ReadWriteWeb

When the much-loved screen shot and image annotation Mac app Skitch was purchased by Evernote a few months ago, an iOS version of the service was said to be forthcoming. Evernote has made good on that promise by launching Skitch for iPad, with an iPhone-friendly version coming soon.

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.

Skitch, a popular Mac desktop app for quickly snapping, marking up and sharing screenshots, has been acquired by ambitious archiving service Evernote, the companies announced today. Also announced: Skitch for Android, iPhone and iPad. The Android version is available today but, unfortunately, appears to focus on annotation of photographs instead of helping capture the elusive Android screenshot. Skitch for iOS is "coming soon."

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.

Skitch, arguably the best free screenshot capturing service for the Mac, has relaunched with a new emphasis on sharing images with friends and admirers. In addition to quick screengrabs, resizing, mark-up and upload, the service now includes a lightbox view, subscriptions, comments and is now ad-supported.

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.

TechSmith, the makers of powerful screencast recording software Camtasia and screen capture app SnagIt, announced this morning that a beta version of SnagIt is now available for the Mac. The Windows version costs $50 but the Mac beta is free for now. It's great.

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.

Aviary, which is known for its fully featured, browser-based image creation and manipulation tools, just released a new tool that makes it extremely easy to capture a copy of any web page by just adding 'aviary.com/' in front of a URL. Unlike most screen capture tools, Aviary is able to capture a complete web site, even if it extends beyond the borders of your screen. Aviary already offered a Firefox plugin, Talon, which allows users to create screenshots, but this new method is available from any browser, as long as it supports Flash for the image editing portion of Aviary.

Teaching people how to use new tools on the internet is hard. Learning through experience is the most effective method, but it's slow. More and more of us are finding ourselves teaching other people how to use new web apps and services - sometimes professionally.

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.