Credit: Image by petesimon on Flickr. Some rights reserved
What is it? An app that lets you share and customise text screenshots straight from your mobile browser
Devices: iOS
Cost: Free
How is it of use to journalists? When it comes to sharing on social media, journalists have to experiment with different headlines or hooks to make the readers click through to the article.
The challenge with posting on Twitter is that a traditional headline might not get the readers' attention – or because of the 140-character limit, you have to leave out what could be a great quote to sum up the story.
Some news organisations have internally developed card systems that easily allow them to personalise and share quotes alongside stories on social media.
We have also previously recommended OneShot, an app that enables you to highlight a few words or a line of text from an article, but that can sometimes be time consuming as it involves uploading the screenshot to the app and cropping it.
This is what Textshot+ does differently – users can take a screenshot of their chosen quote or paragraph and share it straight from their mobile browser.
How it works
First, download Textshot+ on your iOS device and make sure it is enabled as one of the sharing options in your mobile browser.
Open an article in your Safari mobile browser and scroll down to your chosen quote or paragraph.
Tap and drag to highlight the portion of text you want to share, then tap again at the bottom of the screen to reveal your browser's menu.
Click the share button and select Textshot+ from the list, which will preview your chosen quote in the app.
This is the interesting part - your quote will be subtly highlighted and you will also see two sets of arrows at the top and the bottom of the screen. You can use them to add more text from the article to accompany the initial quote, as much as your screen's size allows.
Screenshot of TextShot+.
This is also useful if you feel like you have chosen a quote that needs more context or you have forgotten to add a relevant line of text. You can add it in without having to go back to the article and highlight everything again.
When you're done, press 'share' and you can choose to distribute the screenshot on Twitter and Facebook, but also via text message, e-mail or simply save it to your camera roll.
You can simply share the article's URL to go with your text snippet, or compose your own tweet before posting.
Once posted, the screenshot will credit the article's headline, section and the publication's name at the top and the bottom of the quote.
The default design is simple and easy to read, featuring black text on a white background, but you can get additional styles (for free, at least at the moment) if you'd like to change the background and font size and colour.
This will enable you to pick from three fonts and also decide if you want to display your quote in a small, medium or large size.
You can also choose a different theme for your screenshot, such as 'Dark' or 'Twitter', as well as customising your own, albeit the colour palette is limited to only three choices.
Textshot+ is an easy to use app, which lets you quickly share your favourite quote from an article you are reading or one that you have written, and get more creative with your tweets rather than simply sharing generic URLs or headlines.
Here's what it looks like on Twitter:
More updates on the Greek crisis http://t.co/bGE4CIZoBy pic.twitter.com/iijIE5i10V
— Mădălina Ciobanu (@madalinacrc) July 2, 2015
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