No, this has nothing to do with tasty fish, the name of this service refers to the process of fine tuning a design. Irish design agency Spoiltchild Design came up with a handy tool that helps you and your colleagues to address every detail in an image, without bothering to describe the spot you’re talking about. You just put a note on the desired spot and email the image to a colleague, who can also easily edit the picture as well.
This can come in particularly handy when discussing a site design. I know from my own experience that instead of sending a 3-page email, you just paste some notes on the design. One minor thing though, this experience comes from using Fleck. This Amsterdam-based service offers you the possibility to note specific places on any web page with a bookmarklet or fancy flash browser tool. A disclosure is in order here, as Fleck sponsors this blog. I think though, that for tech-savvy users, Fleck is the better tool. Yet for people who just want to add some text to an image, Finetuna is a good alternative since it’s really simple.
A bit too simple maybe, as Finetuna could use some extra features like an embed option and Twitter integration. Speaking of which, I’ve praised web development companies in the past who make Twitter mash-ups to promote their services. These companies add something to the web, while working on their PR. It’s probably the same story with Spoiltchild Design, as there are no advertisements on Finetuna, nor do visitors have to register. The consultants of Spoiltchild just needed a tool like this and then decided to make it publicly available. And before you know it, some blogger mentions their company name three times.
I use Fleck for sharing individual pages on websites but Skitch for ‘pixelperfect’ stuff. They let you annotate screengrabs with text and upload the images to their site. Works very well!
Cool, thanks for the mention Ernst-Jan.
Actually Fleck is useless for the purpose Finetuna serves, because the position of the notes totally depends on screen resolution/window size etc. It renders the positioning of notes useless.
@sebastien That’s true, fleck puts an overlay on top of the whole page and doesnot peg the notes to html. So different screen resolutions will show the notes on a different horizantal axes (vertical is precise).
Although fleck is used by a lot of webdevelopers who want to communicate with their clients, I like to use it more as a collaborative bookmarking tool to share interesting websites within groups (and yes I can see the notes that other people leave on those websites, which comes in handy sometimes)
Oh, and by the way I think Skitch is by far the best solution for Mac users if you want to annotate pictures. This is also a great tool for bloggers.
@ Patrick
Not arguing Fleck’s value – in this context it just isn’t the right tool to be compared to Finetuna (or Skitch).
Don’t you think finding a solution for fixed positions would be a smart move though?
@Sebastien The (dis)advantage is that whenever the word annotation is mentioned, regardless of the context, fleck is compared to it.
Less than 1% of all flecks are actually placed somewhere in context with the page behind it. I believe that web annotation is a nice tool but not good enough for a true service .That is why Fleck shifted to sharing links and interesting websites within groups, creating a collective brain. The web overlay and the notion that it is possible to add stuff to any website is really cool, but up until today not one company (also not our competitors with several millions in funding) proved that there is a big enough market for ‘web annotation’.
@Sebastian and Patrick, I’m pretty sure it’s a good comparison, as I’ve used it quite a lot for this purpose. Although you’re right about the horizontal bias. Other from that, it works just fine: http://twitter.com/dutchproblogger/statuses/756018472
@ernst-jan Nice!!
I’ve never given this a try, but I think it’s about time I do.