So what is Skitch? Created by Plasq software, the team behind comic generation software Comic Life, Skitch is a desktop image editing tool and more. Available for Macs with a Windows version in development, Skitch revolutionizes basic image editing tasks, delivering a quick and easy tool that offers most image editing features you’ll use day to day. Tied into the desktop client is a dead simple image hosting package that allows you to easy upload and share anything you want online.

So why is it awesome? Besides being completely free, its the range of features Skitch offers quickly and simply. It’s not a Photoshop replacement (I still use Photoshop on occasion) nor does it pretend to be, but what Skitch offers is 95% of every image editing function I’d use on a daily basis without the bloat of Photoshop so image handling is that much quicker. Resizing is as simple as dragging the bottom right hand corner, and likewise image cropping is dragging the border of the image. Text is quick to place, and if I need to add something using my Walcom graphics tablet, it’s simply a matter of picking up the pen for the tablet. Image hosting is as easy as clicking a button, no drag and drop into another program, nor need to log in to another service. Skitch makes handling images a pleasure and I couldn’t live without it today.

I’ve touched on some of the points already, but here’s 20 great ways you can use Skitch

1. Image resizing: Open an existing image, or drag one directly into Skitch. Drag and drop the bottom right hand corner to resize your image in less time that it took you to open Photoshop.

2. image cropping: drag any point of the image in the direction you want for a quick crop

3. Text or drawings: type, use your mouse or even a graphics tablet to quickly add anything to an image, or even start a new image from scratch.

4. LOLCats: the default text setting in Skitch is the lolcat font, so there’s no easier way to create a LOLCat image or related text effects than with Skitch

5. Webcam shot: if you’ve got a webcam, you can use Skitch to take shots with it. Click on Cam, smile, and you get a 3 second countdown for your shot. Easy way of getting more from your webcam

6. Image indexing: every image you edit in Skitch is saved within the program so you can easily browse through anything you’ve previously created. Better still, you can also use Skitch to browse any image on your computer.

7. Image export: Skitch allows you to easily export any image into a range of file formats, including the basics of a jpg or png, but also supports .tif and .svg for scalable vector graphics

8. Make a pdf!: you can even export anything in Skitch to Adobe’s PDF format, so you won’t need Adobe Acrobat or other third party package to create image PDFs.

9. Host images: Skitch online offers a great hosted image service that is as easy to use as clicking a button in Skitch. Each uploaded image can be set to public or private, and can be shared or even embedded. I use Skitch for image hosting on my personal blog for example.

10. Upload to Flickr or MobileMe: along with native support for Skitch hosting, you can also export images directly from Skitch to Flickr or MobileMe in the same easy fashion. Enter your details in the web hosting panel, and the rest is easy.

11. Upload to your own site: using Skitch, you can also directly upload any picture to any webserver via FTP. If you want to host images on your own site, you just need to enter the details.

12. Email photos to Skitch: like other image hosting services, your Skitch account isn’t just limited to the Skitch desktop application. If you’re on the road, or another computer, you can email any image to Skitch for hosting at any time!

13. Share on Twitter: any image hosted on Skitch is a shortcut away from a Twitter post. Users can enter their Twitter account details and use MyTwitter for Skitch to share.

14. Use Skitch with Evernote: the popular database service Evernote works great with Skitch. Create an image, drag it into Evernote, so you get the best of both services. A video here shows you how.

15: Skitch in the classroom: Skitch is free and simple to use, so it works great in the classroom, for both teachers and students alike. Ausmaced explains so more here.

16: Screenshots are easy: Skitch makes grabbing a screenshot a mouse click or keyboard command away. Crosshairs Snap, Fullscreen Snap or a Frame Snap made easy

17. Social platform: Skitch may not be a fully fledged social network, but publicly shared photos can be commented on. An easy way to share and correspond with friends

18. Group collaboration: Skitch allows users to edit and share images in groups using the Skitch It and Skitch It back functions. Details here

How hard is Skitch to use? Here’s a 3 minute video showing how easy it is

Things I’d like to see in Skitch: the key to Skitch is its simplicity and speed, so obviously not every feature is going to be available, nor should it be, but here’s some things I’d like to see in Skitch

1. Improved font handling: you can change fonts in Skitch, but it’s not as easily available as in Photoshop, so you don’t get a drop down option, and you don’t get font previews. It’s one feature that improved would see me use Photoshop even less.

2. FriendFeed integration: photos from Flickr automatically appear in FriendFeed, but the same isn’t available for Skitch.

3. Mobile version: I’d love to have Skitch on my iPhone for image handling, and it would be a nice addition on other phones as well

Related posts:

1. Adobe’s Photoshop Lands On iPhone
2. FriendFeed is Google Bait + 23 Great Ways to use it
3. Evernote. Why it will make it & 20 Awesome Ways to Use It.

