Posted via email from TigerMunky’s Grrreat Trek

I was reading something online, of which I don’t recall, and in a post on this un-named site they listed a bunch of “must have” applications for any Mac user. One of those is obviously Skitch beta by Plasq; which I found to be my favorite Screen Capture application that I have used.

This is not the only Screen Shot/Capturing software I have although it is my favorite for capturing images. There is an awesome amount of “things” you can do with this software that I haven’t found with any other free application, including editing, adding text, arrows, resizing, cropping, and drawing; the perfect bloggers capture tool. Not only are these options available, they are easy to use; even if you are not an editor.

Click on the image to see it larger.
One of the more convenient parts of the program is the option to post directly from the software, to a pre-made Skitch account online which acts very similar to a Flickr Account, however you do also have the option to set up alternate account which include a Flickr account which is what I use regularly to post directly to my blog using the “webpost” button.

So go check it out, it is effective, easy to use, and most important FREE! Skitch beta by Plasq

Thanks for checking the blog out.

-Tim Scouten

Posted via email from TigerMunky’s Grrreat Trek

Photo by Tabea Dibou, from Flickr

We can see more people creating more works than ever before in history. And it’s because of the web and because the web is social. On the web, much is possible. Whether you are finding the right beautiful photo (with the right Creative Commons license) to illustrate metaphorically the connectivity and the beauty of the internet for a blog post, or whether you are playing with a web app (Skitch -  http://skitch.com/) to draw

or to explain something

The web is a space where people want to make, to create. I’m creating this blog post, because it’s FUN! And easy. The phrase “user-friendly” developed with the personal computer. Web apps are aimed at being user-friendly to entice and encourage people to use them, to be creative.The social aspect of the web, the possibility of being seen/heard/recognized, even if only by a very few others, encourages people’s creativity. I might not have composed this blog post if the one I created yesterday hadn’t been re-tweeted, and got  a comment. That thrill of recognition is energizing. So people are playing on computers and posting their creativity on the web. As we get responses ourselves, and even if we just see others get responses, we are encouraged to join in the play. And playfulness spreads.

So serious people who sell cars and race cars become part of the crowd playing:

Two typographers ( Pierre & Damien / plmd.me ) and a pro race pilot (Stef van Campenhoudt) collaborated to design a font with a car.
The car movements were tracked using a custom software, designed by interactive artist Zachary Lieberman. ( openframeworks.cc )

Which I downloaded – nl.toyota.be/iqfont and played with.

Art, play, creativity – that’s how we humans learn and that’s what makes us happy and healthy. And the web is our creativity playground.

Skitch > Command+shift+4 (+select area)

LC: mac screen shot 20 sec? whaaa? shift + command + 3 is like, 1 sec

Sent at 3:25 AM on Wednesday

YH: no,mac screen shot is:

1 sec to take pic
+ 3 secs to go to gmail
+ 1 to click compose

LC: lolol
YH:

1 to click attach
+ 2 to find file
+ 6 to wait to attach actual file
+ 3 more to add words and subject heading
+ 2 to send
+ 1 more to tell you that i sent it
and 3 to wait for you to say you got it
________________
23 secs

LC: kkkkkkkkk

YH: so yeah, skitch: send link: Boom. /end

Chat with @thenoche

Download skitch?

Ποιός είσαι πραγματικά ?

Ποιά είναι τα βαθύτερα μυστικά σου, που κρύβεις στον πάτο της ντουλάπας σου?

Ο skitch έχει τον τρόπο να τα φέρνει στην επιφάνεια!!

Skitch has its way…!!

from talking to a certain self-confessed ‘Mac virgin’ it occurred to me that i should compile a list of the apps that i would recommend to anyone making there first foray into decent computing.
it has always been said that PCs are for worky stuff (and by that i mean office type things, not my ‘work’) and Macs are for the creative stuff. which is pretty much correct. yes, there is a huge amount of overlap, and this debate could occupy a post of it’s own, but that’s for another time. mebbe.

so yes. OSX app recommendations. i shall try and roughly group these by functionality, and suggest the reasons i consider them essential apps, at least in my sphere of usage anyways…

this is by no means definitive, and if i can be bothered i shall update it as i discover more. stay tuned.

music things:

