Archive for the 'Photos' Category

Life’s no Picnic

Life may be no picnic, but maybe Picnik will soon enrich your life!

Thank you, thank you, I actually worked on that first sentence for the better part of an hour. Now on to that magical service called Picnik.

Basically, Picnik is an online photo editor, which is a good thing for everyone who doesn’t want to buy Photoshop or install The Gimp, or for those who like to edit their pictures after they’ve already been uploaded. Colour settings, cropping, special effects - Picnik has it. The thing that makes it really usable is that it lets you import your images from your Flickr account (or just search for any photo on Flickr), from any website or simply from your computer.

The whole interface is done in Flash, which makes it pretty versatile and fast. And it looks pretty too! See for yourself:

picnik picture view

Here’s the view when you edit an image:

picnik edit view

You can then either save the edited photos directly back into your Flickr account, create funky little slideshows, email them to some address or to a website or send the pretty little thing off to the printers:

picnik saving

One little detail I think is clever: You can automatically add the “picnik” tag to edited photos when saving it back to Flickr. That’s quite handy when you want to see the ones you’ve edited online, and it’s a good way for the service itself to get attention.

Picnik reminds me of of this one service called Preloadr, which does most of the things Picnik does, only that it’s limited to Flickr (as the name already implies). The upside to less features is clearly that it’s really a lot more lightweight, and does without the use of a Flash interface.

Thumbq - Image hosting and sharing

thumbqWith AOL, Google, Yahoo and CNet offering image hosting and sharing for very competitive prices, it takes either a lot of guts or a lot of conviction to come out with a new service that does the same.

Kailash Nadd of Commentful and Krun.ch fame (links are to my reviews of these services), two web applications that are simple but effective, today wrote me an email to tell me of his new service Thumbq, a what he calls “trendy, stylish, flexible and free” image hosting and sharing service. Now, I’m not one to to judge trendy and stylish, but it sure is flexible and free.

The sign-up process is quick, you don’t even need to validate your email-address. The service doesn’t have a bulk uploader, so the only way to upload is via a browser upload form:

Once uploaded, your images are automatically cut to various sizes, all of which can be inserted into your website, either with a direct link to the image or a little snippet of Javascript code:

Images can be arranged in collections, and for every image and every collection, an individual URL is created, which you can choose to share with whomever you like (using an “email this page” form):

A slideshow function is included as well, implemented smoothly with a javascript lightbox effect.

The service is rather basic, but that’s actually not a bad thing, considering that it takes about two minutes to set up an account and upload your first image. Website integration works flawlessly (the above images are hosted with Thumbq), and the whole service is rather intuitive.

Whether the service will find a following is not easy to say. Most people who are into photography have accounts with the big social photosites out there (Flickr, Webshots, etc.), and those who are only interested in hosting for their blogs and websites, quite probably use one of the many services listed at the beginning of this posting.

While I do appreciate the effort put into this ambitious little tool, I have serious doubts it will be able to hold out against the big players in this field, unless it can be leveraged as the quick and easy solution for people who don’t have much time and want to get things done without too much hassle. Whew, what a sentence.

Moo - not a cow

mooWhile it may certainly sound like yet another web2.0-centric folly that’s catering to the owners and/or lovers of the bovine kind, moo.com is in fact nothing like that. No, it’s actually a service that has been around for a while, but only recently have they launched what will probably propell them into the heavens of web2.0 stardom (and quite possibly riches as well).

The great thing about it? It’s such a simple idea! Moo, specializing in creating tiny photo business cards for people who don’t care for boring standard white cards, have teamed with Flickr, prototypical web2.0 company and everyone’s favourite photo sharing site, to let people import their pictures from Flickr and then create sets of mini Flickr business cards. And the thing that really makes them stand out? The give out ten free cards to the first 10,000 Flickr users with pro accounts. That way, people will be able to see how the system works (flawlessly and very elegant) and how they like their cards. Later on, if you do like them, you can order 100 card sets for the price of only 19,99USD. For me, that sounds like a swell deal.

So, if you’re a Flickr user, go and check it out. And if you’re a pro, you might even still get your free 10 cards. By the way, they send them out globally, which is a good thing for people like me who don’t happen to live in the Bay Area.

moo way




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