While Picnik has been around since 2006, I have never heard of it till just recently when Google acquired it. After checking out the site a bit the other day I wanted to share it with you as it just blew me away with the quality it offers. Much of the design work I do online requires me to work in photoshop which in itself is an amazing program unfortunately it comes at an amazingly high price as well.

Picnik is a free to use photo editor that works right in your web browser no download is required. The site allows you to do a ton of editing to your pictures to give them cool effects or just to make them look better in general. It allows you to take those dark images you took that do not look so great and brighten them up into a eye catching photo.

They offer an upgrade called premium which costs just over $2 a month which is a great deal for the amount of tools and add ons you get with the service.

Here is a quick example of what you can do with this service with a before and after picture.

Before

After

A new war is on the horizon between Google and Apple. My last post about Google was about Google Docs program which received a nice overhaul recently. Google is currently building a light weight secure OS that has an open online feel to it backed up by multiple Google applications one of them being Google Docs.

Currently I use a number of Google applications as they continue to feed out quality products such as Gmail, Picasa, Google map and others. Having a open source OS will allow me to use all of my every day workings with Google much easier.

But this big development is on the side of Apple as it is currently in talks with Microsoft about changing out Google’s search engine with Bing for its default search engine on safari browser.  With this most recent announcement it’s clear to see that Google and Apple are gearing up to become the big competitors fighting for your loyalty this year.

The current war between these two companies continues to build up in other areas as well. Google’s  YouTube unit is looking into being able to rent movies though the web site which will compete with Apples iTunes. On the mobile front Apple has the iPhone, Google has the Nexus One and its Android software.

This new battle could either benefit you or harm you depending on the next steps taken. Customers may now start to see prices drop on these popular products as these two companies try to get more of their products in your every day life. But on the other hand customers could now be faced with different file formats for their products.

Google Docs Makes Some  Big Changes

With so much on the net its hard to know everything that is out there. I just recently got in touch with Google docs and I have to say its got some big benefits to it. To gain access to Google docs just login to your Gmail account and click on Documents at the top of the page.

Google Docs allows you to create many different file types and share them as well.  When you create a new document it is given its own unique URL in which at first only you have access to it. You are able to share the file with others via the share function. You will need to enter their email address in order for them to gain access to the document. This is great for things such as team school projects where students need to work together. No more worries about the file being the wrong version.

The system allows you to upload current documents you are already working on and transfers them into a writable and shareable document you can work on and others. With these recent changes many feel this is the big step by Google to introduce their GDrive which is though to be a integrated, cloud-based storage system. It is thought that the GDrive will be a software system that runs on your computer that acts as a normally hard drive on your computer but stores your files on a Google hard drive. With this and the impending Chrome OS(Operating System), this will be one of the key features to the new system.