Spotify
if you don’t know what this is already, leave. or JFGI

Songbird
alternative to iTunes, can share the same library

Audion
nearest thing i’ve found to dear old Winamp on the PC (i miss you winamp… *sniff*)
(nb- mine always beachball crashes, if it works for you, goody)
can be skinned, has plugins and stuff too
support has been discontinued, but as a result it is now free. (register code on the official site)

MacAmp Lite X (or maltx to its friends)
also similar to winamp but quite basic.
great for a small unobtrusive player if you just want to play by folder, not going though a huge library
(i stopped using it because it refused to play certain files… couldn’t be arsed to figure out the issue, mebbe doesn’t like a particular codec)

TriTag
lets you rename mp3 files according to their tag info (does other stuff too, but that’s what i use it for)

Musorg
excellent tag editor for mp3 files (believe me, i tried enough before settling on this one)
can edit on or more tags in one or more files, then commit changes when you’re done.
useful for if you actually want to change the tag info actually in the mp3s not just in your library file (iTunes i’m looking at you you goof)

comms things:

Adium
MSN, yahoo, AIM, ICQ, etc etc – your one stop IM solution
can change er pretty much everything about it- dock icon, status bar icon, contact icons, sound sets, message window appearance (has themes for how your convos should look)
cannot recommend enough, only drawback is it doesn’t support custom emoticons, which is a shame cos my old PC’s MSN had a load of em. boo.

Twitter – Tweetdeck
features URL shortening and groups. nice UI, although air’s text rendering can be a little borky.
apparently now has support for facebook status too.

Twitter – Tweetie
popular iPhone client comes to desktop.
nice simple client, ads are annoying though. not sure how they expect peeps to get paid version when there’s so many free ones out there.

Twitter – Nambu
now you’re talking. ‘mail’ style interface with ‘inboxes’ for updates, messages, mentions etc.
can create groups, but instead of displaying those groups at once (so if someone is in more than one group you see their tweet several times over), the groups act like filters for the main stream.
has three views- normal stream, the ‘mail’esque layout, and group columns, a la Tweetdeck.
supports URL shortening, and Identi.ca accounts. Facebook and FriendFeed coming when it gets out of beta.
(nb sometimes crashes when autocompleting names when you type @) (great feature when it works though, saves tweets not getting seen through typos)

Media Shiz:

Skitch
where do i start? awesome app for people who always need to demo stuff remotely.
allows you to take screen grabs (whole screen, dragged area, timed shots etc) then annotate with text, shapes, arrows etc.
can then either drag off the image to desktop (or wherever) and save a PNG (or format of your choice) or upload to the website and share the URL.
excellent for dealing with client changes (ok how about now?), helping show people things over teh interewebs (then click on this bit here etc), or for throwing together humourous images and sharing them quickly (great for making LOLcats)
oh yeah, and you dont need to save your skitch ‘project files’ as it keeps track of all the skitches you’ve done in kinda like a history.

The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program)
freeware image editing program. for peeps who can’t yet stretch to the Creative Suite etc.

ACDsee Pro Beta
ACDsee makes it to Mac! yes, it’s only a beta, but it’s free for now!
useful for organising/previewing large amounts of images. does too many things to list here.

Audacity
probably the best sound editor. kinda like ‘cool edit’ on the PC.

LiquidCD
good cd burning program. does data cds, audio cds, dvds etc.
oh yeah, and it’s free, unlike toast. nyeh.

VLC
video player, that likes DivX. comes with a ton of useful codecs too. if quciktime wont play it, use VLC.

FLV crunch
all-round general purpose video converter. i use it for converting flv files (flash video downloaded from streaming video sites) to normal ones such as .mov (quicktime), but it takes most video formats and converts to, well, most video formats.
it’s good.

XNJB
if, like myself, you have a Creative Zen (or other Creative labs media player) you may or may not be aware that it doesn’t actually use the USB standard for connection. oh no. it uses some backwards-ass, close-to-USB-but-not-quite specification that Microshaft came up with called ‘MTP’ (Media Transfer Protocol).
the upshot of which is- if you plug a Zen (or whatever) into a PC it’ll say ‘oh right, this is kinda like an external hard drive, let me open up the folder in a special way’… if you plug one into a Mac it’ll say ‘hmm?’.
XNJB translates between the MTP and OSX so i can transfer stuff to/from my Zen. it aint perfect, but at least it lets me use the best media player ever with a decent damn computer. win.

