Sazell Gets A Much Needed Facelift, Overhauls Its Widgets

Sazell, the startup that launched last July with widgets that let you “snap the web”, has launched a new version of its site that includes a badly needed new logo and UI overhaul – the previous iteration was a bad rip-off of Google’s logo, and looked as if it would have been outdated in 2003. The site is still in private beta, but you can try it out by going here and entering the code “techcrunch”.

Along with the new UI, Sazell has introduced a number of significant improvements to its widgets. Sazell allows users to use a Google Toolbar plugin or bookmarklet to select a portion of a website (including images) for embedding on blogs and sharing with friends. When they were first introduced, they were totally static – they were little more than embellished links without any interactivity. The new widgets include functionality that allow users to leave comments, vote on polls, and post to social networks like Facebook. Sazell is also introducing a new feature called “AutoSnap” that lets publishers include a single snippet of code in their webpages that will automatically generate a Sazell widget for each new post.

Other sites in the web clipping space include Diigo and SimplyBox, which we covered earlier this week.