This post is going to be the shortest “The Best…” list I’ve ever written.

When I use the phrase “simple screenshots,” I’m just talking about simple shots that can “liven-up” a blog post or website. I don’t use them in this blog, but do use them liberally in the blog for my mainstream ninth-grade English students so that it looks a little more engaging.

I am not talking about screenshots that excellent bloggers like Sue Waters and Silvia Tolisano use so effectively as instructional tools for those of us who are less tech savvy.

In order to make this list, a site needed to be free, not require registration, and quickly deliver the screenshot in a jpg image that could easily be placed on a blog or website.

I’ve experimented with quite a few of them, and can only list two on this “The Best…” list.

(I had originally thought that Thumbalizr outclassed most other sites because I was under the mistaken impression that they hosted images on their site indefinitely. However, they don’t appear to do so — you have to download the images on your computer first and then upload them to where you want them to appear. Given that, there are several other similar applications that are at least equal to Thumbalizr. They include Snapcasa, WebThumb, and Websnapr.)

One is Thumbalizr. It doesn’t get much easier than that site. All of the images on the blog I have for my ninth-grade class came from there.

The other is Kwout. It’s only a little more complicated to use than Thumbalizr, and the advantage is that the whole image you get back actually functions as a live link to the site. To the right of this post you can see an image of my website that was created using Kwout.

I’ve posted in the past about Aviary, a photo-editing site that I think is a bit too complicated for my taste. However, today they just announced a feature that makes it just about the easiest way possible to capture a screenshot that you can then email or embed on a website. All you have to do is type “aviary.com/’ in front of any URL address. That’s all there is to it.

Thumboo! seems like a very quick and easy way to take a screenshot (a picture of a webpage) and add it to your blog or website. An embed code is provided. One negative, though, is it doesn’t appear that you can adjust its size.

Snaggy

How To Take A Screenshot is a nice tutorial that I found through Joe Dinoto.

Capture More Than Just a Visible Screen With Nimbus Screenshot is a useful post from Richard Byrne.

As usual, all feedback is welcome.

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