General System Stuff:

TextWrangler
better text editor. supports odd characters, has line highlighting and support for multiple open files in the same window (has a sidebar with current open files, click to switch between em)

Transmission
nice tidy torrent program. don’t worry, i’m not gonna ask what you might be using it for.

Coconut Battery
gives you info about the health of your battery- how many cycles it’s been though, current max capacity compared to initial cap etc.

Butler
super-awesome tweaker. does way too many things to list here.
i use it for putting in icon in my status bar that lets me access drives, folders, and my music library by clicking on the status bar icon. that’s just too convenient for words. oh yeah, and i put a search box in my status bar too (with multiple customisable search engines)

GMail Status
status bar icon for checking your GMail account. checks every so often, lights up if you have one. can give growl notifications and make a noise too. (i have a clip of Groucho Marx saying “any mail for me while i was gone?”… heh.)

CyberDuck FTP
useful open source FTP/SFTP uploader. also a WebDAV, Mosso Cloud Files  and Amazon S3  browser.

StuffIt Expander
utility for unpacking compressed archives (zip, RAR, etc etc files)

If you are a Mac user there is a new application you need to get… If you are a designer this is a must!

I take and send screen shots all the time, and Command + Shift + 4 was a little irritating… You had to take the shot, find it on your desktop, rename it because “picture 1″ isn’t a good description, and then go to mail and attach the file. Granted it’s not an excessive amount of work but what if you wanted to draw an arrow to something, or circle some part of the image…. it might take a few minutes.

Well give Skitch a try. It takes much less time, it’s much easier to use and listen up… you can drag and drop the screen shots into your mail or word documents. You can type on the image, draw arrows or circles and save it quickly. Pretty awesome right… I use this application daily, and it has improved client communication by allowing me to share images quickly.

You can also upload directly to your Flickr or Mobile Me account.

Here’s what the interface looks like:

I highly recommend this one for all mac users (sorry PCs, but I’m sure there is something out there for you) give Skitch a try.

Twittering is truly becoming one of the most important ways to share content in the social media arena. Beyond the obvious 140 characters limitation, there was no way to share images (a picture is worth a 1000 words). Since Twitter doesn’t have an application for this, third party vendors have come up with options for us that work on Twitter.

I recently read a post by Josh Catone, 5 ways to share images on Twitter, that I thought was both interesting and insightful on his part. He outlines our options and gives an overview of each of his examples. Here are some highlights of his 5 ways:

1. Via a Twitter image sharing service
2. Via SMS or Email
3. Via Brightkite or FriendFeed
4. Via Skitch
5. Via an Encoded Tweet

Obviously, image sharing is the next logical step for Twitter and will probably drive more Tweets because of it.

If you’re already into images, I’d like to hear which one you prefer.

The all-female group of young Swedish designers, FRONT and their latest collaboration with MOROSO, MOOOI, Established & Sons LTD and the new Italian design brand  SKITCH, were the talk of the town during the design week in Milan. Below we have showcased their latest designs and if the cushions of a sofa are balanced on their edges, a flat surface is turned into one richly draped with fabric and the wind has blown away a vase, then in front of your screen are showcased all the new products of FRONT design for 2009.

Via & more: Yatzer

Skitch est une application de dessin bien sympa. Elle permet d’ajouter du texte et des indications sur une image ou une capture d’écran. Toujours disponible dans la barre de menus, c’est également un service de partage en ligne. Voilà par exemple ce qu’il est possible de faire :

Skitch est une application complète qui permet de faire des captures d’écran, d’une sélection de l’écran ou même de la webcam pour les importer directement dans la fenêtre principale qui se présente comme ceci :

À gauche se trouvent les icônes des différents outils : insérer une flèche, un cadre, un cercle, du texte, dessiner… À droite les couleurs, et les icônes de captures. Au bas de la fenêtre se trouve l’option Drag me. Cliquez dessus et déposez le fichier où vous le souhaitez. C’est une manière bien pratique pour enregistrer ses fichiers. De plus Skitch offre la possibilité de choisir le format d’enregistrement : png, jpg, bmp… pas mal de formats disponibles. Cochez Export at original size pour enregistrer le fichier à sa taille originale.

Skitch propose son propre service de partage en ligne, mais vous pourrez également exporter vers Flickr, MobileMe ou un Ftp. Il suffit de sélectionner webpost pour envoyer le fichier, la flèche à côté permet de choisir quel compte utiliser. Le service Skitch.com permet, si nécessaire, de rendre privé ses fichiers. L’icône en haut à gauche de Photos offre d’autres options comme envoyer directement par mail, inverser l’image ou faire une rotation.

