Okay, so you don’t have the time to sit down at your computer, reading what seems to be never-ending pages of reference and tutorials books to simply figure out and understand how to use all those tedious photo editing programs. Likewise, you don’t have the extra cash to indulge yourself in that Adobe Suite that has been enticing your creative mind molecules for awhile. Fear not my friends, Picnik is about to help change all that. Picnik is an online photo editing program, completely powered by Flash, and includes a notable abundance of helpful attributes within its simplistic core. Grabbing images from either your computer, your Flickr account, a desired website, Yahoo! search, or even your web cam (if you have it conveniently installed), are just of the few accommodating features Picnik delivers to its users. Oh, by the way, it’s free. Nice. You actually don’t even have to create an account if you’re one of those people who’s just eager to jump right in and get their hands dirty.

So let’s roll. Like I mentioned previously, Picnik is able to snag images from numerous sources. When you import your photos from Flickr it organizes them and allows you to sort them by date taken/posted and interestingness in ascending and descending order. One of the other neat ways it gets images is its ability to capture them from other websites. Simply input a befitting website of your choice and Picnik will then grab all the images from that designated website. It will retrieve and list all the images that it found on that website and allow you to edit, email to a friend, or download any of them. Unfortunately, you can only have one site’s image listing open at a given time, but this small downfall is adequately compensated by the amount of photo editing features at your disposal for each image.

Once in the Edit portion of the website, you’ll be introduced to your tool palette. Simplified as it might look for all you design gurus, it bears favorable results. The main tool set consists of the following: Auto-fix, Rotate, Crop, Exposure, Colors, Sharpen and Red-Eye. Clicking each tool brings up a sub menu that will assist you further in editing. The Auto-fix function repairs color quality if you come across an images with less-than-par color characteristics to it. In the Rotate menu you’ll be able to adjust any noticeable uneven horizons in photos using the Fine Rotate tool. Additionally, you can freely rotate the image left or right 90 degrees. The Crop tool allows you to, obviously, crop your image to the proportions you wish. They have default preset dimensions of cropping for you to choose from, or you can choose to custom crop by inputting the measurements you want.

Moving on, the Exposure tool allows you to adjust the brightness and contrast in your photo. An Auto-fix function is found in the Exposure menu as well, for those who just want the quickest fix for exposure problems. This menu also has an Advanced setting attached to it displaying a graph of color tone changes to the users as they edit their photo in real-time. Next, the Color option enables users to manage the color balance of their images. Saturation helps add emphasis on primary colors in a photo when increased and will, adversely, strip all colors from your image and eventually gray scale it if fully reduced. As can be implied, the temperature slider helps add or subtract warmth to a photo. For those who have studied and understand camera lighting and filming, know that the warm feeling in video and still images is portrayed as an orange hue, while on the contrary, cold is depicted as a blueish shade. The temperature control is similar to that. Excuse the brief lighting lesson, I digress. Again, you’ll find an auto function for the color tool if you so desire to use it. There is a Neutral Picker which is similar to what people in the film industry may refer to as white balancing, which generally speaking is, the act of identifying what is the true white color of a photo or piece of film while taking into account environmental lighting and natural shadows. Picnik’s Neutral Picker compares closely to this term.

Next on the list is Sharpening. Nothing too substantial in this menu, the slider adjusts how sharp an image is and can naturally come in handy to counteract slightly blurred photos. Last on the palette is the Red Eye tool for all those photos of yours that were marred by the infamous red eye defect. Click on the center of each affected eye to help restore proper color to infected areas. Of course like all editing software, you’re able to undo any unwanted mistakes that might happen while editing, or redo admired effects if that’s the case.

Picnik currently has a limited amount of features in the Special Effects category, however still respectively consists of general filter distortion such as: Sepia, Matte, Black and White, Vignette, Soften and Boost effects. Zooming in and out is also easy via a small slider at the bottom right hand corner of your project while you’re in the Edit and Creative Tools modes. Though you are able to resize a photo once you’re ready to save it to your computer, it would’ve been nice to have a real-time resize function within the interface. Nevertheless, combined with the site’s other components, you should should be able to find an outcome that you can pleasantly appreciate.

