Response to the Snap Preview Anywhere Extreme MakeOver Contest far exceeded all expectations—nearly 500 ideas, 1000 votes, and 400 comments.

So, if it’s taken us awhile to plow through them all and announce the winners, please bear with us!

There were so many great ideas, that we decided to add an honorable mention category and give Snap t-shirts to eight additional winners, along with Snap t-shirts to the dollar winners as well.

So, here they are:

Honorable Mention and a Snap t-shirt:

Title: Adult content warning
Contestant: guigo
Idea: If the link is hiding an adult site underneath it, small alert pops out with "18+" icon or warning text that page may not be suitable for children. Offer parents to install this plugin on browser and it doesn't show adult pages on that PC :)

Title: drag, resize and live preview
Contestant: blonkm
Idea: I'd like to be able to drag and resize the preview window. This way you could keep the previews you find interesting on the page and click them later. You could combine the resize with a toggle between static image and live preview, so the resize would show more detail. The live preview could be a paid option.

Title: Snap preview as browser plug-in for every website without adding any code!
Contestant: smkarmarkar
Idea: Let the users decide when they want to see the preview and for which websites than developers enabling this option on only few websites. At this moment developers need to add little piece of code along with the settings in their website to make these previews available for the users. Instead of developer doing that work manually for every site, let users take charge of this task through a simply browser plug-in from Snap.

Title: Alternating Images/Links in Preview - add Functionality
Contestant: slave1ilo
Idea: Instead of just having 1 image displayed in the preview that leads to the index/home page, why not have a set of images based on the pages on the website. If the site was static, you could have users decide which pages they want displayed (maybe they get to choose up to 5 or 10) and these pages get preview pics also… so that when the preview window is opened its like a slide show of images of the different pages on the website. If the site was dynamic, like a blog… it could use the 5 or 10 most recent posts and display their pages in addition to the index.html main page, which would always display first… and have the link change with the picture so you could go straight to the page instead of always to the home page.

Title: My country My snaps
Contestant: nhm tanveer hossain khan (hasan)
Idea: www.snap.com front page has a simple text box, what do you think, if a visitor just come over www.snap.com and find other web sites from his country. for example: i am from bangladesh, when i will browse www.snap.com and find some bangladeshi site's snaps, it would be quite interesting for me.

Title: It's All About Customization and Analysis
Contestant: salcan
Idea: In order to make SPA the best possible Snap should allow each user customize what their preview box looks like. This is possible, to a limited extent, right now but should be taken to a whole new level.

How about building a backend framework were user can control their SPA's CSS, what components appear in the preview box, and where they appear. The size of the preview image and size of the preview popup should also be allowed as well as the use of the user's own host images for background, icons, etc. The ability to customize with CSS alone would be a huge advantage, but further customization would be an even great bonus

Title: site and context specific previews.
Contestant: daniloamartins
Idea: It is interesting how there are a few sites on the internet today that attract repeated a disproportionate amount of tech-savvy surfers, opinion formers and earlier adopters of internet technology. As such a web site enhancement tool such as Snap Preview Anywhere has much to gain by catering specifically to the audience of these sites.
-Fark.org: Display a preview of the actual news article listed on mousing over the link on the front page
-Slashdot.com: Displaying whichever part of the article is not displayed on the front page on mouse over (slashdots articles are normally 75% readable from the front page but the users are obliged to click on to a link to read the "tail of the article"
-craigslist.org: Display a preview of the classified or photo on mousing over the listing

Title: Malicious Content Warning, Favorites, and History
Contestant: Ranman
Idea: Well, I think it would be nice to have some sort of option to flag pages which may contain malicious content (Such as viruses, trojans, malware, adware etc.).

Another thing I think would be useful is maybe a favorites page or something where users could add pages they liked to a list (These would be kept using cookies, SQL database entry that would show the entry based on the users IP address, or one guaranteed not to fail, a user system. Another thing related to this that could be useful is a search history feature in which users could see all the searches they have made (or at least the last 10?).

Comment Winners ($500 + Snap T-Shirt)

Contestant: Noah Wesley [commenting on #3 idea below]
Comment: Some more examples…
If you linked to a specific page on Flickr, SPA could use the main Flickr photo on that page as the thumbnail, instead of the whole page.

If you linked to a specific page on YouTube, SPA could use the actual video on that page as the thumbnail (even playable), instead of the whole page.

If you linked to a specific forum post on a website's forum, SPA could display the actual text of the post as the preview, instead of the whole page (where you wouldn't be able to read the text due to the size)

It's all about SPA intelligently identifying the type of content being linked to, and displaying it appropriately (sometimes a thumbnail image is best, sometimes it isn't). SNAP could even handle this using a "filter" method (i.e. using a Flickr, YouTube, etc. filter to change how SNAP displays a preview). And… they could make the filters open source, so people like us could write our own SNAP Preview Content Filters and use/share 'em.

Now I'm started to get excited about being able to use SPA like this. :)

Contestant: bangedupshins [commenting on an idea to flag malicious sites]
Comment: I was going to suggest this but I defer.

This is an excellent idea as Site Advisor is already compatible with the major browsers. My visitors expect me not to lead them astray to a site that may be malicious or spammy in nature . . . a small traffic signal type icon (red, amber, green) to indicate what Site Advisor thinks of this site would be nice.

Also, return the labels on sites with ICRA RDF files.

These suggestions would take up little real estate and provide visitors with infomation to make a choice about whether to click that link or not.

And the winners aren’t…

Two contestants tried to cheat the system by registering multiple email accounts and voting for their own ideas repeatedly. It was pretty obvious. We did what we had to and disqualified them. Which is a shame, because their ideas were among the best received.

Now, on to the real winners.

Idea Winners

3rd Prize ($500 + Snap T-Shirt)
Title: SmartPreview — Intelligent content-based previewing
Contestant: noahwesley
Idea: My idea is simple yet very useful. It furthers the goals of Snap.com to help users find what they are looking for and skip what they don't. It's a concept I call SmartPreview.

Instead of pulling up a static screenshot of every external link you mouse over, Snap could analyze the content and provide a preview style that works the best.

My best example is using Snap Preview Anywhere for RSS/ATOM feed links (internal or external). Check out my mock-up. [Post included a very detailed mock-up and, yes, he won twice for this post and comment].

2nd Prize ($1000 + Snap T-Shirt)
Title: Statistic
Contestant: belutz
Idea: We might be able to show statistic of how many viewer comes from clicking snap preview and how many viewer exit our website by clicking the snap preview

1st Prize ($2500 + Snap T-Shirt)
Title: SnapMap
Contestant: arsblog
Idea: Snap adds value by reducing the frictions of web navigation. Visual previews of link landing pages are attention optimizers that increase the efficiency of a user's content consumption. I believe Snap's success will be directly correlated to the degree in which they can further optimize the "attention allocation" of users. Most blogs have more content for which metadata would be useful than just links. When a certain other search engine detects place information (addresses, place names) in search or in one of their apps, it provides one-click mapping to geo-locate that place. I propose a mapping feature for Snap. Double-click on addresses or place names on snap-enabled web pages and get geographic information without leaving the page. Another friction point removed, and another user intention instance captured by Snap for potential conversion to search or other use of the service.

A note to the winners: If you have not been contacted by Snap to get your address, please email extrememakeover@snap.com. Thanks to everyone who participated—you’re really helping make Snap Preview Anywhere the most popular website enhancement in the world.