An Introduction to Clarify

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Greg DeVore

Clarify If you have been following our blog you may have seen a few of our announcements regarding Clarify. Clarify is a new product we have been working on for several months designed to help you communicate more clearly online.

As people have been introduced to Clarify several questions have come up. Here are some answers to the most common ones.

Why did you create Clarify? Isn’t this the same as ScreenSteps?

At first glance Clarify may seem very similar to ScreenSteps but it has some important differences. The idea for Clarify was born when we introduced our ScreenSteps.me service for sharing ScreenSteps documents online. Prior to that, ScreenSteps had always been a software documentation tool. But with the simplicity of ScreenSteps.me we began to use ScreenSteps to create one-off communications with our customers. This wasn’t really software documentation. It was just communication. But it worked really well – except for one thing.

ScreenSteps seemed like too heavy of a tool for these communications. ScreenSteps has a lot of features designed for creating software documentation. This extra functionality added too much baggage for creating these quick communications.

We realized that we were trying to hire ScreenSteps to do two very different jobs and it wasn’t really working. That was when we decided to create Clarify. Clarify would be our communications tool. ScreenSteps would be our software documentation tool.

What makes Clarify different?

The Clarify interface is streamlined for communication and working with images. It is much more of a general purpose screen capture tool and image editor as opposed to ScreenSteps. It is designed to appeal to a much broader user base than those who just deal with software documentation.

What do you do with Clarify?

Several months ago I was listening to an interview of Jason Fried by Andrew Warner of Mixergy. At one point in the interview Jason says:

And that is another tip that I think everyone should be thinking about. How can you reduce the number of round trip emails you have to make to get something done?

That is what I use Clarify for – reducing round trip emails. I use Clarify to communicate with:

  • Contractors, web designers, virtual assistants, etc.
  • Customers
  • Suppliers
  • Friends and family

Clarify means I never have to re-explain myself. The recipients understand what I am saying the first time I send them a communication. This means no round trips and no wasted time.

When will it be available?

Clarify is currently available as a free public beta for Mac. A Windows public beta should be available within the next few weeks.

Video Intro

Here is a quick video intro that will give you an introduction to Clarify. Please download the public beta and let us know what you think.

Save Time. Reduce Frustration. Clarify Your Communications.

Clarify

Download a FREE Trial >

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  • http://www.psychotactics.com/ Sean D’Souza

    This is indeed very cool, Greg :) I just had this problem just this morning. I had to do many captures to get the point across.

    Well done :)

    s-

  • http://river-media.net Bob Brock

    This is an awesome tool! I have been a ScreenSteps user for years and will use this new tool to simplify sharing information. As a web programmer, I am always trying to relay information for “How-To’s” and this new tool will save me a bunch of time. Thanks!

  • http://welcomehere.com Randy Crawford

    Hi,

    This is useful. I won’t start using it in earnest until I know what it costs. I would prefer not being locked in to your sharing web site so I would wish for the ability to put this on my own web site. Using dropbox would be a nice way to go also.

    I know it brings it close to ScreenSteps, but I would like to be able to output to html or pdf. Whenever I put work into the creation of something I want to be able to save it in a “free” format like pdf or html. Ultimately I wouldn’t use this unless I was able to capture the output is some form other than just putting it on your sharing web site.

    I definitely do appreciate the idea behind it and the work it would take to produce it. Congratulations.

    –Randy

  • Mark Smith

    I can definitely see a need for this in my future…. great idea.

    – Mark

  • Jonpaul

    Very cool, we have need for this, I’m looking forward to playing with the beta.

  • http://angelabooth.com/ Angela Booth

    Looks great, just what I need for everyday explanations to my clients and students. Thank you. :-)

  • http://askhowie.com Howie Jacobson

    This is brilliant! I was conducting a Q&A session on my Facebook Fan page today, and someone asked a question that required a screensteps tutorial. I tried to rush it, but ended up promising it to them later.

    If you had sent out the notice about Clarify 2 hours earlier, I could have blow them away with a quick and helpful answer.

