A few of our very own Team Picniker’s joined men from around the world in recognizing Movember.   Movember is the dedication of the month of November to raise awareness, research dollars and support for men’s health and prostate cancer.

To participate in Movember men start out clean shaven on November 1st and then proceed to grow spectacular variations of mustaches for the remainder of the month.

If you are late to the party or follically challenged finish the month strong by adding a little scruff to your photos or profile pictures with our Premium Beard tool or free beard stickers.  Nothing says you are committed to a good cause like drawing some scruffy attention to it.

It’s the women’s turn: The world championship for women’s national association football is happening in nine German cities between the 26th of June and the 17th of July.

If you’re a fan of one of the qualified teams (or if you’re just now choosing one), come to Picnik to dress your photos in your national colors. There are scarves, face paint, flags, and everything else you’d need to show your support for Australia, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, England, Equatorial Guinea, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, North Korea, Norway, Sweden, and the United States.

Everyday at Picnik we’re blown away by the amazing photos that Picnikers share in our forum challenges, add to our Flickr group, and post on our Facebook page.

Picnikers all have their own unique way of making these masterpieces, so what better way to share your tips and tricks than in person at one of our Picnik & Tell Meetups, which will be happening in cities around the world on November 3rd.

All attendees* will receive a complimentary 1 month Picnik Premium account trial after completing a short feedback survey. Plus, Picnik team members in Seattle, San Francisco, and even New Zealand will be on hand to say hello!

Everything you need to participate is on our Picnik & Tell Meetup site. To find a Meetup near you, click here or do a quick search on the map. To join a scheduled event, click on the I’m Interested button on the Meetup details page, or if you don’t see one listed, click on Schedule a Meetup to create one.

When you start or join a Meetup, consider volunteering to be the Meetup organizer. That gives you the ability to set the venue and time of the party. Anyone can do it, plus you may get the opportunity to be featured here on the Picnik blog (and all the fame and glory that comes along with it).

Also, don’t forget to comment on your city’s party details page—you can use it to chat and plan with your fellow attendees prior to the Meetup.

So grab a few friends and your favorite Picniked photos (brownie points if you use our new Halloween Effects) and we hope to hear all about it on November 3rd.

Happy Picniking!

*Void where prohibited

This is, according to our calculations, Picnik’s BILLIONTH edited photo:

It comes from Gísli Hjálmar, an Icelandic law student working as a technician and one of Flickr’s more prolific Picnikers. To celebrate, and to show him off a bit, we asked him a little bit about himself.

He became interested in photography when he was around 19, but then didn’t take pictures for nearly 20 years before starting up again three years ago.

Two years ago he discovered Picnik, and now does most of his photo editing with us (even though he has Photoshop on his computer). His favorite part of Picnik? The Seasonal Effects! How does he feel about his photo being Picnik’s billionth edited photo? He’s “very happy” and for good reason: Gísli now has a lifetime subscription to Picnik Premium!

Of all the thousands of photos being edited Wednesday morning, we’re so happy that the person with the billionth photo is such an interesting guy, an enthusiastic photographer and a good Picniker! It makes us think about all the millions of interesting people out there with their squillions of interesting pictures using Picnik all the time, and we can’t wait to see what the next billion brings. Thank you all and happy Picniking!

Ding ding ding! Big news here at Picnik World Headquarters! Today our crack team of server specialists cracked open the champagne in their Top Secret Server Lair high above downtown Seattle when the Official Picnik Tally Counter ticked over to one billion photo edits!

To put this into perspective:

One billion seconds: nearly 32 years
One billion minutes ago: Trajan was Emperor of Rome
One billion days ago: Lucy was still alive and well
One billion edits ago: it was October 2007!

To celebrate this HUGE number, Picnik Premium is free for everyone today! So enjoy those Effects, admire all that’s Advanced and go nuts with Seasonal from 9 a.m. today until 9 a.m. tomorrow, February 4th, Seattle time (PST)!

Time’s up! Thank’s so much everyone for helping to make this possible, and many happy Picniking returns!

Team Picnik is heading to Sin City this week for the Consumer Electronics Show! Look out for the green grass, fluffy clouds and shining faces of the Picnik Booth in the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Kelcey (Junior Designer, Unicorn Enthusiast), Ali (Community Cultivator, QA Deputy) and Michael (Bolognino, Social Marketing Manager, second Michael and first Picnik employee who needs to go by his last name) will be on hand to demo Picnik’s awesomeness, so stop by and say hi!

