It can be hard to keep up with what’s new here at Picnik. Unlike traditional software companies that put a new box on shelves every 18 months or so, we do updates every week! Sometimes they’re little updates, moving menus around or fixing bugs to make it easier for you to use Picnik, but other times it’s an avalanche of awesomeness. Here’s how you can better keep track of everything we’re up to here at Picnik World HQ:

If you have a Twitter account, and statistically speaking, you do, follow us @Picnik for all the latest feature updates, office shenanigans, promos and freebies, delivered instantly to your timeline.

And on Facebook, join the rest of our 173,000-plus fans for all those updates and the fun pictures that we make for just all you Facebookers too!

And don’t forget! If you have any questions or need any help, don’t hesitate to email our intrepid feedbackers at feedback@picnik.com! And of course we always read the comments here on the blog, too. Happy Picniking!

Team Picnik is ever-so-proud of our very own Darrin Massena for winning the Technology Innovator of the Year award at Wednesday night’s WTIA Awards. He’s got a fancy vase on his desk now, and the rest of us have sparkly “Washington Technology Industry Association” swag bags full of tchotchkes. The award has set off a flurry of press coverage, including some thoughtful photographs of the cupcake tree those of us who couldn’t attend missed. And we’d like to thank John Cook (of the Puget Sound Business Journal’s Tech Flash blog) for sprinkling his Good Luck Curse-Breaking Fairy Dust for calling it too. It was very serendipitous of him!

We’d like to direct our users’ attention to the new blog the haystack needle, started just this month by our friend Jen Jafarzadeh.

Jen was always incredibly kind to us during her time as editor at Redbook, and never had anything but glowing things to say about Picnik. Now we have reason to return the favor since her new blog is so delightful! She writes about green living, home design, crafts, shopping, and of course the internet’s best photo-editors! In fact, she uses Picnik to edit all the photos on the haystack needle, and the photos on the site are truly delicious. It could be the excellent quality of dishes, stationery, food and furniture that she discovers for us, but we think it’s also that extra Picniky goodness.

And in an era when Domino has been shuttered, House and Garden is long gone, Blueprint, Home, Cottage Living, O at Home and Vogue Living have closed and Country Home will be with us only through March, the future is obviously going to be daily lifestyle blogs like the haystack needle and her friends at Ruby Press, Wiley Valentine, Linda & Harriet, yoga deals, Chelsea Heather, and inchmark. The new trend is casual style, casual elegance, casual lifestyles, even casual magazine publishing! And key to all that is casual online photo-editing!

Our friends at Flickr have a timely reminder that it’s not too late to send holiday cards this year!

Especially those of you who, like us, are stuck in the snow-bound Pacific Northwest region and haven’t been able to find their cars let alone go downtown for last-minute shopping (even if the roads were open, which they’re not), using Picnik to “holiday-up” your own photographs to send to family and friends (see the Flickr examples above) is quick, easy, guaranteed on time, and requires absolutely zero winter driving skills.

An excellent place to start is in our new Premium collection of Fancy Collages from the talented people at Plain Digital Wrapper. And don’t forget to light a menorah candle and spin a dreidel with our new Hanukkah shapes!

the Picnik kids play in the Seattle snow

And lastly, do Santa a favor in all this wintery weather and help lighten his load with Picnik Premium stocking stuffers for everyone on your list! Just $24.95, it’s the gift that keeps on giving photo editing joy all year long.

Monica, Jonathan and Charlie were in San Francisco over the weekend for the annual BlogHer Conference. Designed to create opportunities for women bloggers in areas of education, community, exposure and economic empowerment, this year’s BlogHer Conference has scheduled sessions focusing on MommyBlogging, Green/Social Change and Food, Race and Gender, the Commercial Momosphere, War & Peace, and photography (sponsored by Picnik!).

One attendee and weekend recipient of a free Picnik Premium membership, Ohmommy, is giving away two free year-long subscriptions to Picnik Premium! Just leave her a comment before Wednesday night!

