Tony Dunckel is Product Manager for SnagIt, the versatile screen capture program from Okemos based TechSmith Corporation that functions more like a Swiss-Army knife of graphic tasks. I interviewed Tony more than a year ago -- and SnagIt already looks like a different, newer product that adds more usability and feature improvements with each release.
In this conversation, Tony discusses new SnagIt improvements and usage patterns.
Geetesh: Tell us more about the improvements in the new version of SnagIt?
Tony: Geetesh, since we last talked we have introduced 2 new versions, v8 and v8.1, which have added some long requested capabilities and some novel innovations as well.
SnagIt 8, launched towards the beginning of the year, produced the most astounding response we have ever received from our customer base. This was likely due to the fact that we solved their number one request: make the SnagIt Editor vector-based. This long awaited feature now lets users apply, change and delete edits made to a screen capture over and over again. We also spiced up the editing environment by adding custom callouts. These callouts allow users to add callout graphic, customize the size and color or it and enter the necessary text in one quick step. Plus users are able to save there custom callouts for repeat use.
From an innovation perspective, version 8 introduced the new capability of adding interactivity to a screen capture. This comes in a couple forms. First, users can now capture live web pages, where the hyperlinks stay active and can be accessed long after the capture was taken. This allows users to add one-click access to local files or web sites within screen captures they might use in an email, a saved file or even on a webpage itself. Second, users can add another type of interactivity through Flash. By adding a custom hotspot to any image, users can create popup text or images that appear when the viewer hovers over the hotspot. This unprecedented capability allows users to create truly interactive screen captures with point and click simplicity. Imagine images that can further explain themselves through this interactivity. This gives a whole new dimension in how uses can communicate visually with images.
Last, we added support for PDF in this release. Users can now easily capture any images and save that image to a PDF file. This ubiquitous format works across any platform and can be easily searched for by user entered metadata. Best yet, users can now use SnagIt's printer capture to print web pages, documents and more to SnagIt and then save them as PDF files in one quick step.
Just this past June, we launched version 8.1 to follow up the well received version 8. In this release, we enhanced the already popular interactive images by making these easy to put into PowerPoint.
Educators, presenters and consultants alike were extremely happy to see these incredibly powerful images now capable of being used inside the application they use everyday. We finally added in a few housekeeping items such as developing support for 64-bit operating systems and changing our new callout tool to create vector objects.
Geetesh: Can you share some SnagIt indispensable stories with us -- about people who are so spoiled by SnagIt that they can't live without it?
Tony: You bet. Not a day goes by we don't get fan mail from happy customers (don't worry, we get the other kind too...), but some are certainly more unconventional than others.
For example, we've gotten many requests to make SnagIt available on the thumb drive. People ask for this because they often have to use client PCs and just can't live without SnagIt at their fingertips. Of course, this is a legitimate request and one we're considering.
Then we have those that are more unique, such as the person that has changed jobs six times in the past four years and has managed to convince his boss to buy him SnagIt every time (boy, he must be in sales!).
And you can't forget the woman who bought her boss SnagIt as a holiday gift as a way to convince him to buy it for the whole company -- and no, she wasn't on the TechSmith payroll ;-)
TechSmith is truly fortunate that it has such appreciative customers. We understand the valuable role our customers play in helping us create quality products. Keeping that at the forefront of our model hopefully means many more years of happy SnagIt users.
From an innovation perspective, version 8 introduced the new capability of adding interactivity to a screen capture. This comes in a couple forms. First, users can now capture live web pages, where the hyperlinks stay active and can be accessed long after the capture was taken. This allows users to add one-click access to local files or web sites within screen captures they might use in an email, a saved file or even on a webpage itself. Second, users can add another type of interactivity through Flash. By adding a custom hotspot to any image, users can create popup text or images that appear when the viewer hovers over the hotspot. This unprecedented capability allows users to create truly interactive screen captures with point and click simplicity.