Also, make sure you catch Picnik CMO and Bullhorn (and mom) Lisa Conquergood on a panel discussion talking about “Moms as Memory Keepers” on Friday at 1:00 pm with Jef Holove of Eye-Fi, Jennifer Smiczek of The Print Shop, Terence Swee of muvee, Neil Yarian of Pandigital, Susan Write of Smilebox and Suzanne Kantra of Techlicious.com moderating.

Over the weekend Team Picnik gathered for the Second Annual Picnik Picnic!  We dusted off our boots and climbed into our flannels to rally up at Remlinger Farms in Carnation Washington.

Jonathan presented each member of the team with a customized award for excellence, such as Most Caffeinated without Coffee and Most Likely to Wear a Shirt Designed for a Kid.  After a farm fresh feast of hot dogs, hamburgers and pizza, we were ready to hit the rides!  We partook in everything the farm had to offer from the 4-H barnyard to the not-so-haunted house.  We cruised the Mine Coaster, held in our lunches on the Spinning Barrels and rode the rails in a mini steam train which toted us around the entire farm.

After a sweet (and salty) interlude involving kettle corn we were onto the hayride, pumpkin patch and corn maze!  Before we knew it, the sun was setting, the air was becoming crisp and the map of the maze was failing us.  With the kettle corn sustaining our bellies and the onset of darkness keeping us in motion, we chugged on.  And on.  Eventually stumbling upon a way out and back to the warmth of our homes, where we slept like babies.

It really was the perfect day for a picnic.

Our resident penguin handler, Justin Huff, has returned to Picnik Headquarters from the Washington State Convention & Trade Center after captivating the attendees of IT Roadmap Seattle earlier this week.

Justin educated the crowd on the woes, wonders, and juggling act that comes with Picnik’s high demand for storage capacity and computing power. Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 services combined with patience and Zen make the perfect, cost-effective combination that we require to meet the needs of our users.

Justin also acted as Whippersnapper Ambassador to the IT Nation. On a panel entitled, “Generation Transformation – How Younger Hires are Drastically Changing Business and IT Paradigms,” Justin offered a unique perspective as the sole panel member born in the 80s. And, yes, Justin was the only panelist sporting jeans.

Although the resemblance is quite uncanny, you’re looking at the charming and dapper professionals of Team Picnik and not the stars of AMC’s hit television series Mad Men.

It’s true, we here at Picnik like to push the boundaries when it comes to fashion. On most days you will find us dressed to the nines in the highest of quality bleu de Gênes, or jeans, if you will. We’re known for dazzling the greater Seattle area with our denim in various shades of blue: cobalt, navy, indigo and royal!

But on Friday we raised the classy bar to a significant new height. Consider this the startup fashion statement of the year! In the name of prevailing taste, the Season 3 premier of Mad Men and maintaining the utmost  levels of awesomeness, we dressed the part of 1960′s office workers pounding on typewriters and puffing on (in our case, fake) cigarettes.

Jr. Designer, Kelcey, won our in house contest for Best Dressed lady in a sublimely vintage, Peggy Olsonesque dress and jacket. Developer extraordinaire, Alastair, took it home for the Best Dressed gent with a sleek, black cardigan and thick rimmed, lens-less glasses.

We’ve since given up the demanding world of fame and fashion (autograph signing can be such a drag) retiring to the familiarity of jean and jersey. So until someone invents the time machine, these old charmers will be stuck in the threads of a post-millennial landscape.

We’ve set our away messages, synchronized our watches to Central Daylight Time, and hit the dusty trail (A.K.A. I-5) to Sea-Tac airport. Today, we three ladies of Picnik are boarding our flight for the Windy City!

What’s with the globetrotting, you ask? Lisa, Sarah, and I are off to reveal the superhuman photo editing powers of Picnik to the ladies of BlogHer at their 5th annual conference! We’ll be demoing the best of Picnik out of Booth #112 alongside our trusty press rep, Bridget, while giving away some choice Picnik swag. Come find us!

Don’t worry, we’re leaving a few days early to scarf some deep-dish, cruise the Magnificent Mile, catch a few bars of the blues, and rofl to some world-class improv.

Along the way, we’ll be posting photos to a Flickr stream here. Follow along on our whimsical forays and misadventures in America’s 3rd largest city, Chicago!