bouncingboomergirlgeek: fyi & fwiw

Create Without Limits - Sell Without Fees

The title above is the slogan for a nifty-sounding site just getting launched. Artfire.com is for artisans selling their self-designed self-made wares online (click image for a sample view). The art can be whatever you wish, from a piece of jewelry all handmade to a custom digital template for a new business card. A basic storefront is free, and artists sell without added fees. The biz model appears to make its money off the larger shops, but even the full boat package is cheap ($7 monthly) a price they will guarantee for life to the next 5,000 accounts. The site seeks to build community too. It encourages members to interact, even to blog, and it has a go green section. With this level of energy and ease of access, they might become serious rivals for the niche-leader Etsy.com.

New & Neat, No.2

My "New & Neat" Nominee this week is Clip2Net, a (free) little Windows utility I seem to be using constantly.

Clip2Net does one simple thing: screenshots. But it does it with such quick, fluid ease, I find myself getting much more visual in everything I write because what used to take a half dozen steps to snip, save and share now takes only two or three moves from me. It's a dream date for visual thinkers who like to show as much as tell.

Clip2Net does two things: (a) it turns your cursor into a temporary marquee to grab any part of what you see on screen and (b) saves that image to clipboard or disk or to a private online bin with its own URL that you can share anywhere. If you register your copy you also get control panel management of all your uploads, including a download counter and a generous hunk of storage space. You can also tag your uploads for how long you wish to keep them.

Consider the effect of simply putting the C2N logo at the head of this post. You instantly see if you already know what I'm talking about, and if so, you keep surfing. Or you have your interest piqued and decide to keep reading. So you, the viewer, can maximize the ROI on your time, while I, the author, can add visual impact, and the developers of C2N can reap more eyeballs if you decide to use it too.

That's the kind of thing I am talking about when I mention the "Win-Win Web" which is what all of Web 2.0 is rapidly coming to mean to me. But more about that in the next post and back to this handy little utility. Read on to find out more about what Clip2Net.can do.

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