SnapCasa has now served over 100 million snapshots!  Since about six months ago when SnapCasa v2 was launched I have released many new features and made many improvements.  My primary focus to this point has been perfecting the snapshot capture process on the backend.  My focus will now shift to improving some frontend aspects of SnapCasa such as creating a user guide, a Help Center/FAQ page, and improving the checkout process.  A community portion of SnapCasa is also high on my list of improvements to develop.  I hope to create a discussion board and also an implementations section where users can share scripts which utilize SnapCasa.

The Dedicated Service will also be available shortly.  We have several high volume users which would benefit from the increased performance while paying lower prices.  Those are just a few things to look forward to the next few months.  It took six months for SnapCasa to serve 100 million requests but it is growing at such a rapid rate that it will likely surpass 500 million in the next six months.

I would also like to thank all of my loyal users, especially those who used the service even before v2 was released.  Keep the feedback and ideas coming!  Check this blog occasionally, I will be posting special discounts and contests in the future!

Thanks,

Greg Rogoszewski

SnapCasa Founder

Today I would like to introduce a new parameter which will make it easier for premium users to make update requests.  The new ‘age’ parameter accepts a numeric value which represents the maximum amount of time to allow a snapshot to be requested without an update.  The numeric value passed with the age parameter represents the hours since the last update.  For instance, if you attach age=24 to your requests each snapshot will be updated every 24 hours. 

http://snapcasa.com/get.aspx?code=1000&size=s&age=48&url=ask.com

You can also pass decimal values such as 1.25 which will update your snapshots every 75 minutes.  Snapshots can be update at maximum every 15 minutes and at minimum every 30 days.  As with the alternative way to request snapshot updates introduced in December, there is a three credit charge per update request. 

The ability to capture flash based websites has been a feature of SnapCasa since its initial launch.  Today I am happy to introduce a new feature which will further improve SnapCasa’s ability to capture accurate flash webpage’s.  The new ‘speed’ parameter will enable premium users to extend the wait time before a snapshot is captured.  This will allow flash elements to completely load and be captured correctly.  Setting the ‘speed’  parameters value to ‘2’ will extend the wait time before a capture is made.  This feature does not cost any additional credits.

http://snapcasa.com/get.aspx?code=1000&size=s&speed=2&url=pepsi.com

I have tested this feature and have seen great results on many flash webpage’s.  However, I will need to hear feedback from other users utilizing this feature to see if the wait time that is currently set is sufficient.  If you are still receiving partial captures of flash webpage’s please send each individual url to me.  I will take a look at each one and adjust the wait time if necessary.  You can send the urls and feedback to me directly by using the contact form on SnapCasa.com.

The speed feature is quite a useful and exciting feature.  There will be another half to this feature introduced later which will allow users to capture accurate snapshots in just a few seconds. 

Premium users can now take advantage of yet another new parameter.  You may have noticed that if a snapshot is being captured for the first time the request may take up to 20 seconds or longer to complete while the webpage is captured.  The new ‘wait’ parameter will enable users to immediately receive a processing snapshot instead of waiting for the capture.  This feature is also useful when you want to submit a snapshot for processing which you will be needing later.

http://snapcasa.com/get.aspx?code=1000&size=s&wait=0&url=msn.com

Always place the ‘wait’ parameter before the ‘url’ parameter.  Setting a value of 0 for the wait parameter will immediately return a ‘Processing’ graphic if the requested url is not currently stored in our cache.   This feature does not cost any additional credits.  Enjoy!

Thanks again to all my loyal users! Show your support by upgrading to premium so that I may continue to improve SnapCasa for you!