Somehow, the entire backend/operations team here at Picnik (mike and myself) was convinced to compete in the Issaquah Triathlon. This is a ’sprint’ event consisting of a 1/4 mile swim, 15mi bike, and 3mi run.

Saturday is the day. I’m scheduled to hit the water just after 7am. Mike is a little later at 7:30am.

Oh yeah, while I’ve done a couple of 10K runs, neither of us has ever done a tri before. I think we’re ready, but wish us luck anyway!

Update:

Mike and I finished in around 1hr 33min. We were 11.4s apart!

Congratulations to Grahamish for winning the prestigious First Ever Flickr Picnikers Group Monthly Theme Contest Award (FPGMTCA for short, or “Fupugumuties” (actually we’re still casting around on that)) for Effect Painting: Selective Desaturation. As her prize, she’s won a full year Picnik Premium subscription, the runners up, Essjay in NZ and Liz AM both won three-month Premium subscriptions, and everyone who entered this exciting inaugural contest won one-month Premium subscriptions!

Brenda, our Community Liaison in Charge of Flickr Operations, is already gearing up for the June contest, so stay tuned to the Picnikers Group for that, and head over to the Contest Questions thread if you have any ideas or suggestions.

What else can you do with Picnik, besides ‘fixing’ your photos and creating your own clipart? We thought you’d never ask. Weddingbee is sharing some great ideas on how to liven up your “Cps” (crappy pictures) using Picnik effects. That photo isn’t crappy, really, it just needs a little Picnik TLC.

Sure, Picnik is awesome for fixing red-eye, removing blemishes, cropping, etc but the real fun happens when people combine their great ideas with the effects, shapes, and fonts under Picnik’s Create tab. We came across this incredible “Make Your Own Free Clip Art With Picnik” tutorial on WordPlayBlog.com and are still picking our jaws up off the floor!

We’re building a collection for a future showcase and would love to see what you’ve been making. Send your favorite Picniked images to contact@picnik.com!

One hundred thirty two years ago, Decoration Day was first observed in Waterloo, New York, to honor soldiers fallen in the Civil War. Since then, the holiday has evolved to include memorializing WWI, WWII, Korean, and Vietnam War Fallen, as well as those serving in current conflicts and those who served who never saw battle, by hanging a flag in the front yard, tying a ribbon in honor of family members in harm’s way, or sending hot dogs in to serve the noble cause of the first summer barbecue.

However you choose to observe Memorial Day, we invite you to use Picnik’s new Memorial Day icons, BBQ shapes, the yellow ribbon in our new Awareness Ribbons shapes section, and Picnik’s perennially wonderful fonts to create an ecard, invitation, or decorate a photo you’ve taken of the day, to create something worth memorializing on its own.

photo by paul goyette

Once again, yesterday was a record-breaking day! It seems like only yesterday — or maybe just last year — when Mike would update me (sometimes waking me up) with the news that Picnik had more than 200, 300, or -gosh- 400 users! Now, each month, millions of people are coming to Picnik. In fact, if we project our current month-to-month growth rate forward, the law of compounding says that within a few years everyone on the Internet will be having too much fun Picniking to do anything else ever again.

We especially love looking at the geographical stats from our friends at Google. While the biggest chunk of our traffic comes from the US and Canada (we’re pretty sure Steve Leroux has a humongous extended family), Picnik now attracts visitors from 205 countries and territories around the world. It gives us a thrill to know that Picnik is catching on as far afield as Moldava, Liechtenstein, Nepal, and Burundi.

Really, what does this mean? That Picnik is growing and thriving around the world and that we’re truly, madly, grateful for all of the support and encouragement. Please keep spreading the Picnik love. The more Picnikers we have, the better we can make Picnik for everyone :-)

Picnik’s very own Community Liaison in Charge of Flickr Operations, Brenda, has knocked up an excellent video tutorial of Effect Painting for the Picnikers group on Flickr. For those of you not regular contributors to the Picnikers Flickr Group (and if not, why not? There’s prizes to be had!), Brenda’s an American-in-New Zealand photography enthusiast with three kids, a gazillion photo sets, and an uncanny knack for harnessing the power of Flickr’s new video tool thingie. In fact she’s so good at this newfangled technology, we just had to post this here, too:

And of course this technique can be used on any of Picnik’s effects with the little icon!

Sure, Team Picnik is freezing through a drizzly and overcast Seattle May, and perhaps we’re more disgruntled about “Climate Change” than any “Global Warming” as such, but we’re still keen stewards of the environment here at Picnik, and wanted to express our enthusiasm for National Bike to Work Week (starting today the 12th to Friday the 16th). Of course, it’s easy for us to be enthusiastic, since of Team Picnik, 80% of us regularly walk, take public transport, drive a bio-diesel powered vehicle, or telecommute, and 7% — Brian — bicycles. As for the rest of us biking to work this month, well, Seattle’s a bit on the hilly side, and some of us would rather let the bus do all the work as we cheer Brian on from within the cozy embrace of Sound Transit.

Anyway, it’s cold outside.

But for those of you living in flatter, more thigh-friendly regions, we’d like to encourage you to take this opportunity to leave the car in the garage, tell your carpool to figure something else out, and feel the wind in your hair (or helmet — Picnik promotes safe riding!) during this week’s commute. For those of you for whom biking to work just isn’t feasible, or if you suffer the effects of Climate Change as much as we do, perhaps you can live the spirit of the week by using Picnik to edit and send a Picnik-powered egreeting! With no dead trees, no air miles, and a carbon footprint only as wide as the amount power you use to run your computer (which of course would be on anyway), using Picnik to edit your photos, apply awesome effects, personalize it with fantastic fonts, shapes and frames, and then email it off to anyone in the world (and try bicycling there, eh?) is truly an environmentally friendly way to share your fabulous photos.

Meanwhile, and maybe it’s just that Seattle is sunnier today, but several members of Team Picnik leaned their bikes up along side Brian’s today. Well done, everybody, and let’s hope the weather keeps on warming!

Forget all the stress of cheesy greeting cards and too-slow postal travel times by making your favorite mom (or moms, or grandmoms, or favored aunt, or particularly maternal father) her (or their, or his) very own personalized, hand-made Mother’s Day greeting with our new selection of Mother’s Day shapes!

Whether a delicate bouquet of flowers or a super-bad tattoo on your arm declaring your devotion, just add a little text with your own personal message and sit back and wait for her (or their, or his) eyes to well up in misty gratitude.

Because, admit it, the ones you make yourself are more meaningful anyway.