Evernote, make no quibbles about it, has changed the way I store my information &, if it hasn’t already, should be the way it stores yours.

Firstly, what is it? Evernote is a tool which stores notes, documents & images and gives you the ability to be able to access & search them from wherever you are. Still unclear? Here’s a video of Evernote’s CEO Phil Libin giving you a 1 minute run down of his service.

Before we go into why it’s special, here’s a little background, Evernote was initially just a desktop application, a mighty fine one at, but just a desktop application all the same. On June 24th 2008, Evernote went into open beta & open its (virtual) doors to the world as a spanking new online service with desktop versions of the tool for Mac’s & PC’s and mobile versions for windows mobile and now, the iPhone.

So why is it such a special tool you ask…why do I, as well as the majority of other Evernote users have so much passion & faith in the product. Well firstly, the company have been in the information business for a while now, they’ve built a solid reputation & it’s clear they aren’t going to dissapear without a fight. Secondly, they have a loyal user base which has only grown since they’re expansion onto the web. Thirdly, innovation – they have really mastered it & hopefully won’t be losing their touch any time soon.

Lets forget however about the three reasons above and take evernote on face value. Why is it such a great tool? Here are four of the best features it offers:

1. It runs on Mac’s, PC’s, Online & on your iPhone. So no matter where you are, you’ve got access to your information.

2. Evernote can read text in your images So if you’ve got a photo like one I took of a receipt, it will scan it & make it searchable. In this particular example I searched for receipt obiously.

Although not perfect, it works better than i ever expect it to & is much more efficient than going through a drawer of receipts let me tell you.

3. Fantastic number of ways to get your information into it but the basics: you can email to it, take a photo & send it to it, you can take a screenshot or just simply copy & paste text into it. If you have a graphics tablet, you can take handwritten notes and of course…if you’re primarily browser based – you can use their firefox extension or bookmarklet which lets you grab any web page, image or text and create a note out of it.

4. Sync baby. Whether you’ve got one compute or 1000. Evernote will stay in sync across them all. It’s good like that :].

For more information & a detailed visual run through of Evernote & how to use it – have a watch of this video. It’s lengthy, but if you have the time then go ahead & watch it, if not – don’t worry, you’ve got the basics & the application is pretty intuitive.

Let’s move onto the final part of this post…

Ways to use Evernote.

• Bookmarking: Probably the most obvious use of evernote. Come across a link – use the firefox extension, bookmarklet or drag & drop on the mac to save the link and text/images on it. Tag them & you’ve got your own bookmarks available offline & online.
• Random Picture Archive. Now, i’m not saying use it as your primary photo album (although you probably could). It’s perfect for those random photos taken here, there & everywhere – like maybe a photograph of a top someone’s wearing that you fancy getting hold of a random shop name that’s made you laugh or maybe just a the smile of a loved one sat in front of you…Using the iphone’s app – this is a piece of cake.
• Collate ALL your emails: If you’ve got 5 different accounts, Evernote is a fantastic way to be able to search all of them from one place. Just find out your evernote email address & auto-forward them on!
• PDF Store: We all know how prevalant pdf’s have become – just drag & drop or even email your pdf’s into Evernote & voila you’ve got them available whenever you need them.
• Serial & Pins. Use Evernote to store serial numbers, login details, pins & codes whether for software or to get into your house!
• Receipts. Wherever you are (again particularly useful if you have iphone) take a photo of any/every receipt and have it all stored & searchable on your evernote.
• Code Snippet Library: Coder? Use evernote as a store for all those snippets of code that you need to revisit.
• Takeaway & Delivery menus! Yep, scan or even just photograph your menus & never lose them again. Just think, you can search for whatever you’re in the mood for! :]
• Instant Message Store: Ever need a record of a previous instant message conversation – copy & paste it into evernote & it’s there whenver you need it.
• Inspiration: I use Evernote more for this than anything. I’m an inspiration fanatic – particular with design (logos & websites in particular). When online & I come across a site, logo or maybe just part of a site I like – you can just use Evernotes to capture that area or page. Should you want to capture the entire webpage (which you would normally have to scroll down for), I recommend using a firefox screenshot tool like screengrab! which lets you quickly save the entire page as an image and you can then insert that image file from your desktop into evernote. Works a charm and particularly fast on the mac.
  Of course, if you find inspiration on the road – take a photo of it or use your iphone to and you’ve got it there to come back to when you need it.
• Recipes: Find an recipe you like in a book, online or wherever – capture it using the many options available to you. The next time someone asks you the recipe for the wonderful dish you just made, or maybe you’re stuck for options while at a friends place – guess who has the perfect recipe to hand? :]
• Paper notes: Find you’d much rather stick to handwritten notes? Then just keep them to hand at the end of the day – take a photograph of them on your iphone or scan them in & you’ve got a back of each of them…again, easily searchable, for whever you need them.
• Tablet PC Notes: If you’re on a tablet pc, the benefits should be evident – and whatever you do drop onenote. Although great for it’s time, it’s time to move on.
• Jott + Evernote: If you’re a jott user, take a look at this great post by Brad Isaac of achieve-IT on lifehacker. All about how to combine the two.
• Reqall + Evernote: Easily one of my top three favorite iphone apps. Reqall will allow you to record what’s on your mind in audio, the email you the file & converted to text message so you’ve got in your email account. Next thing to do is set up an autoforward which will then forward on all Reqalls emails, so you’ve got a store of these in your Evernote. Awesome.
• Train & Bus Schedules: Take a photo or add a pdf of the schedule to your evernote and it’s there whenever the time calls.
• Business Cards: Take a photo of every business card you come across & within minutes you’ve got names, emails, addresses, phone number all searchable!
• Quotes Store: Copy & paste quotes, one liners, jokes whatever! There for whenever the surprise speech is sprung upon you.
• Research: Whether it’s for a product you are planning on buying, a service you might be using or an event you’re putting together…there are other tools out there, but Evernote works wonderfully.
• Never lose that whiteboard again: Take pics of your whiteboard, add it to evernote and it’s there forever. All the text is searchable & you can go ahead & clean your board and start afresh with a new one knowing you haven’t lost anything.

