Ma.gnolia Blog: Little Pictures on the Web Site
A few sharp eyes have noticed something new about Ma.gnolia over the past month: a change in the source of our thumbnail screen shots that are found on bookmark detail pages, RSS and Atom feeds, daily blog postings, and through our API.
Where are these images now coming from? A new service we’re publicly launching today called thmbnl.
Thmbnl won’t revolutionize the internets, feed your pets, or teach your children the classics. It does one thing, and that one thing we hope it does well: capture and present accurate screen shots of web pages. We originally developed thmbnl for our in-sourced use only, but soon realized that plenty of other people might want to use the images we’re capturing and decided to open it up as a public service. Given it’s limited scope and applicability, there is a bunch of nifty, geeky stuff going on behind the scenes, which are explored in detail by Todd on his blog. Be sure to check out his post, and even subscribe to keep up with the whole Ma.gnolia family.
What does this mean for Ma.gnolia users? More accurate and up to date images, as well as some new tricks in the works now that we have a variety of sizes to work with. Are there any other places or ways you’d like to see site thumbnails appear on Ma.gnolia? Let us know, we’re sure that we haven’t thought about all of the possibilities.
Posted by Larry on March 5, 2008 | Mark This Post
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John on March 5, 2008
I've noticed this (the default "no thumbnail" image has been different). I also have noticed fairly slow image loading in the newsfeeds (particularly compared to the old third-party thumbnails). Hopefully it gets better over time.