Meanwhile, for all you bloggers who couldn’t make it to San Francisco and see our press pack, Picnik has all sorts of tools designed to making your photoblogging as seamless and awesome as possible. For instance, here is a plug-in that integrates Picnik into Movable Type, and one that integrates Picnik into Wordpress, plus Picnik supports sending photos to a number of blogging platforms via the “Email to Web Site” feature in the Save and Share tab, including such useful places as TypePad, Tumblr, Windows Life Spaces and LiveJournal. Plus there’s the “Other” option for others like Blogger!

There are also some handy browser plug-ins, such as the Firefox extension bloggers have made so popular, to make editing images on the web (even screenshots of whole web pages!) incredibly convenient.

And for those bloggers who haven’t yet harnessed the power of Picnik, some features commonly used by other bloggers are Resize, Crop, Drop Shadow, Frames, and of course Text!

Sifting through our linkage over the weekend, we found some really excellent video tours of Picnik of all the editing tools and more exciting special effects from a Second Life perspective. First, a one-minute quick tour from Torley Linden:

And then a longer, 12-minute tour:

Featured quote from the video: “Makes you feel really good and makes you want to invest in their product!”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves! Thanks, Torley! And on the blog:

I freshly upgraded to a Picnik Premium account. This US$25 investment was a no-brainer, considering how many right things they’ve got going for them. For one, their website design is exemplary, consistently-themed (grass & skies!), and helps you learn more about — and use! — the product without wasting time. From their uncanny ability to make forms simple and even (gasp!) enjoyable to fill out to how clear they communicate Picnik’s benefits, it’s a winner all-’round.

Picnik itself is fantastic: totally integrates with Flickr (altho you can upload images from your hard drive and other sources too), the effects enable you to get stunning results in just a few clicks, and it’s severely smile-inducing.

Emphases his. Thanks, Torley!

Then there’s “Picnik, A photo editor for the rest of us” from Marcie Vargas, who says,

I love Picnik. I can’t put it any simpler than that. Picnik is a photo editing program that works in your browser— PC or Mac. The interface is ridiculously easy to use, the options are fun and plentiful, but most importantly, your picture will look good.

I have long hesitated to really use much photo editing… I don’t want to read a manual or a take a class just to tweak pictures I take as a hobby. Other programs seem too simple for my needs, and the results never quite satisfy me.

That’s just the sort of thing we here at Picnik love to hear. Photo editing should be fun (”play”, even, as Torley calls it). And unless you’re that small percentage of the population who is a very specific type of person needing to do very specific types of things, there’s no reason a photo editor has to be complicated and hard to use, or unable to make everyone’s photos awesome.

Meanwhile, we’re happy to see we weren’t the only ones biking into work last month!

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.

All of us are very heads-down this week on a wide variety of new things for Picnik.  For example (and in no particular order) Steve’s working on a couple very cool new effects that he demo’d for us the other day.  Plus he continues to improve and streamline the experience of editing photos from one of our many cool partners like Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and Photoworks.  Some new partners coming soon!

Mike is deep in the banking part of the e-commerce industry this week.  He is building the back end support for the subscription system… making it a solid experience so our Premium users can continue Picniking without a hitch.

Brian is working on very related stuff building and integrating the front-end aspects of the subscription system.  But also (spoiler alerts!) he is adding new fonts and shapes!  What I’ve seen over his shoulder is WAY cool… carrying some momentum from early design work Peter had laid out.

Jonathan and Monica have been connecting us with tons of reviews and write-ups… even a little TV action!  I’ll get a list together in the next few days for you to check out.

I won’t run down everyone today, you can see what I’m up to… especially if you’ve sent feedback lately. :)

BTW – did you know you can add Picnik as a Facebook application?  Do a search for “Picnik” on facebook, or just click this link.

Shouts to our Flickr and Facebook user groups!

- Picnik de Fotos… Hola!
- *picnik addicts * BFF!