Evernote’s elegance & usefulness comes from it’s ability to handle numnerous types of data, across a variety of operating systems & of course online. It’s secure, fast, efficient has an actual revenue model (so should definitely be here for a long long time) and it can hold a scope of different file types (with hopefully more to come).

With all the beauty of this innovative tool there are still things I’d like to see included:

1. Copy & Paste text from text in the images. Or the ability to literally see a txt version of the image if you see what i mean.

2. More media types – no not people – I mean audio, video, word docs, zip files etc..

3. Even better & faster OCR.

4. Ability to edit notes on the iphone – unfortunately you can’t currently edit previous notes on the iphone.

5. Sharing a notebook amongst peers/friends not publicly.

6. Know how many other people bookmarked the same link – possibly even be able to search for links similar to delicious – except without knowing who bookmarked what.

6. Tree like structure to folders or notebooks – so you have one notebook within another…although if you’re tag man person, you’ll be very comfortable.

For some honest thought from people on Evernote – have a read: here, here & here.

What do you love about Evernote? What you like to see improved & what are you using it for…? And if you’re not using it – why not & what else are you using?

About the author: Zee is Creative Director at London based digital agency, WeDoCreative, Editor at Lifehacking & Productivity Blog: ProProductivity.com and an active Friendfeeder & Twitterer

Update: Robert Scoble interview with Evernote Phil Libin below:

Related posts:

1. Evernote Moves Out of Beta
2. Skitch: Why it’s awesome & 18 great ways to use it
3. Adobe’s Photoshop Lands On iPhone

Evernote combines bookmarking, clipping, scanning and picture taking with industrial OCR software to allow users to catalog pretty much anything they want to. I’m not sure exactly when Evernote first launched in beta, but I’m sure I read somewhere the company was founded in 2002. The first mention of the company according to Google News is 2004. Notably this beta period (4 or more years) was a closed beta as well, with new users only able to sign up via a received invite code from another user. It’s a proven viral tactic, but 4 or more years would seem to be a new record.

I’ve publicly praised Evernote before, but I should explain again how I use Evernote. I do use it for some web clipping, but primarily I use it to scan and store digital documents, which in the most part means bills. Telephone bill comes in I scan it directly into the Evernote desktop app, then it gets shredded. I can then leave a note to reopen it when it needs to be paid. Business cards, menus…pretty much any piece of paper I can either get rid of (because it isn’t needed in hard copy later) or I want to have easy access to (Evernote is desktop, web + iPhone) goes into Evernote.

The downside: over 40mb a month in uploads means paying for the service, and when you’re scanning large documents you usually don’t bother shrinking them down before they hit Evernote. That and storage is fairly cheap to free everywhere else. Of course it helps that Evernote has such beautifully thought out tools, but still, some people will baulk at the price. The other issue: as much as I love Evernote, as a stand alone idea it struggles. Someone is going to come along and integrate Evernote like features into another, all in one package (say email or a GTD app) and then Evernote will become redundant. It’s extremely good at what it does, it’s just limited in what it does, if that makes sense.

Mashable notes that an API is being developed for Evernote, if this is the case we will see Evernote functionality built into other apps in the future.

Related posts:

1. Evernote. Why it will make it & 20 Awesome Ways to Use It.
2. Gays.com moves into open beta
3. Let’s all get a woodie over removing a beta label