After all your tweaking is finished and you’re satisfied with the results, you can save your work to either: your computer, your normal Flickr gallery, your Flickr slide show, or even save to a website. Websites that you are able to save directly to include: Image Shack, Photo Bucket, Live Journal, and Walmart Photos, just to name a few. Furthermore, you can also print out your work and email it to a friend. Pertaining to their printing function, you have the option to print in a full page format or half page format. As for saving to your Flickr slide show, it’s easy and straight forward. Simply authenticate that you agree that Picnik will directly connect to your Flickr account and you’re done! The embedded HTML code and direct link to your Flickr slide show will be displayed for you in Picnik. You’re also able to change the background color and size of your slide show through Picnik. Prior to saving the image directly to your own computer, you’re brought to a settings page that includes the dimensions of the image, desired format (.jpg, .gif, .png, .bmp, .pdf, .tiff), and a slider that controls image quality.

On a personal note, I believe they presented Picnik clearly and I think it will appeal to a large audience. The site design is clean, as well as being constructed and organized in a focused manner. Think Apple’s iPhoto, but online. Granted, Picnik isn’t Photoshop by far, or close to most other image editing and manipulation programs out there. It doesn’t include freehand tools like brushes, cloning, or fills. It’s not meant to. It’s meant to simply enhance the decency of already taken photos, not totally give them an extensive make-over. However for being strictly online, being entirely generated by Flash, being flexible enough to obtain images from literally anywhere, and above all, being free, it unquestionably earns my vote as being one of the best values for a near instantaneous, presentable, online photo editor. Looking for examples of what Picnik can do? Visit the Picnik tag or Picnik group on Flickr, both hosting a nice inventory of work using Picnik. And hey, it’s still in beta. Only good things await on the horizon for this credible application. I tip my hat you Picnik.

Update: Picnik now supports image resizing. (Thanks Darrin!)

Last year I had selected the task management solution Orchestrate as a top pick in 25 To Do Lists to Stay Productive. Now Tokyo based startup Jonkenpon, creator of Orchestrate, has launched a service called 8apps which aims to be a social network for productive people. The idea is to create a community where users can not only meet new people but work with them in a suite of productivity based applications. There are currently three applications available in the 8apps suite with five more to come. The first three applications are Handshake, Orchestrate and Blueprint offering social networking, task management and brainstorming. In a blog post announcing 8apps, Jonkenpon explains that they do not plan on competing with offerings such as 37signals or Google Docs but rather fill in the gaps where they lack in productivity with a suite of small, focused applications.

What makes 8apps special is the concept of applications within a social network. Essentially, it’s a social network that you join to be more productive. It may sound strange at first, but I think 8apps is onto something. The 8apps social network is called Handshake and serves as a place to connect with co-workers, meet new people, and show your stuff. Any user that you connect with in Handshake can ultimately collaborate with you in any 8apps application. You can, for example, search for a developer to connect with and brainstorm about a possible project together without leaving the site. In fact, someone has already come in contact with Tim, one of our editors, for possible design work. Not bad considering that we’ve only been registered to 8apps for a week!

Handshake consists of all the basic features that you would expect to find in a social network. You can customize your profile, browse through user profiles, send messages to contacts, and add comments to your contacts profiles. The profiles themselves are very minimal, but one nice feature is the ability to append your websites RSS feed to your profile. There’s also a neat skills graph in the right column showing a users level in experience, teamwork, ability, ideas and speed based on contact votes (you can’t vote for yourself). Additionally, Handshake has a Groups section where users can go to discuss any given topic and meet new people.

The next application in the suite is a task management solution called Orchestrate. 8apps co-founder Jon Yongfook Cockle had created Orchestrate as a standalone application early last year and has since decided to merge it into the 8apps suite. It’s a unique task manager that allows users to create and view multiple tasks lists in one workspace and set focus to specific lists when needed. You also have the ability to color code task lists and share them with your contacts. What I find to be especially neat is how you can quickly create a task list for any project you create in 8apps. Meaning, if I were to create a project in the brainstorming application, I can optionally create a task list to go along with it in one click.

