kwout–”A Brilliant Way to Quote”
Quoting others is a common practice in all forms of communication, written, spoken, or other. When typing, quoting more often than not involves copying chunks of text and pasting them into whatever word processor you’re using, hoping the formatting doesn’t get screwed up and links don’t get broken. This process is what kwout intends to change.
kwout, the product of Japanese HeartRails Inc. launched on December 25, 2007 and is accessed via a bookmarklet add-on for your web browser of choice. To use, go to the web page you intend to quote, click the bookmarklet, and kwout will guide you through the rest—a quick selection, a few customizations and you’re good to go. It’s painfully easy and delivers the quote as an image with or without an image map, keeping any links within the quote intact (as you can see to the right). When you’re done you can post directly to your Flickr and Tumblr accounts or embed the provided code somewhere else.
kwout may not be absolutely essential, but it makes getting clean quotes so hassle-free that there’s really no reason not to use it. Kwout is one service that I definitely hope catches on, as it is indeed “a brilliant way to quote.” Learn more at kwout.com.
