Zappy
Zapier releases a new tool for annotating screenshots called Zappy, in the tradition of Skitch, and, my favorite, the unfortunately discontinued Napkin.
I’m fascinated by this problem, it seems so simple on the surface: Just share what I’m looking at on the screen and be able to mark it up. But this problem is wonderfully devious in ways that emphasize our expectations when using computers. For example, once something is digital, we expect it be perfect. A poorly-drawn digital line is somehow worse than the same line drawn on a whiteboard.
Consider editing text, one of the first things a new computer user learns, and almost immediately they can produce pixel-perfect text every time. The comparative skill for just editing a line, is a Bezier curve tool like the one found in Adobe Illustrator, which is extraordinarily difficult to master by comparison.
Sharing an annotated screenshot brings out two truths about computers:
- We expect digital artifacts to be perfect.
- Editing anything graphical with a computer is very hard to master.