout, teds been hittin the pipe again, be careful kwout uses js

mookat / 27.Dec.2007 at 11:31am

http://kwout.com/cutout/x/cz/36/t94_bor_rou_sha.jpg

mookat / 27.Dec.2007 at 11:35am

Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM in 1958, said that there was a world market for about 5 computers. If he'd said a world NEED for 5 computers, he'd have been about right.

tricky dick / 27.Dec.2007 at 11:58am

I saw Kwout yesterday and tried it out... for the purpose of it (quoting sites) it seems ridiculous! Why would I want an image on my site when I can just copy and paste the text and add some CSS!!!

But, I can see it coming in handy to take screen shots of websites without using third party installed tools. Then I noticed how LONG it takes to load a page! I can start GIMP take a screen shot and crop it faster then this fucking crap loads. worthless...

trigger / 27.Dec.2007 at 12:02pm

This site looks like web 2.0 superfail: http://www.woome.com/

something / 27.Dec.2007 at 12:48pm

@something browser/search isn't enabled there yet. It will be fun to see if Justine Ezarik ends up joining woome.

nin-mofo / 27.Dec.2007 at 01:04pm

while (techcrunch) { techcrunch.credibility--; }

joe / 27.Dec.2007 at 02:13pm

oh my god these pictures... where in the hell do you get them? That looks like that greasy bear's brother - the oily guy always hanging off of paris hilton. Tell me I did NOT just see that guy's hairy balls...

mike not arrington / 27.Dec.2007 at 02:54pm

actually, i see value here, sad as it might be. specifically, non-english websites don't render properly for users running xp without the right language packs installed (pretty common still iirc?). they get empty boxes all over the place in lieu of the correct chatacters and/or an install popup.

john ketchpaw / 27.Dec.2007 at 05:12pm

I was cleaning out my bookmarks today so that I could take an uncluttered screenshot, and "kwout" was in there. I couldn't figure out what the fuck it was, so I clicked it. It turned out to be exactly what I needed at the time. One downside, it doesn't give you the code to put the image on a forum. Other than that it's actually pretty solid, although the problem it solves is not one I encounter much. The name sucks though. At least make the bookmarklet say something more descriptive than "kwout". And the decorations are... ugly. But they got the hard stuff right, with a bit of tweaking this might be something slightly useful.

paul / 27.Dec.2007 at 08:56pm

@John - I still don't see value to that? If I can read Chinese, I probably have the characters installed. If I can't, what part of the image am I cropping.. certainly not the text?

joshua / 27.Dec.2007 at 09:06pm

Two things. 1) At least "kwout" makes "wedgea" sound halfway decent. 2) I think the impetus for the development of kwout was the (already filled) need for screenshots of websites for display on other sites such as search engines, directories, domain name oriented sites, etc. I also think the kwout folks took it one step further and allowed you to pull off only part of the image which could be useful for pulling quick image pieces for articles. Are there other solutions available? Sure both online (for full screens) and offline (your custom code or pieced together libraries). Although kwout seems to remove a level of automation.

wedgea / 27.Dec.2007 at 10:47pm

@wedgea: remove a level of automation? what the hell are you talking about! The steps involved in taking a screenshot and croping it are pretty much what is involved in this application!
so, what the fuck is wedgea? Although not giving it a goal makes it in line with most web 2.0 fronts, so you're well on your way --I'm assuming that's what you mean. Asshat...
Why is someone using custom codes and libraries to take a screen shot?

trigger / 28.Dec.2007 at 12:07am

I thought I'd email this in, but fuck that. Emails can be ignored and deleted, but blog comment? Those are serious and forever. I hope Persai is gonna solve my fucking problem. Here's the problem: There is incredible band called Russian Cirles (instrumental, neo-post-prog rock). They're in the US, I'm not. I want to know what's going on with them. I have a Google Reader blog search alert for "Russian Circles" http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?hl=en&client=news&q=%22russian+circles%22&ie=utf-8&output=atom
If the band or label puts out some information, I get it in the reader. Then for the next 2 months, as every schmuck blogger who thinks they're covering the indie music decides to actually post something this month, I get those cut-n-paste "news" items in my reader too. Will Persai solve this problem? I guess I'll find out soon enough.

dempsey / 28.Dec.2007 at 12:15am

A swirly administered by your gym coach should solve this problem.

tricky dick / 28.Dec.2007 at 01:34pm

@trigger: Yeah, their site (Kwout) adds the step of having to mark the area of the webpage screen capture thus making it less automated than other web enabled webpage thumbnailers (where you can just add an img tag with the URL of the site to be captured). I see what they were trying to do but with the manual intervention it is not too useful. Why have folks created web enabled thumbnail sites? Many folks do not want to piece together their own and a common pool of thumbnails reduces redundant efforts. As for "WEDGea" (aweful sounding name for sure but it is like an ugly pair of shoes...still wearable and interesting in their own right), I'm just trying to get some tech folks together for anything from meeting to discuss tech to hopefully working on a common project. It is hard to come across like-minded folks in the midwest. I'm bound to the locale due to personal reasons otherwise I would be back in the Bay Area. It's vague as I want the group that we finally assemble to vote on a project out of a pool of our ideas. I know...too much information for a damn comment on a snarky blog like Uncov.

wedgea / 28.Dec.2007 at 02:15pm

Holy fuck!!! WHAT A SERVICE!! Just imagine, I can use *it* instead of, you know, hitting Print Screen, opening MS Paint, Pasting, and then, uh, you know, *selecting* the shit *I* want without problem. Oh brave new world that has such fucking horrors in it!!

mike cane / 28.Dec.2007 at 03:27pm

I don't even use Paint. I just post a link back to the site like everyfuckingbody else. You know, like Kwout

steve / 28.Dec.2007 at 04:11pm

That's the uncov crew for you. Snarky to the last. I love it. I'm not defending Kwout (or associated with it) but I know other thumbnailers (that don't require you to manually select a region) fill some folks needs that were looking for website thumbnails as seen on Alexa, whois.sc, AdBrite and some other sites. Just using some URL for the image is much easier than busting open Photoshop/Paint everytime you need one. Also, you don't have to host the images (i.e. bandwidth costs). Actually, it sounds like I am defending them. Okay, those other thumbnailers fill a void for some - Kwout on the otherhand fails by adding the select a region step. @steve: thanks for the snarky comment on my blog. ;-)

wedgea / 28.Dec.2007 at 04:50pm

You cant launch a startup from omaha, too much corn. You need to move a little more to the south like K.C. All that corn rots your brain.

mookat / 29.Dec.2007 at 07:46am

Wow, their business model is nerds who are too lazy to use MSPaint.

shii / 30.Dec.2007 at 12:42am

Um, I see Paul is stealing your lines again: always be closin....

mike not arrington / 31.Dec.2007 at 02:21pm

Re: what's up with web 2.0 names: http://www.cerado.com/web20quiz.htm

nori / 02.Jan.2008 at 09:25pm

Sorry, comments are closed for this article.

Kwuot. Um, what?

How Do I Internet

I Can't Get Kwuot To Work. It Hangs On "Grabbing A Medium Screen Shot..."

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