Blueprint is 8apps brainstorming application. It’s an interesting application that allows you to quickly jot down your ideas in a free-form like fashion as well as brainstorm collaboratively with others around the 8apps network. You can add keywords, links and bodies of text to your Blueprint workspace and drag each item around organizing them whichever way works best for you. I spent some time with Matt and Tim (Solution Watch editors) in a Blueprint project called “8apps Review” and found it to be quite helpful in passing around our thoughts. Though I didn’t see Blueprint’s true potential until given the opportunity to join a project by the founder of 8apps. There were around nine people in the brainstorm and everyone was sharing their ideas for an application. It was pretty neat to see such collaboration from random users around the 8apps network.

8apps has only launched its private beta two weeks ago, but I feel it’s already off to a great start. What appeals to me most is how a user can meet someone in the social network and immediately start working on a project together. I also had a great time using the brainstorming application with my friends and found it to be quite helpful. But there are still some rough edges around the existing applications. For starters, the Mail section in Handshake does not have a send mail option (you can send mail by going to a contacts profile) and you can’t view previously sent mail. Also, Blueprint lacks real-time updating of items and automatically pushes around comments between pages when least needed.

If you are interested in trying out the private beta of 8apps, feel free to reach me for an invite - I have 17 invites remaining. Webware also has a nice writeup on 8apps and some invites to handout. (via Mashable)

Diagrams on paper are cool, but diagrams on the internet are cooler. This is where Bubbl.us comes into play. Bubbl.us is a mind-mapping product aimed towards literally anyone who needs help organizing their thoughts or any untidy information. Powered by Flash, Bubbl.us makes it easy for anyone to quickly start planning and sorting out their ideas through the use of linked text bubbles. Each bubble of information is connected to its preceding parent bubble and color coordinated accordingly for hierarchy sake. Using the mouse wheel or the side tool bar allows for easy zooming in and out of your mind-maps. Also added to the tool bar is workspace positioning and setup styles, however most will find that holding the left mouse button and dragging is a much more convenient way of moving around the work area.

You begin with a parent bubble. Pressing Tab creates another bubble in the same color and level of hierarchy as the bubble you tabbed from. Pressing Enter in a bubble will create a new level of hierarchy with a different colored bubble. Naturally, levels of the bubble tree are connected with lines and are movable around the workspace while remaining connected to each other. Each bubble also has an “Unpin” function. This resets all bubbles that you might have moved back under its appropriate parent. Bubbl.us also has an amusing deletion confirmation for each bubble you wish to omit. Once you press the X in the corner of a bubble a counter will begin counting down from three to zero as the line connecting the bubble to its parent acts as a lit fuse. Once it reaches zero the bubble will blow up in a cloud of fire. Neat.

Saving and loading is simple and fast. The navigation found on the right of the website is neatly made and holds all your current projects. Multiple brainstorming projects can be saved to folders in the side bar and loaded again at any time. Of course you’re also able to rename any of your projects using the side menu. Directly above the side menu is the link to edit your account information if necessary as well. A printing function has also been implemented so that your newly mapped out ideas can be printed out whenever you wish. They have included options for printing to the minimum height and width of your bubble tree, or simply a full screen print. Simply zoom out/in to what you feel is presentable, then print. There’s no hassle.

Frankly I loved Bubbl.us. It’s simple, it’s quick, it’s helpful. It’s not meant to be a complex, and it’s not looking to win the most thorough mind-mapping application of the year. It’s meant for prompt, on-the-spot organization, and in this respect it passes with flying colors. With the recent disappearance of the mind-mapping application Mayomi, Bubbl.us is a good substitute if not a primary information structuring tool to aid you in your brainstorming and planning.

