On the iPad, Skitch lets you pull up photos, screenshots and Web pages and annotate them with arrows, shapes, text and lines. It's a stripped-down offering compared what Skitch can do on the desktop, but for the tablet form factor, it works quite well.

The app even has a built in Web browser so you can snap screenshots and scribble on them as needed. Of course, you can always take a screenshot of any site or app on the iPad by simultaneously hitting the home and power buttons on the device. Those images land in your "Photos" collection, which Skitch can then pull from.

In addition to marking up images and maps, you can pull up a blank screen and use Skitch like one of the many digital whiteboard applications we've seen. In fact, this application could easily replace most of those offerings while providing a whole slew of handy new features on top of it.

All marked-up images are saved automatically within the app. They can be emailed, saved locally or tweeted out to the world. You can plug in your Evernote account to save things there, but it's by no means a requirement.

The first iOS app for Skitch comes a few months after the service was acquired by Evernote and subsequently launched an Android app.

What does it mean that Skitch is now part of Evernote? It means that the international team behind one of the most-loved little pieces of Mac software, which makes it so easy to capture content and throw it up on the web, has now found a home in a well-funded startup with very long-term archival aims. It's a good sign for Evernote's design and user experience, too.

Evernote says that Skitch's most advanced features, which today sell for $20, will now be free forever. We interviewed Evernote CEO Phil Libin last November and found out that the company works under a nearly 20 year plan and believes that in that timeframe, people will have brain implants that let us invoke the Internet with our thoughts. Evernote will be there to capture those assets, too. At least now we know that will be done with an attractive, Skitch-like interface.

Alternatives include Aviary, Little Snapper and many others. See also Springpad.

Co-founder Cris Pearson says a web uploader and a Windows version will be available soon. His shots are here on Skitch and he recommends following other users including designers Wolfgang Bartelme and Chris Messina.

Skitch is quick, easy and free. It's also capable of more than you might think, including a variety of fonts and FTP options.

If you're looking to pay for something more heavy-duty on the Mac, TechSmith announced this week that its well-known Windows product Snaggit is now available for Mac as well.

If you've used Skitch or Little Snapper, SnagIt seems much more full-featured. The best parts I've seen so far are far more font options and really easy composite image creation.

One thing that's missing is the ability to quickly post an image to Flickr or any other online site. That would be nice and is a feature that competitors offer. Easy click and drag resize is something that SnagIt could pick up from other services as well. All in all, though, this looks like a very nice product.

For more control over the screenshot, you can also invoke Talon from Aviary's web site, where you can manipulate the image quality, set the screen resolution, and decide if you want to capture the entire page or just the part that would be above the fold. In the next version, users will also be able to set which browser and OS to take the screenshot from (which should be great for web designers who want to test their creations).

Some Issues

One problem with the Firefox plugin, however, is that it doesn't capture Flash content, and that, of course, is a deal-breaker in many cases. Using the 'aviary.com' prefix to capture Flash content works, but you can't select a specific moment in a video to show in your screenshot, for example. For this, you still need desktop based tools like Jing or Skitch, which a lot of us here at RWW use. Though they can't capture a complete web page that goes beyond the fold, you can use another desktop tool like Little Snapper, which makes it pretty easy to capture complete web pages at once.

Though you, elite readers, might consider getting excited about apps that are a year or two old to be painfully behind the times, the fact is that there is huge demand for training in use and application of web apps old and new.

Yuuguu

You can show people how to go through multi-step processes by sharing your desktop in a tab of their browser with Yuuguu. It's free, no downloads required, get sharing in seconds. Old versions of the software can be a bit buggy but the newest version has worked great for me.

There's absolutely nothing like getting to watch someone else work on their own desktop - it's a magical learning experience for people. I use it while talking to people on the phone, after IMing them the login and PIN to see my screen. I haven't tried recording the sessions yet, but that could be really useful too.

ViewMyPC will release a version of its screensharing app that lets viewers watch from inside their browsers as well, later this month.

Multi-platform IM Client

Multi-platform IM services let you IM with anyone almost anywhere, without worrying what IM network they are on. Just sign up for an account on AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk, give your client the login info for each account and you'll be set for good. Mac users can check out Adium (pictured, but souped up), Windows users can try out Trillian or Digsby and anyone can use Meebo on the web.

If you're going to work with a wide variety of people online, you should be able to easily IM with them no matter what service they use.

IM during phone calls or even in person is the fastest way to share URLs, it's a great way to take shared notes and, as consultant to international Communities of Practice consultant John Smith says, it's a great way to clarify communication between people who don't speak the same languages natively.

Jing

Jing is the fastest, easiest way to record a short screencast demonstrating how to do something online. It's not particularly robust but for a quick tutorial to send to a client, you'll probably like it a lot.

The ability to watch again and again makes screencasting a particularly useful tool for consultants to offer their clients. If you're teaching any tangible skills, as opposed to just marketing fluff (or even genuinely useful marketing strategy!) then making screencasts all day long could prove very useful.

Annotated Screenshots with Screensteps or Skitch

ScreenSteps was the app we used to make this post in a jiffy, Skitch is another app we're totally in love with. Both are for Mac only - can anyone recommend a good PC equivalent? Update - we were wrong ScreenSteps has a Windows version after all!

The idea is that both make it really easy to grab screenshots, annotate them and then upload them to the web. For many clients, a screenshare or a screencast will still move too fast and it's really nice to be able to read text explaining how to do things at any time.

AideRSS: Filter RSS Feeds for Popularity

We write about AideRSS here all the time. Consulting clients love it, though. Tell them you can give them a feed, or run a feed through email for them, that delivers just the most popular items from any news source and they will adore you. Plug in any feed and it will score items by number of comments, inbound links, saves in delicious.com etc.

You can do this with almost anything. In the above screenshot, we've performed a Google Blogsearch for posts that link to a company's website, then changed the RSS URL to output 50 items instead of 10 (the default in the URL), then run that feed through AideRSS and grabbed the "best" feed. The goal here was to identify bloggers who had written about the company and gotten a big reaction from their readers. This is a good way to try and find a blogger for a company to hire if it's looking for one, among other things.

Those Are Our Favorites, What Are Yours?

Everyone's probably got a different list of "must-haves" but apps vary in terms of performance and functionality. If we're missing anything here, please let us know. What's more fun than learning about new ways to most effectively teach other people about all the exciting things going online these days?

Photo: Little Birdies, by Flickr user IanMatthewSoper