I’m a big fan of integrated non-intrusive, productivity-enhanching applications. One category which is especially useful for me is the automatic publishing of screenshots, making conversations about looks and state so much easier.

Mr Bulgur: The label of the “More” button looks totally skewed.
Jean-Claude Which button?! You mean the home one? Looks good for me on Windows.
Mr Bulgur See, it looks like the v-centering algo is broken on OS X: http://hunch.se/s/8y/9sd0h2fcow8gs.png
Jean-Claude Ah! Yes, I’ll fix it in a blink of an eye.

I once purchased a license for Grab Up but the team bailed on us when the software broke. Moved on to TinyGrab but it’s too slow and often not working.

Since this functionality is rather trivial I looked around if someone had written an open source version, which I could simply adjust to my needs. None found. So I wrote one myself — Scrup.

Scrup is a simple little OS X application, or system plug-in, which sits in your menu bar:

When you take a screenshot, Scrup sends it to a web server of your choice. The web server then do something with the image (saves it, doh!) and returns a URL to the new image. That URL is then placed in your pasteboard, ready to be pasted somewhere. Scrup also keeps a list of the most recent scrups in it’s menu, for easy access at a later date.

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I just released the first official version of DroPub. It’s a mute little OS X application which makes drop boxes and sending stuff to remote servers as simple as it gets — just put a file in a regular folder and you’re done.

Try it out — simply download, double click and create a folder.

Uses SCP (secure copy over SSH) and thus you need to add your SSH key to the remote server in order for things to work. A future version will introduce storing of passwords in the KeyChain.

It normally lives in the menu bar, but can live in the dock also.

Virtually unlimited number of folders can be watched and configured.

Further reading: How I wrote DroPub in two days.

Finally!

CUPERTINO, California—February 12, 2008—Apple® today introduced Aperture™ 2, the next major release of its groundbreaking photo editing and management software with over 100 new features that make it faster, easier to use and more powerful. With a streamlined user interface and entirely new image processing engine, Aperture 2 also introduces new imaging tools for highlight recovery, color vibrancy, local contrast definition, soft-edged retouching, vignetting and RAW fine-tuning, and lets users directly post their portfolios on the .Mac Web Gallery* for viewing on the web, iPhone™, iPod® touch and Apple TV®. At a new low price of $199, anyone can easily organize, edit and publish photos like a pro.

• Press release
• Overview of Features
• New in Aperture 2.0

My favourite photo tool Apple Aperture has been updated.
Aperture 1.5.3 addresses issues related to overall reliability and performance in a number of areas, including:

• Generation of thumbnails for adjusted images
• Entering and exiting Full Screen mode
• Working with large sets of keywords in the Keywords HUD
• Restoring from a vault

Among the specific issues that have been addressed:

• Previews now update properly when images are sent to an external editor.
• Leaf Aptus 22 and Aptus 75 images are now imported with the correct orientation.
• When folders are imported as projects, the folder structure is now correctly preserved when identically named subfolders are included in the hierarchy.
• Reconnecting referenced images that have been externally edited now works more reliably.
• Setting the ColorSync profile in the Aperture Print dialog now correctly suppresses color management settings in the Mac OS X Print dialog.

I also noted the addition and update of several UI-interface element, among those a toolbar button for quickly printing a Contact Sheet.

However, I can’t find a way to get it into my toolbar. (You can of course still print contact sheets by selecting a few thumbs and hit Apple+P)