Author Archives: Michelle Lentz

Google has acquired Picnik, the Seattle-based photo-editing app that lives in the cloud. I always sort of thought of Picnik as Photoshop Elements that I could access from anywhere.

I’m a bit surprised by this news, as I feel like I’ve seen Picnik everywhere in the last year, including BlogHer and CES. In fact, one of those recyclable shopping bags with a big Picnik logo is sitting right next to me.

My first thought when I heard Picnik was acquired by Google was, “What about Yahoo?”  Picnik is integrated into Yahoo’s Flickr photo-sharing app, where it offers online photo editing inside the Flickr wrapper. I use it all the time, actually. So this is interesting cross-contamination between Google and Yahoo. Obviously Google is hoping to really ramp up Picasa, and as Picasa shares so seamlessly with the other Google tools, this makes sense. If everyone I know (and several years worth of photos) wasn’t already on Flickr, I’d probably move to Picasa.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the Picnik blog post on the matter sounds more happy than sad.

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.

The Official Google blog also reiterates that nothing is changing. In particular, they address the Yahoo/Flickr question without mentioning it by name, saying that they’ll support “all existing Picnik partners.”

We’re not announcing any significant changes to Picnik today, though we’ll be working hard on integration and new features. As well, we’d like to continue supporting all existing Picnik partners so that users will continue to be able to add their photos from other photo sharing sites, make edits in the cloud and then save and share to all relevant networks.

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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

Back in early January, I went to CES and was completely overwhelmed. My constant joke was (and still is) that the so-called booths are big enough to have their own zip code. I took a ton of video footage, convinced I would return home and turn that into a montage that really showed everyone the absolute strangeness of CES.

I failed. I came home, switched out suitcases, and headed back out on the road again pretty soon after returning. However, I discovered a video today from my CES partner-in-crime. I spent most of the event with my friend Jason Griffey, who is Head of Library IT at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga. He’s in the midst of planning a new library building, and the place is going uber-digital. (Someday I should get him to write a post here on digital libraries.) Jason managed to put his own CES montage together and that’s what I’m dropping here.

Enjoy the oddness, the hugeness, and the just plain silly at CES 2010:

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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

Launched, I believe, only a few days ago, Twitgift.me, a product of the LAC Project, is a new way to send a real gift to your Twitter friends.

You simply choose a gift (which currently consists of chocolate chip, sugar, or peanut butter cookies), enter your own Twitter ID and credit card information, as well as the Twitter ID of the recipient. That’s it. The recipient gets a tweet notifying them of the Twitgift and they enter their own shipping information and can be waiting eagerly for the cookie arrival.

It’s a great concept. After all, sometimes you’ll discover wonderful people on Twitter, but you may rarely see them and never ask for their mailing address. Now you don’t have to; you can just send a Twitgift when that wonderful person has a birthday, needs a pick-me-up, or is celebrating something.

The cookies cost $19 and it looks like there is around $10 in shipping. Twitgift is looking for more vendors to add, so they won’t be an all-baked-goods type of place (not that I have any issues with cookies!).

UPDATE: The nice folks over at TwitGift sent me my own box of cookies after this post. I love chocolate chip cookies, so I couldn’t have been happier. The entire unboxing can be found in a post on my personal blog.

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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

Do you use an app like FourSquare or GoWalla to tweet out your location? I’m guilty of this – I’m Mayor of both my favorite bar and coffee shop. When I visit a new location, that information gets sent to Twitter. I’m a little different from most people – since I am twittering my location, I send it to my private and locked Twitter account. Since I approve all of my followers at that account, I’m minimizing the risk of unwanted stalking.

Do you list your home on FourSquare? I have to admit I’m always a little bit amazed by the people who list “Jones Home” and then their address. Really? I work out of my home, but my mailing address is a PO Box. I will occasionally use FourSquare to show I’m at my office, but the location that shows up is the PO Box, not my house. Again, I’m minimizing the unwanted stalking.

Today on Twitter, there’s been a lot of buzz (forgive the pun) about PleaseRobMe.com. The site wants you to be aware of what you’re doing when you tweet to the world that you’re not home.

According to the site creators,

The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not… home. So here we are; on one end we’re leaving lights on when we’re going on a holiday, and on the other we’re telling everybody on the internet we’re not home. It gets even worse if you have “friends” who want to colonize your house. That means they have to enter your address, to tell everyone where they are. Your address.. on the internet.. Now you know what to do when people reach for their phone as soon as they enter your home. That’s right, slap them across the face.

So the message here is think before you tweet. After all, do you really want to be featured in the stream on PleaseRobMe?

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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

I’ve spent a good part of this month at various conferences, continuing through the end of next week. Because of my schedule, I have a collection of other people’s business cards – in my own business card holder, at the bottom of my briefcase, shoved into my change purse, and tucked into my moleskin. I have no idea, for the most part, who gave me what card and why.On top of that, I constantly forget to bring my own business cards. They just don’t always fit into whatever stylish little clutch I’m carrying … But now I’ve got a solution.

Contxts.com, currently in alpha and free, enables you to set up your contact information and provide it via SMS. All you need to do is provide your user name to someone, they text 50500, and your information is texted to their phone. In fact, my phone is where I need that information, so receiving someone’s information that way is a lot more convenient for me than traditional business cards.

So now that we’ve gotten your interest you want to know how it works. There are two ways to connect with a colleague. Regardless of whether they have a profile on contxts or not you can exchange your credentials.

From your phone, you txt “send 3034759204” to 50500 (where 3034759204 is your recipients 10 digit number)

Your recipient will receive all of your contact information.

Your contact txts “username” to 50500 on their phone

You will receive a request confirmation (unless you have it turned off). Upon accepting, your contact will receive your information

Contxts maintains a list of everyone who requests your info and notifies you whenever it happens. Since I plan on putting my information on the front of every presentation I give next week, I’m curious to see how many people – and who -  actually text the number to acquire my information.

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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.