Filed under: Accessories, Software, Internet Tools, Snow Leopard
Dear Aunt TUAW: Snow Leopard killed GrabUp, Auntie fixes it
Dear Auntie TUAW,
I love GrabUp. GrabUp is my BFF. It automatically uploads my screen shots to the GrabUp web site and copies the URL to my clipboard. If GrabUp were a girl, I'd marry her like *snap* that. But Snow Leopard has killed GrabUp. It doesn't work. My darling is dead.
I tried TinyGrab as well and that isn't working either. Frankly, between you and me, TinyGrab has issues. It's slow and does not work all the time. I miss GrabUp :(
Love and kisses,
Your Nephew J.
Darling J,
My heart goes out to you. I too am a GrabUp aficionado! Because I love you (and all my nephews and nieces) and because I really needed to get GrabUp working again for my own use, I put together a work-around for you! (Here is the zipped command line utility) Download, unzip, switch off GrabUp, and run this at the command line.
Grabupper looks for new screen shots on the Desktop using the Snow Leopard screenshot naming standard. When it finds them, it uploads the data to the GrabUp website, copies the URL, pastes it to your clipboard, and lets you know when the URL is ready to use.
The grabupper utility uses a few shortcuts for expedience. It only looks on the Desktop, and it only looks for names starting with "Screen shot". The reason I mention this is because you can change the screen shot prefix using defaults write com.apple.screencapture name prefix, but if you do so, you'll have to update the utility source code to match that prefix.
You'll find the source code over at GitHub. It works like this. A notification observer looks for com.apple.carbon.core.DirectoryNotification events, which are associated with the screen shot updates. When these events trigger, the file manager searches for new screen shots that are less than 5 seconds old. When it finds one, it converts the file to JPEG format (Auntie loves using non-compatible TIFFs for book illustrations), and uploads them to GrabUp.
Once GrabUp returns a successful upload response, the code extracts the URL string and writes it to the system pasteboard. It then spawns a system process to alert the user (system("say 'You Are Ell is ready'");). Isn't that just adorable?
Here's hoping this will hold you until GrabUp becomes Snow Leopard ready!
Hugs,
Auntie T.
UPDATE: Based on suggestions by TUAW co-blogger Joachim Bean, the source and executable have been updated to use the defaults written to com.apple.screencapture, both name and path. Thanks, Joachim!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chroma said 2:23PM on 9-07-2009
"If GrabUp were a girl, I'd marry her like *snap* that"
Sooo, Erica is a lesbian?
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Chroma said 2:24PM on 9-07-2009
Oh, wait, reading fail. Didn't notice question and reply format.
Chris Leydon said 2:24PM on 9-07-2009
I'm sorry to hear that you'e currently experiencing issues with TinyGrab. I can assure you that it does work for many users with Snow Leopard.
The issues that may be experiencing could be down to language issues, or the format of your screenshots. Unfortunately, currently, TinyGrab only supports the English localised OS by default (unless you specifically request a localised version by emailing us). TinyGrab also, currently, only automatically uploads screenshots saved in the format of .PNG
I'm unaware of the server outages that you've been experiencing. We did have 2 minutes of download today, as we were migrating our Rackspace Cloud servers, apart from that I am unaware of any other connection issues.
I would appreciate it if you could email me (chris at tinygrab dawt com) so that I could assist you further with any problems.
Best wishes!
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thinktwice said 2:26PM on 9-07-2009
Skitch
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Krum said 2:43PM on 9-07-2009
All of this "It doesn't work on Snow Leopard" is getting old. It's starting to sound like a bunch of Windows XP users complaining that their programs don't work on Vista. Get over it already, find another program to do what you want, or just wait for a fix from the developer.
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SimpleRain said 5:09PM on 9-07-2009
Chris, if you'll excuse me... Your product is less than GrabUp's but with current development. For me and my house we'll use GrabUp, the first and still the best without virtually any updates since April of 2008. How does your product stand up? :P Create a new way of doing things and maybe I'd have more respect. :)
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me said 6:32PM on 9-07-2009
Does this work with FTP-ing to my own server?
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Erica Sadun said 6:42PM on 9-07-2009
Easy enough to add FTP support (I've got FTP sample code for that up at GitHub) but GrabUp's service is very nice on its own.
Chris Sexton said 9:46PM on 9-07-2009
I discovered the same problems as I installed Snow Leopard as soon as I received the Developer Preview. This was especially sad as I had just upgraded to GrabUp Pro.
I did the same thing you did, I rolled my own.
http://github.com/csexton/captured
It is a ruby replacement that uses Growl for notifications. It is very flexible and can even invoke an arbitrary command when a new screenshot is found -- I provide an example using curl to post to twitpic.com, or a simple scp.
Given the target audience (aka me), I didn't give it the polish of GrabUp -- but it works great for me.
I might just have to fork grabupper and see how you did things. Thanks for releasing the source!
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dropinthestream said 11:09PM on 9-07-2009
Another nice option is Snapplr. It's similar to GrabUp, except provides some more flexibility as to where you want your screenshot uploaded: to their servers, to a new email message, your clipboard, or do a file on your desktop as usual. There's also a neat Live option where you can select a window and create a "live link" that can take a screenshot of that window whenever someone accesses the URL.
http://snapplr.com/
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jpxxx said 1:45AM on 9-08-2009
The idea behind Grabup is so ingenious and astonishingly useful that I have been singing its praises for a year, despite an ever-more-rotten experience. The client started glitching, the server would go down for hours at a time, the twitter updates stopped coming, and finally it died entirely under Snow Leopard. Developer response: "..."
I played with Tinygrab for ten minutes before whipping out my credit card. Every single aspect of the client is better, with the added bonus that it functions at all. You can manage your uploads after the fact, you can upload discrete files, you can get a short URL automatically, and oh.... did I mention that it WORKS?
Life's too short to wait on developers that don't give a shit.
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Andi said 7:01AM on 9-08-2009
build your own using automator with upload to ftp.
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/automator/uploadtoftp.html
SL lets you easily set up a service with a shortcut. :)
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Ronny said 8:39PM on 9-21-2009
After having seen this last 'upload to FTP' action I gave automator another try, and I actually got extremely close to copying Grabup. For free. Only downside is a few seconds (2-3sec) delay before the upload starts... Check it out!
http://digg.com/u1CsvW
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Josh said 11:56AM on 10-10-2009
Seriously, check out Plasq.com's Skitch... it's fantastic and free.
http://plasq.com/skitch
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