Squidworks is launching a new web service that provides free website thumbnails and image hosting. The free service allows the user to submit a website url to the thumbnail generator, the generator will go and create a thumbnail image of the website as seen in a Firefox browser. The website thumbnail generator will then update that image regularly and allow the user to either download image or link to the image letting us host the image for them. The value with allowing us to host image is your images updates at the same time we update our archive, this keeps the image fresh on your sites.
We are able to make automated services like this by using Linux servers with X installed. We use a Virtual Frame Buffer and launch a browse inside the VFB. We send in the URL’s to the Firefox browser, wait a second for site to load and then snapshot the buffer. We pipe that snapshot to our image manipulation software where we re-size and convert image to a format usable on the internet. Taking thumbnails in this fashion allows us to use browser plugin’s like Flash player and Java which greatly improve the quality of the thumbnail snapshot. Our website thumbnail images shows you the true view the designer intended.
Please visit www.thumbmyweb.com and add your favorite URL’s to our archive. Browse through our image gallery and see all the webs we have in our archives. We just might have yours..
Cubert is currently working on a few websites, building up a VM network for Duckman using a PFSense VM to secure his VM network and Local switch. Setting up a Zimbra mail server on a Fedora 10 Vm for Quantumleaps.com and managing their DNS and SPF records