C’est une excellente solution pour annoter ses fichiers, les partager ou simplement dessiner. L’interface est vraiment très simple, de plus tous les outils et informations sont disponibles en un clic. Le tout avec un design s’intégrant parfaitement à Mac os x.

Another day, another attempt at live blogging at CIL2009. Probably spending my day in Track C.

The Best of the Web – Aaron Schmidt.

Aaron had us introduce ourselves to someone next to us and talk about what we like on the web.

Firefox – cool another fan. Greasemonkey fan as well, smart keywords, better Gmail

Google Reader – Helvetireader

Book City Jackets – brown wrappers – cool idea for display perhaps for banned book week?

Wikimedia commons – sister site of wikipedia

Flickr image search – creative commons – pictobrowser gives you code to include a slide show on a web page

Skitch – screenshot tool – annotate them – upload to Flickr from Skitch

Jing – only Mac or Windows (their loss no one smart enough or good enough to program it for LInux)

Screentoaster – completely web based

Vimeo – artier than Youtube, clean – free or pro accounts – customize how they are embedded

PostRiank – library’s blog feed address and will tell you which posts are more popular than others (must do this for our blogs at work) – helps you gear content to your audience

copypastecharacter.com – if you don’t know code you can copy and paste it into your web site or blog. I’d prefer that you learn the code but okay.

Today’sMeet – create temporary online space – discuss things – had the front row setup a room and login pretty simple

Doodle

Let me Google that for you

Color lovers!! YES one of my favorites.

TagCrowd – enter URL or block of text and pulls out the tags for you or you can use Wordle

Qapture – real time capture of what is going on in Twitter mentioned this morning at the keynote

Twitter – power of searching on twitter pulled Aaron in – Tweetdeck select who you want to display helps you filter out unwanted tweets

VYEW – online web conferencing tool

http://bacoliciou.us – run a web page through and puts a piece of bacon on it – friend sees web page w/bacon

Thematic theme for WordPress – easy to modify cheap way to improve library web site

Ted talks (or videos) – expensive conference but they bring the interesting people together

Google Voice – for voice mail – get voice mail transcribed so you can read it

Google Forms – create a form

Netnewswire – for Macs only Rss reader

What is Prezi? – not intuitive – neat looking presentations – bit of a learning curve by invite only right now

280Slides – online presentation maker – make, save and share

Lovely Charts – register and make org charts, network diagrams, flow charts

Typetester – enter sample text – css params in the middle and will see 3 different fonts – then copy CSS and paste it

must use the right tool for the job – and library is the place to find them

kalau sering anda dengar kita print screen…

paint…sering terdengar apabila pengguna windows…

nah sekarang bagimana kalau kita mau mengcapture gambar  sekaligus melakukan editing dengan mac osx anda?

skitch

gambar diatas adalah salah astu contoh dari skitch…

amazing and impresive adalah ulasan saya…

kita bisa melakukan capture dan editing…

so …. i love mac OSX

Skitch für MacOS mach eigntlich nichts weltbewegendes Neues, aber vereint dafür einige (zumindest in meinem Fall) häufig genutzte Abläufe in einem Programm. Man mit Skitch Screenshots machen und direkt bearbeiten(Markierungen setzen, Texte hinzufügen, Beschneiden usw.) Skitch arbeitet auch mit der iSight Kamera und man kann so ein schnelles Bild aufnehmen.

Danach reicht ein Knopfdruck und das Tool stellt die Datei im Netz bereit. Entweder auf dem eigenen MySkitch Webspace, bei Flickr, via FTP, WebDAV, oder auch .Mac. Außerdem bietet Skitch eine gute iPhoto-Integration, eine History der zuletzt bearbeitete Dateien und weiter einstellbare Kleinigkeiten.

Neben dem Zugriff auf die iSight gibt es grundsätzlich 3 Möglichkeiten einen Screenshot zu machen. Einen Fullscreen Snapshot, einen Crosshair Snapshot und einen Frameshot.