Footnote is an impressive resource which launched last week that allows users to access and annotate millions of historical documents online for the first time. Interested in the Civil War or perhaps the Bureau of Investigation? Just look it up on Footnote and within seconds view digitized copies of the original documents including photographs, signed documents, letters, case studies and more. Footnote has also established a partnership with the National Archives providing access to millions of historical documents for viewing online. Around 4.5 million documents have already been added to the site and apparently millions more to come. I’ll admit, I wasn’t one to raise my hand during history class, but it’s pretty neat being able to view transcripts that George Washington wrote back in 1775 for the Continental Congress and the signature of John Hancock. I’d imagine Footnote to be a prime attraction for genealogists, historians, public libraries, school systems and history buffs in general.

On top of viewing original documents online, Footnote encourages users to share their knowledge by uploading images, annotating documents and maintaining member pages. Users can also download any image on the site and add it to their account gallery. There is a catch, however. Not all images on the site can be viewed and downloaded for free. Respectably, Footnote is a resource for those who are serious about original documents and that are willing to pay either by member subscription ($9.99/month and $99.99/year) or a per download basis ($1.99/image). But if you’re like me and just want to take a look around, you can register for a basic membership (free) and view select documents from the National Archives as well as contribute to the site by uploading images, annotating documents and creating member pages.

To start things off, let’s take a look at the Original Documents section. This is where you can find featured titles and the latest titles of documents on Footnote. It is also where you will spend most of your time searching, viewing, annotating, downloading and sharing. Now let’s say you are looking for a specific set of documents. You can either select to browse all available titles or perform a basic search. Browsing titles, as seen in the screenshot above, works much like the file panel on a Mac. You select a title from the list and then drill down into each subtitle until you find your document. It’s a nice view if you’re wanting to simply view the database of images. But if you’re looking for something specific, such as a name, you can use the document search and find matches from basic descriptions and annotations.

Selecting an image from a title will bring you to the Footnote image viewer. Powered by Adobe Flash Player, the viewer allows you to zoom in, rotate, and drag around an image so you can easily explore every last detail of a document. It also uses a similar technology to Google Maps where the image is re-buffered each time you zoom in and out to maintaining a high quality output. You will also find a bar on the right side of the viewer where you can view information about the image as well as comment and browse document annotations. Additionally, users can save an image to their account gallery, download it, and print it out all within the viewer. (Note: The document in the screenshot above is of the Declaration of Independence. Cool, huh?)

Now let’s say you were viewing an image in the viewer and found something specific that you would want to point out, like a name. Rather than simply commenting about the occurrence, Footnote allows you to annotate it so others can easily spot the name and search upon it. Just click on “Add Annotation”, drag the box to where you want, and size it to what you are annotating. Then specify whether the annotation is of a person, date, place, or text and fill in the appropriate information. That’s all to it and now other viewers can find your annotation and better understand what they are looking at.

Footnote also provides members with what they call, Member Pages. Essentially, Member Pages are small websites on a specific topic which can be created by any member for free. Members can write freely about anything they find notable and can write in sections, which holds a similar form to a blog. Member pages can also receive comments from other Footnote members and include images as reference. Footnote suggest members use pages to: publish histories of people and events; create a notebook for ongoing research; and showcase original documents that they’ve found and want to share. For example, one member has created the page “HMS Titanic Timeline” which covers the events of the “unsinkable” ocean liner.

Overall, I found Footnote to be a great resource and development. I don’t have a high interest in history, but it was entertaining to look through documents that one can’t normally view without going to a historical museum. The ability to browse through millions of documents and zoom in to every last detail of an image is quite impressive. I also felt that the social features of adding comments, annotations, and member pages to Footnote is a great addition as it allows members to get involved with our history and share their knowledge. I suspect Footnote will be big with genealogists, educational systems, libraries and anyone with high interest in history.

Update: More on the launch of Footnote can be found at the developers blog, Hypergene MediaBlog. You can also view a detailed screencast of Footnote in action on Youtube.

Humble Voice, think MySpace, but with a pleasant facelift and being overall more versatile. Essentially, it’s a social network for the creative type where users can show off their work, build a portfolio, and connect with friends and family. It has all the recognized social community features that everyone has come to abide by and appreciate. You have your standard profiles, Friends Lists, Bulletin Board, and comments. There’s also a point system in place in which you’re able to win prizes after accumulating certain amounts of points. In general, Humble Voice is a place where any person who is creative through designing, composing music, art, video, and writing can convene to meet others who share similar interests and hobbies.

