chris nixon : nixonbyname.com

I’ve been using Skitch recently to capture screen shots and resize photos for my blogs. It is one of the best pieces of software I have ever used.

Somebody over at Plasq has obviously thought very hard about how to make their software work for the user.

The software has many uses. Screen grabs, and camera grabs are the most obvious, but they also make it easy to make basic edits to your photos, resize images, draw and share or just host the images created at Skitch.com.

Where before I was using different apps to make changes to images and take screen shots, Skitch has wrapped these all up into one extremely useful and easy to use application. I really couldn’t recommend it more highly.

My only wish was that they had a windows version so I could use it at work. I regularly miss using it when I’m not on the Mac.

I am looking for Mac/PC folder sharing advice. I have a shared folder of .avi files on my Media Center that I want to add to from my Mac. When I try to copy the files across, OSX tell me I don’t have write access.

Sure enough, when I look at the folder on the PC it is marked as “read only”. I unclick it and hit apply, and all looks fine. However when I look again, it has marked itself as “read only” again, and I still don’t have permissions in OSX.

I have tried accessing through OSX using my windows log-in rather than as a guest, but this appears to make no difference.

Can anybody help?

Update from Pownce:

In the next couple of weeks, I will buy my first Mac. My laptop has been playing up over the last few months, and I’m generally sick of Windows. I just want life to be easier. I thought I’d methodically look through what I actually do on my laptop, and what I want to do, and see if I can get some free advice (that’s a hint to you, dear reader) on what software I should use once the ’shiny thing’ arrives.

I spend most of my laptop time on the net. So I suppose I should think very strongly about what browser to use. There are two obvious choices in Safari and Firefox. I use Firefox just now, and one of the features I like most is the ability to sync my bookmarks across computers. From what I read, Safari is more stable than the current version of Firefox but I think I’ll stick with what I know (how very boring sounding) just now, and see how I get on.

I obviously do a fair bit of blogging. In the last couple of months I’ve really grown to like Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer, but what are the options on the Mac? Should I be going for free software, or should I fork out some dosh. I’m really stuck on this one. I use hosted WordPress.com blogs, so it’s important that whatever I use is compatible with that.

I want to be able to edit my photographs on my new laptop. I currently use Photoshop CS2 for Windows, but I’d like to use something different on the Mac. I find that the handling of RAW images in Photoshop is a bit clunky in CS2. Is this the same in CS3? I want to be able to edit my images, then export them as jpegs for sharing on Zooomr. What is the advice here? Should I stick with Photoshop, or should I be using something like Lightroom?

I currently use iTunes on the PC, so that is an obvious port across to the Mac. Is there an easy way to do this? I would like to retain my ratings and play counts as I have spent rather too much time getting these ‘just so’ and I don’t want to have to go through the process again.

Because my current laptop is an early Sony Vaio, it can’t play divx. Sony blame, and divx blame Sony. I get about 10 seconds into a divx video before I get a BSOD. I think it’s a video driver issue, and Sony refuse to update the driver, so I’m updating away from Sony. Do Mac users use divx video, or do they tend to use the newer H.264? What are the advantages? I’d like to do a bit of video editing on my Mac. Am I best to use the built-in software, or look elsewhere?

Well that’s enough questions for now. I’d really appreciate any advice that people have on these. I’m obviously going to do some research myself, but hearing real people’s real experiences much more valuable.