Ein Fullscreen Snapshot erklärt sich von selbst. Bei einem Crosshair Snapshot bekommt man (wie der Name schon vermuten lässt) ein Fadenkreuz mit dem man dann auf den gewünschten Bereich bzw. auf das gewünschte Fenster klickt. Mit dem Framshot Snapshot kann man mit er Skitch Oberfläche einen Screenshot von einem bestimmten Bereich erzielen (siehe Bild unten)

Mit folgendem Resultat…

Neben der Bereitstellung ins Netz kann man die Datei auch lokal abspeichern in dem man einfach an die unten angehängt Lasche “Drag Me” klickt und zum Beispiel auf den Schreibtisch zieht.

Wie und wo das Programm verweilt kann man sich selbst einstellen. Im Dock, in der Menubar oder in beidem.

Skitch ist kostenlos. Das einzige was man benötigt ist ein (ebenfalls kostenloser) Skitch Account, den man ganz einfach bei der Erstkonfiguration von Skitch anlegt.

Zusammenfassend kann ich nur sagen, dass mir Skitch den Arbeitsalltag auf eine sehr angenehme Art und Weise erleichtert hat.

Skitch entwickelt sich für mich immer mehr zum Universalwerkzeug für schnelle Bildbearbeitung für mein Blog. Es ist nicht nur eine echte Augenweide, sondern Skitch enthält neue Bedienkonzepte die so intuitiv sind, dass man erst mal fast nicht darauf kommt.

Jetzt ist eine neue Version herausgekommen, die unten stehende Verbesserungen, Neuigkeiten und wohl auch ein paar Fehlerbereinigungen enthält.

Through Stephen Downes’ OLDaily, I stumbled across Typealyzer – http://www.typealyzer.com/index.php?lang=en – and let it analyze my blog (and me;->). Here’s its analysis of me according to this blog:

Typealyzer & This Blog

It goes even further and says my brain has this pattern of activity:

Typealyzer & My Brain

So there you have it, what my words and interests reveal about me!

Dwarven Kingdom
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

So, as a gamer, I’m always interested in building new locations or settings for games. Moria, the dwarven kingdom in LORD OF THE RINGS, kind of sets the standard for dwarven ways. Yet given their interactions with the surface, compared with other earth-resident races, it always seemed to me that the dwarven kingdom belonged in a cleft in the rock.

Here, I’ve used Picknik’s tools to label the map with some of the regions or territories within the Dwarven kingdom of Westcleft, a surface-dwelling dwarven princedom on the western slopes of the Fogtooth Mountains.

The original picture is of a cleft in a sand-covered snowbank in the school parking lot. I wish there’d been some greenery, but no such luck.

The photo on Flickr has roll-over notes with additional ideas for what happens in each place or region. I don’t have a good sense of scale yet, but I’m figuring it’s a day’s march between Three Road City and Black Rock Tower. So it’s really more of a city-state than a principality or kingdom.

I GO-trained into Toronto today to attend some sessions  at the MagNet ‘09 Conference. I was really impressed with the excellent level of organization and with the high quality of the two sessions I attended, a session with a panel of literary agents answering questions and a session with Harry van Bommel on self-publishing. Both were excellent. Harry van Bommel speaks frequently and if you ever get a chance to hear him, do it! I learned a lot from him. http://www.harryvanbommel.com/Harry_van_Bommel/HOME.html

Harry van Bommel's Home Page

It was a lovely day to be in downtown Toronto:

Toronto's Old City Hall

Toronto's current City Hall

Tomorrow I give my presentation on researching using the web.

iQ mobile Search - an iPhone Screenshot

I worry a little because the audience will be doubly diverse. They will have many different angles on what they want to research and what for. Plus, today I noticed a wide range in web awareness and know-how in those attending the sessions I was in. As well, I’ve been tweeting using the hashtag #MagNet09, and when I’ve searched, very few seem to be using it. I’m hoping I’ve got something for everyone but tomorrow will tell.

I’m using a PowerPoint, for three reasons.

1. I like KeyNote better, but if anything went wrong with my laptop, there might not be another Mac handy and a PowerPoint file will play on a Mac or a Windows platform. (Not that I’m paranoid ;-> but I’ve emailed a copy to my Google mail, and I have a memory stick with my presentation on it which I carry separately from my laptop,)
2. I’ve just found PowerPoint’s Presenter Tool -  something I thought only Keynote had – and that will make my presentation easier to run.
3. I don’t trust hotel wi-fi having had previous bad experiences with giving web-based presentations where the promised wi-fi was down more than up.

So tomorrow, I will be looking at this screen -

PowerPoint's Presenter Tools

Wish me luck ;->

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