Let’s start with the main sections of the site. They have separated their sections in five major categories: Music, Video, Art, Photography, and Word (Writing). Each section displays the latest and greatest pertaining to its topic. Every section’s main page contains recent and popular profiles. For instance the Music section has a side column that displays the Newest Artists, Most Played Songs of the Day, and Most Played Artists. Featured Uploads, along with the most recently uploaded are there as well. Naturally, for each artist you’re able to go into their profile and listen to their work via the Humble Voice media player. Also you’ll find more information and biographies of the band and its members, along with upcoming shows and pictures, if any.

Next is the community section; this section features a point ticker that keeps and up-to-date track of the active user base on Humble Voice. Powered by Flash, it presents a scrolling list of members on Humble Voice and the points that each member has accumulated according to recent activity on the site. So, the more browsing and participation you do will affect whether or not you’re seen on the ticker. Furthermore, they have an area to recognize the members who currently are the leaders in points within the community. Additionally, they have outfitted the section with their very own Humble Voice TV player. The TV has “channels” that show user submitted videos that you can watch at your own leisure. Lists of the newest members and the friendliest members can be located on this page, along with a link to the Humble Voice store. The community section is also where you’re able to cash in all those points that you earn on Humble Voice. You’ll also find a online chat on the community page where you can openly share messages with others logged in to Humble Voice.

Moving onto an area where I believe Humble Voice executes exceedingly well at. Their profile and user account area is very thorough. They’ve implemented a small control panel that lets you freely edit any and all of the things you wish. They give you layout choices for each content area of your profile. You can choose one, two, or three column formation for each content area. You can then mix and match the different layout settings to satisfy what you vision your Humble Voice page to look like. The content areas include: Profile Photo, Featured Text, Actions, Artist Profile, Bulletin Board, Word Gallery, Friends, Blog, and Comments. You’re also allowed to add new pages to your profile. You can then, in turn, add and remove any of the contents areas on the first page. Users can then sort out which content they want on each particular page. This allows for more expansive user profiles and helps diversify your profile from others. So say, for instance, I wanted to make a section for each of my individual interests. I could make a separate page for Writing, Music Composition, and Design. I could add all the content categories that are associated with each of those topics in those specific pages. For example, in my Design page you’d find the Art Gallery and Photo Album content areas, in comparison to say, my Writing page which you’d find content areas such as the Blog, Word Galleries, and Notepad. This feature helps to easily maintain and organize your information so your viewer can easily browse your profile.

The Music section’s streaming audio player is similar to PureVolume, in functionality. You can add songs from artist profiles to your Library so that you can easily find them at a later date. Additionally, you can also add the actual bands to your library as well. Their Video section mimics the Music section design-wise, but in a more simplified way. You’re able to tag, add comments, bookmark, and rate all the uploaded videos to sort out the bad from the good. Their rating systems compares with many standard five star rating systems, but instead of stars it’s, of course, their logo’s bird. Obviously, you can bookmark videos for future viewing as well. The Photography and Art section are almost identical. Featured work is on the front page, along with lists of a selection of the popular pieces and recent submissions. Naturally, you acquire points from rating and commenting on people’s work. The comments that members submit to each other aren’t moderated, so it could be hard to find thorough reviews of your work, if that’s what you’re seeking.

However in the long run, you get the best of both worlds with Humble Voice. They have nicely designed their website while keeping a wide variety of usability for the members. Topics are organized well, they have a plethora of content for your surfing pleasure, and heck, you can win prizes. What’s not to like? It’s easy enough for the timid online user and diverse enough for the more competent. So if you’re looking to get your work out their and hopefully positively criticized, then Humble Voice is one of your best bets. They have a notable amount of active users for how new their community is to the social network scene, so input on your work shouldn’t be too hard to acquire. Personally, I’m not a hardcore MySpace person, but browsing through MySpace after being on Humble Voice is like drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth. (Yeah, that bad.)