Justin (our Penguin Handler) and Mike (COO) are in San Jose this week for the annual Velocity Conference on web performance and operations. Keynote speakers this year include Jonathan Heiliger of Facebook, Marissa Mayer of Google, John Adams of Twitter, and Justin Huff of Picnik! That’s right, Justin gave a keynote today on “2 Years Later: Loving and Hating the Cloud,” and Mike went along to cheer for him.

Most of our users might hear about “the Cloud” and wonder, “Why would Justin hate the Picnik clouds?” but actually the Cloud is where most of Picnik is stored! It refers to all our offsite data storage, processing, flexibility, and not making Justin install all that hardware himself. That way, it’s where we don’t have to look at it, as if it were hidden behind big white fluffy clouds. So Justin was down there to talk about love, hate, and laziness.

They’ll be there for the rest of the conference, so if you run into them, say hi!

Update: The video is now online!

All across the Northern hemisphere people are celebrating the return of summer and here at Picnik we’re digging out the wicker basket and unrolling the checkered blanket by putting forth a challenge for Picnikers to show us how they’re kicking off the season by posting their best summer pictures with their favorite Picnik effects to Twitter, with a prize to the winners! Check out all 200+ images by clicking here or searching for the contest hashtag #SummerPicnik.

A big congratulations to our three winners @smith521, @wildcat24, and @bellavaz. All three winners received a one year subscription for Picnik Premium!

We also had two more favorites: @welstechtrainer received three months of Premium for posting an amazing collage that won her the award for the most amazing time capsule image, and @sandra6dee won three months of Picnik Premium for the most joyful jumping picture.

Want to share you favorite pictures on Twitter? We’ve made it really easy! When you get to the Save & Share tab select Twitter and connect to your account. Congrats to all the winners and have a great summer to all!

Next week Team Picnik is giving away a couple one-year Picnik Premium Memberships in a new Twitter contest: Use Picnik to Tweet your favorite summer photograph, using the hashtag #SummerPicnik so we can see you, and Team Picnik members will choose the best ones, with winners announced on Friday, June 19!

Directions: Make a Twitter account, if you don’t have one! Announce yourself by following @picnik on Twitter! Take your picture, then upload it and edit it! Then find the Twitter page under the Save & Share tab to Tweet your summery masterpiece!

The contest runs from Monday at 12.01 am through Thursday at 2 pm PDT. So why are we telling you this early? Because it’s a beautiful weekend in June! So get outside and get those photos!

Note to our Southern Hemisphere Picnikers: You are entirely welcome to include your photos of the grumpy weather you’re having right now.

Update: The contest is now open! Feel free to start Tweeting your submissions!

Update #2: The contest is now closed! Thank you to everyone who participated! We will announce the winners tomorrow, June 19 at 2pm PDT. In the meantime, check out the submissions on Twitter by searching for “#SummerPicnik”.

Today Yahoo! has launched a whole new set of applications inside Yahoo! Mail, and Picnik is launching right there with them!

That’s right, the internet’s most gigantor webmail provider is now offering Picnik as the photo editor for their users! And without having to go digging in an application directory, either, but right there in the applications menu at the left.

Similar to our integrations with Facebook and Flickr, having Picnik inside your email brings Picnik’s photo editing awesomeness to where so many of your photos are kept anyway: in your inbox! Just click on “Edit Photos” next to the Picnik icon and hit connect, and Picnik automatically grabs all the images attachments in your Yahoo! Mail. Can’t find something? You can also Get From Computer, a Website, a Yahoo! Search, a Webcam shot, the list goes on. Then edit, add Effects, Stickers, Text, and Touch-Ups to your heart’s content, and when you’re done, Save to your Computer, Flickr, Print, other third party storage sites, and, of course, email!

We here at Picnik World Head-quarters are all still scraping our jaws off the floor after COO Mike Harrington completed a Half Ironman in Saturday’s Ironman Hawaii. He did his 1.2 mile open-water swim across the Kailua-Kona Bay, 56 mile bike across the lava desert to Hawi and back, and 13.1 mile run along the Big Island coast between the Puako Petroglyph Archaeological Park and the Nomura Hawaii Village, for a total of 70.3 miles, all in just 7:09:39. There are those of us who can’t sit in a chair for that long without getting tired.

Also on Saturday was the annual Issaquah Triathlon, a sprint Triathlon of much more humane distances of 1/4 mile swim, 15 mile bike ride and 3 mile run all around the Lake Sammamish area just to the east of us, which Penguin Handler Justin entered again and finished in 1:13:22, a 20 minute improvement on last year!