    Can’t wait to download…

    PS, Hi Sean :)

  • Greg DeVore

    Randy -

    With the current version you can copy RTF to the clipboard for insertion into an email, word processing doc or any other app that accepts RTF. See here: http://help.clarify-it.com/s/clarify/m/clarify/l/33892-How-to-insert-your-document-into-an-email

  • http://kidsandcash.com Harvey Beck

    Brilliant. I’ve been using ScreenSteps since the very early days, and used it a great many times for emails. This beautifully streamlines the process.

    Congrats, Greg and Trevor

    BTW – with that said, I do share Randy’s concerns. My use might end up depending on the cost. Since I already use ScreenSteps and Skitch, I’d probably only use this if I knew I could either continue to post for free on your site or be able to post it to my own.

  • Randy Brown

    Definitely something I would use. But like others have pointed out, if I’m stuck sharing through your proprietary online service, that’s a deal-breaker for me.

    Instead, I’d like to just output the document to a .pdf and email it to whoever I need to communicate with. Or post it to my own website or online distribution service (like Dropbox or YouSendIt.com or whatever).

    Once again, if the only way to use this is to force users to post to your proprietary file-sharing system (or, for that matter, to Dropbox), then I’ll pass.

  • Greg DeVore

    Harvey -

    Free sharing with Clarify-it.com will be included in the cost of the product. Clarify will be a one time purchase that includes Clarify-it.com basic sharing. We will also offer premium versions of Clarify-it.com that include custom branding and other premium features. But the basic sharing will always be free.

  • Russ Day

    Aha! Beautiful! One more step, then and my problems are solved.

    Will you be adding a “Paste to Email” button like Voila! has? A “Paste to Clipboard” button, right there on the toolbar, would also be useful.

    I’d use those hourly. Clarify is much better then Voila because I don’t have to create a bunch of emails that I then have to consolidate manually. Also, having the annotation tools on the toolbar is an ergonomic win, instead of hiding them under a tab.

    I can’t use the public website because a lot of the data is customer confidential, the email feature is a winner. (I wonder why they don’t insist on encrypting the emails? Go figure…)

    I like this a lot. Thanks!

  • http://www.alberthathazi.com Albert Hathazi

    Clarify will cut down hours of work for me having explain things to clients. I am going to give it a try on my Mac when I get home.

  • Eric Perlberg

    I gave it a try and I think it would replace imagewell which I currently use or perhaps skitch which is now free. Clarify feels more feature rich. I find that the copy to clipboard and then paste in an email is a bit awkward, not a deal breaker but not elegant. Export to pdf would be very useful and increase my enthusiasm greatly. I would not use the Clarify web site in any case, that’s a dealbreaker if I only had that option. Dropbox or iCloud integration would be great. Pricing and better export options will be key for me.

  • Steve Forbes

    Great idea! I would definitely recommend providing the ability to share content to a configurable location (such as our own website)rather than having to use Clarify-it.com. Good luck!

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  • WillTech

    Good idea, nice concept, but as Randy Crawford states I too would not like to be locked into your web sharing site. If you miss this point, I think your project will not be as successful as it could be. When someone else comes up with a similar product and if they allow storing on e.g. Dropbox etc. then that will be more attractive for users. I would prefer to be able to use Apple’s iCloud (if I have to be locked into a system I would prefer it be this). It seems that a number of vendors are trying to lock people in to their sites in order to later charge them fees. Users are aware of this and ultimately will reject it. Nevertheless, you do have a good application, and I wish you every success esp. if you leave the storage of clips open. Best wishes.

  • Greg DeVore

    Will -

    Thanks for the feedback. Many times companies like ours aren’t trying to “lock people” into services to just perform a bait and switch. Often it is because we want to deliver a superior experience and we can only do that if we can control certain aspects of the experience. That being said, we are looking at expanding options. We just probably won’t offer an FTP/SFTP option for the main reason that it would create a massive increase to our support requests. Many users who aren’t very familiar with FTP servers will often configure them incorrectly. When we do add additional sharing services they will most likely be with established, common services. But we think we will be able to provide the best experience on Clarify-it.com. Some customers will choose to use it and some won’t.