ZooTool, the iTunes for the Web

ZooTool, an online social bookmarking tool, was introduced to me by my Piehead colleague and Senior Web Developer Nate Bates. This buzz-worthy app promises to change the web-surfing experience for designers, developers and anyone generally web-savvy.

During a recent interview about the tool, Nate explained how he and fellow developers and designers would moan about cluttered desktops and the tireless pursuit of saving creatively inspiring sites in one convenient and accessible spot.  “I would find cool sites and want to quickly save the link for future reference,” says Bates.

Enter ZooTool.  Launched this year by Founder Bastian Allgeier, ZooTool originated when it became clear that web designers didn’t have their own, specialized bookmarking application.  Differentiating itself by visually archiving images and documents (like PDFs), videos, and pages (not complete pages), the site generates thumbnails through its web service with the click of a button.  The user then, through what the site calls “lassoing”, picks the screen shots to save, thereby storing them in a personal “zoo” for future reference.

Says Bates, “ZooTool is comparable to Dribble, Flickr or Delicious, but easier to use. I am impressed by the cleanliness of the design and how well it echoes elements of the Mac OS interface.  It’s essentially an inspiration feed.  You get to see images clipped from sites, as well as thumbnails of full websites.  It’s perfect for scanning and a great source for people in the design industry – those whose job it is to judge books by their covers.  And for the rest of us, we can use it for our own clipping, but also see what ‘real’ designers are up to – we can follow specific users’ zoos, or find the most popular zoos. It is very social too.”

Despite its obvious advantages over more traditional bookmarking apps, ZooTool is still in its beta phase and working out some software bugs. The other day I found that some screenshots that I saved were lost, and during his research, Nate left some feedback regarding similar problems he had encountered. Additionally, there is the concern that the bookmarking industry is constantly evolving, causing people to be reluctant to put all their “tag-eggs” into one basket.
Despite some of these basic kinks, this Zoo is definitely worth a visit.  It’s intuitive, slick and free to the public!  Watch out iTunes!