It’s the Memorial Day Long Weekend: The ads are all for barbecues, the malls are all having sales and here in Seattle, it’s pouring rain.

As the official opening of summer with the end of school on the horizon, everyone gathers around in the late spring sunshine (or huddles out of the rain, as the case may be) in a relaxed, carefree spirit with friends and family. These days there are many ways to celebrate Memorial Day, and we here at Picnik want to help you celebrate it with memories. So whether you have a photo from your family barbecue, your day at the beach or a loved one serving overseas, we have a whole new section of Memorial Day Stickers including the barbecue, but also the parade, the poppies, and the yellow ribbons. We also have new military-themed Camouflage Frames, in both traditional and digital camo, representing as many kinds of terrain (including pink!) that you might find yourself in.

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day, and Happy Picniking!

Team Picnik had a great time at the Seattle 2.0 Awards last week. Seattle 2.0 is a great organization here in Seattle designed to support the local startup community and help technology entrepreneurs build great companies. Jonathan was honored to be asked to deliver the keynote at this year’s awards ceremony, and took the opportunity to talk about building strong teams, hard work and persistence, and an object that has been in outer space.

Jonathan on stage during his keynote, left, and Nominees Darrin Massena and Pearl Chan before the ceremony, right.

You can watch a video of the whole thing here. Jonathan’s keynote starts at the 53 minute mark.

This Sunday is Mother’s Day, the day to freshly squeeze the orange juice, burn the toast, bring out the bed tray and tuck a card under the flower vase telling Mom how much we love her.

This year, skip the line at the card store and stress not about postage, because Picnik has the perfect collection of everything you could ever want to make your Mom a heartfelt, personalized, custom-made-with-love card: Start in the Create Tab with Frames, Flowers, and Heart Tattoos for your photos (don’t forget to write “Dear Mom” with our Text tool!), then make a card, a scrapbook page and an envelope full of IOUs in our new collections of Mother’s Day Fancy Collages. Print it yourself on your own computer or email straight to Mom’s inbox! Or Buzz it, Tweet it, save it to Facebook or Flickr or upload to Picasa Web Albums for safekeeping and showing the whole world what your Mom means to you.

And to all you Picniking Moms out there, Happy Mother’s Day!

Seattle 2.0

Prime your browsers and get your mouse warmed up because Team Picnik has learned that our very own Darrin Massena (WTIA Technology Innovator of the Year, 2009) is nominated for the Seattle 2.0 Awards Startup Technologist of the Year! Darrin is so technologically innovative that he invented computer desktop wallpaper, founded Picnik and developed it as a rich internet application (before that particular bit of jargon had really been coined yet), and still works works every day (and frequently into the night) to make Picnik even more awesome. He’s thrilled to be nominated for this award, so vote for Darrin!

You can also vote for Pearl Chan of CFO Selections, nominated for Best Service Provider to Startups who helped us hugely these past couple of months. Voting is open through May 11, so vote now!

And if you’re at the Seattle 2.0 Awards ceremony on May 19th, our own Jonathan Sposato will be delivering the keynote, discussing his personal experience and offering his pearls of wisdom on the startup business in Seattle. We hope to see you there!

Easter is this Sunday, a quintessential Spring holiday, all about rebirth, new life, baby bunnies and chocolates.

We have some fabulous new Easter content for you, like Bunny Tone and Easter Egg Frame, plus new Sketchy Easter stickers to go with our existing collection of Easter shapes of Peace Doves, Chalices and Jelly Beans. So dye your photos with color and surround yourself with candy this year before you grab your basket and head out to the lawn.

Happy hunting!

We here at Picnik were thrilled to have been included in this year’s additions to the list of new dictionary words as an official entry as an alternate spelling for “picnic”!

For a long time now, Picnik.com has been the top search result for leisurists, gastronomes and wicker enthusiasts looking for information about “an excursion or outing with food usually provided by members of the group and eaten in the open.” At the same time, photography fans were completely missing out on learning about this “amusingly carefree experience.” So intrepid lexicographers read the zeitgeist on the wall and have combined the two words for the betterment and enjoyment of both groups.

For a complete list of words added to the dictionary this year, click here. Thanks and Happy Picniking!

Is it March? Do you long for hills, green with clover? Can you smell the Guinness in the air? That must mean it’s almost Saint Patrick’s Day!

Who better to help you embrace your inner leprechaun than Picnik? Turn yourself the color of the Emerald Isle itself, surround yourself with whimsical stickers, and festoon yourself with four-leaf clover! Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, and slaínte!

Team Picnik’s designers Peter, Michael and Kelcey are headed to Austin, Texas today for the SXSW Interactive conference. They’ll be found sitting in on talks like Beauty in Web Design, Long Distance UX, The Right Way to Wireframe, and Mind Control, Psychology for the Web. If you see them, say hi!

When Bitnik, Inc was created, our founders envisioned making great software for real people and giving users the power to edit digital photos in their browser, without having to purchase or download complicated software. While our first office in 2005 only had two desks, today we’ve grown to 20 employees and have become the world’s most fun online photo editor, with millions of visitors every month. As we’ve grown together over the years, we’ve worked hard to build a company of great people creating great software. We think our emphasis on strong partnerships, a fun culture and you, our users, is what has made Picnik so awesome.

And all this leads us to today’s exciting news: we’ve just been acquired by Google! What does this mean for Picnik? It means we can think BIG. Google processes petabytes of data every day, and with their worldwide infrastructure and world-class team, it is truly the best home we could have found. Under the Google roof we’ll reach more people than ever before, impacting more lives and making more photos more awesome.

What does this mean for you Picnikers? Nothing is changing right away, but Picnik now has more potential than ever before. The team that built Picnik from the grass up will continue making advanced and powerful photo-editing easier, more intuitive and more fun, so stay tuned to hear about all the cool new stuff we’re working on. We want to thank you all for being great users, pushing us to grow and do big things. So thank you all for your continued support, and Happy Picniking!

- Mike, Darrin, Jonathan, Peter, Brian, Justin, Virginia, Steve, Charlie, Brenda, Michael, Ali, Sonia, Sarah, Lisa, Chelsea, Kelcey, Maria, Annie Laurie, Pearl, Michael B and Tim

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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!