When WebTV's PageBuilder feature was first released, there was general outcry from the previewers for a WebTV transloader. (A 'transloader' is a site that allows WebTV users to transfer images from the internet to their personal web sites.) There are a number of sites that were already doing this, but they were (and still are) very difficult to use. Always looking to help our customers, and always looking to learn new things, Jos decided to create his own transloader that would provide the same service but with a friendly and more sensible interface. No one asked him to do this, it was just something he wanted to do, and as far as I know he did it in his spare time while he was working on the developer.webtv.net site. This was the beauty and genius of Jos. Our customers were so important to him.
Once he had a working version of his transloader, he presented it to the WebTV PageBuilder team. At the time, I was working as a program manager and I was at the meeting when Jos presented the first version of his transloader, dubbed the 'ImageGrabber'. After the meeting I approached my supervisor and said that I was very interested in working with Jos to make the ImageGrabber available to our users. Our plan at the time was to make it available as an external web site that would be provided by WebTV, and this was the portion of the project I was involved with. I did my best to try to make the ImageGrabber available, but ultimately it proved too difficult and time-consuming to host such a site. Ultimately, we are planning to create something that is very similar to WebScissors, but supporting it as an external site proved to be too complicated. I was told by my supervisor that it would be several months before we would have any hope of seeing the ImageGrabber's functionality integrated into the WebTV service. Understandably, Jos and everyone else who had hoped to make this happen were very disappointed.
Never one to stand defeated, Jos decided to re-name the site, and to use his own money to host the site on an external server. I think this really demonstrates how much he cared about WebTV's customers. He was willing to really go out on a limb to help them, despite WebTV's inability to support this. It was very unfortunate that WebTV was not to be a part of WebScissors, but I was very happy about his decision.
I really hope that sometime in the near future the functionality of WebScissors will be included in the WebTV service. Until then, Jos has created a wonderful tool that is used by thousands of people each day. We have done our best to send WebTV users to the WebScissors site if they ask for help regarding this issue. To see this reference, on your WebTV: