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!

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!

Eating. Let’s be honest, it’s something we Americans are experts at! And here in Seattle, the home of Pike Place Market, world famous coffees, geoducks, Salumi salami, and the only certified fair trade and organic chocolate factory in the US, we really know how to eat right. We even managed to turn the Space Needle into a restaurant, for goodness sake! So, it was an ideal location for the first ever International Food Blogger Conference presented by Foodista.

Tickets to the three-day event sold out immediately, proving that not only do we enjoy consuming food, we also love talking about food, sharing our experiences with food, and pouring over the digital concoctions of fellow food bloggers. Sarah and I joined a panel called “Food Porn: Food Photography & Styling” alongside chef and author Kathy Casey and food stylist Patty Wittmann. We walked through a quick and dirty Picnik demo, showing the attendant foodies how easy it is to make your food look as delicious as it tastes. We demonstrated how to adjust for poor lighting with a quick auto-fix, resize the image so it fits perfectly on your blog, or flip your pineapple upside down cake upside down! We also showed how to make your alfredo absolutely dreamy with the Orton-ish effect, recreate Mom’s famous apple pie with the 1960’s effect, or sweep away those pesky crumbs with the Clone tool.

What a perfect fit for bloggers who need a little help making their pictures as mouth watering as the masterpieces they whip up! Thanks to all the attendees who asked great questions and offered their testimonials on how Picnik is already as essential as their recipes. Picnik and delicious dishes make a steamy couple and now the word is out.

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Already a year has passed since our last Memorial Day and now we’re up to one hundred and thirty-three years since Decoration Day, the precursor to Memorial Day, was first celebrated in Waterloo, New York, and once again we encourage you all to memorialize WWI, WWII, Korean, and Vietnam War Fallen, as well as those serving in current conflicts and anyone else who served in either of the four branches of the military, 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.

This year, in addition to our BBQ Stickers, Flags and Yellow Ribbon shapes, and the rest of our summery selection of Stickers and Fonts, we also have a whole new set of Birthday Stickers, with cakes, banners, balloons, and little numbered candles. Meanwhile, don’t forget the graduates in your life: whether a PhD candidate, undergrad, high-schooler, preschooler, or even just the kid who aced his third grade report card, we’ve got Graduation Stickers too!

So this Memorial Day long weekend, we’ve got everything you need to create an ecard, invitation, or decorate any photo you take, to create something worth memorializing on its own.

Thank you everyone who voted for us last month in the Webware 100 Awards because we are one of the Webware 100!

Other winners in our Photo & Video category include ginormous luminaries such as YouTube, Flickr and Hulu (you may have heard of them), and in other categories Pandora, Etsy, Facebook, Twitter, and this little startup in Mountain View called Google.

So thank you all so much, trusty Picnikers, for all your votes and for rooting for us! We couldn’t have done it without you!

We’re pleased to report that our friends at TechFlash have put out a great list of the 100 Top Women in Seattle Tech and included our very own Lisa Conquergood!

Lisa’s been Team Picnik’s Chief Marketing Officer since February so we’ve long known that she’s an opinion leader, a mover-and-shaker, and a Naval Undersea Warfare interner, but it’s wonderful to see her recognized as all those things by her inclusion in this inaugural list of the top women in Seattle Tech!

Last week Brian, our Quixotic Softographer, told his incredibly pregnant wife about our latest additions of Stickers and Fancy Collages, and said that it was therefore safe for her to have their baby, because they were all set up for the announcements.

That’s right, for Picnik Premium members, we have two whole sets of Baby Fancy Collages! One for baby boys, and one for baby girls! Each set has a dozen adorable and tastefully laid out spaces for either single or up to three photographs of your little bundle (or bundles!) of joy. Plus, for the Customization-enthusiasts amongst you, or those who prefer to put together their own adorably-adorned baby photos, there are thirty cute and cuddly baby-themed shapes in the Stickers list.

And, sure enough, on Thursday last week the newest (and by far the smallest and cutest) member of Team Picnik came into the world: little baby Rowan. Congratulations, Brian and family!

Those of you who use the microblogging sensation Twitter are probably already aware of twitter.com/picnik. From that chirpy perch, first Steve and now a whole flock of us watch every Twitter mentioning “Picnik” go by, and have built up a whole colony of happy Picnik users to follow. Those of you reading this blog post on the blog can see to your right the handy Twitter widget that keeps blog readers abreast of our past 5 tweets. And those of you who are looking at our Twitter page will notice that the most recent Tweet was posted from (be still your beating wings) Picnik!

That’s because the most recent addition to our covey of connections is Twitter! Now when you’ve completed Picniking, say, your photo of finches, you can Save & Share directly to your Twitter feed, while tweeting about it, all inside of Picnik! All this is possible thanks to our new partnership with Twitgoo, a media-sharing service created by Photobucket for posting pictures on Twitter.

But twittering isn’t all that you can do from inside of Picnik! You can also post your perfectly Picniked Profile Picture, or set it as your Twitter background! Happy Twittering!

Two of the bestest startups in Seattle, Picnik and Wetpaint, have teamed up at last, bringing Picnik’s many photo powers into a seamless integration with Wetpaint! Picnik you know about, but in case you don’t know Wetpaint, they’re a wiki hosting and social networking service for regular people to collaborate online to create webpages about whatever interests them, with already over one million free wikis created. Picnik, too, is designed to give regular people photo-editing superpowers through simple but sophisticated editing tools and then save and share with friends, family, and the world, and doesn’t that sound like the point of a really good wiki? Now whenever you add a photo to your educational, lifestyle, or James Bond Wiki, you can click the Edit in Picnik link to add all of Picnik’s awesomeness to your Tudors fan photos, dogs pictures, or Daniel Craig’s DB9!

A lot has happened here at Picnik World Headquarters in the past couple of weeks! You all might think that what with all the awards, the conferences, the talks, the surveys, and a fair number of birthday cakes, we wouldn’t have had time for many releases, but oh we have. The Quixotic Softographer’s been tilting at windmills, the Penguin Handler’s been chasing the little dudes around the data center, Steve’s been drinking the tea as fast as he can, and our Data Stylist’s latest data stylings have us all singing Handel. Meanwhile, the Designers have been putting a grassy sheen on all this output while Charlie’s been churning out the releases on a weekly basis. Here’s a brief tour of some of the stuff we’ve put out in the last little while:

The new Fancy Focus effect makes it look like you spent time and money on setting up expensive lenses to get a perfect shot, with your subject in focus and the rest slightly desaturated and slightly faded. Great for crowd shots, busy backgrounds, and cake.

The new Gritty effect is great for people wanting to look real, unvarnished, tough.


There are new Stickers! We often get Picnikers writing in asking for more butterflies and sports shapes! So here you go, both Butterflies and Sports!

Not to mention, Easter and Spring are free for all during the next couple weeks to help everyone embellish their photos of Easter Egg hunts, soccer games, badminton tournaments, and generally the ability to go outdoors again. Meanwhile, all the other stuff mentioned is for our Premium Members only (upgrade here!).