SAN FRANCISCO - Google is adding yet another online service to its growing portfolio of Web-based tools. The search giant today announced that it has bought Picnik, a photo utility that lets users edit digital photos in a Web browser. Picnik launched in 2005 and has 20 employees. Terms of the deal were not announced.

Google’s Intentions

What plans does Google have for Picnik? It won’t say just yet.

“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,” says Google product management director Brian Axe in a blog post.
What Is Picnik?

Picnik offers both free and premium photo-editing services. The free plan has a basic toolkit–cropping, color-correction, auto-fix, and the like–as well as advertising. The premium service, which starts at $2.08 per month, is ad-free and provides a lot more image-manipulation tools.

Picnik also works with a variety of web services, including Google’s competitors. Yahoo Mail users, for instance, can use Picnik to edit photos right inside Yahoo Mail. Picnik provides similar integration with other popular social-networking and image-storing sites, including Facebook, Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, and Photobucket.

Even after the Google merger, Picnik accounts and settings will stay the same. Users won’t need a Google account, or even have to register, to use the photo-editing service, according to Picnik officials.

PC World selected Picnik as one of “25 Web Sites to Watch.”

SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook, still [the social network of choice by the young, started rolling out a new homepage design late Thursday focusing on the top menu and left column. Unlike previous overhauls that focused on visual appeal, the new Facebook changes are more about improving site navigation and placing useful information and links on one side of the Webpage. Facebook hasn’t said when the new rollout will be complete or how many users have received the update so far, but Inside Facebook is reporting that just 80 million of Facebook’s users have seen the changes to date. Details of the redesign have been posted on Facebook’s blog.
Here’s what’s new:

Top Menu

The biggest change you’re likely to notice is that the notifications icon, for when someone has written on your wall or sent you message, has been moved from the lower right corner to the left side of the top menu (click on the image to enlarge it).

The notifications icon has also been changed from a signpost to a globe, but Facebook says you will still see the familiar red pop-up bubble alerting you to new notifications.

To the left of the notifications icon are two other icons: one for messages (replacing the current ‘Inbox’ link) and one for the requests to join groups or authorized applications that used to appear in the right hand column. The search bar is now next to these three icons on the left side, and links to your profile, account menu (including privacy settings) and the log out button will remain on the top right side of your screen.

Top Left Hand Column

The left column is now populated by far more useful information than previous homepage designs, and each link opens to what Facebook calls a “dashboard” instead of a news stream. Dashboards are nothing new, and used to be found by clicking on the icons on the bottom left of the Facebook homepage for thinks like photos, groups, and bookmarked applications. (Click on image to enlarge.)

Event notifications have been moved to the left hand column, making alerts to upcoming birthdays, meetings, parties, and other important dates more prominent.

A modified chat link has also been added to the lower part of the left column that lets you known when the Facebook friends you chat with most often are online. To see a complete list of who’s online you’ll still have to click on the chat pop-up window in the lower right hand corner of the homepage.

Games and Apps

A little further down the left side of the new homepage are new dashboard links for games and applications. Facebook says the new links are supposed to make it easier for you to interact with Facebook applications as well as find new ones. These dashboards will detail your recent activity, highlight your friends’ activity, and alert you when it’s time to take an action like harvesting virtual crops in Farmville or taking care of your digital pets in Pet Society.

Facebook also says it has added new privacy controls to the applications dashboard, in case you don’t want any of your gaming or other application activity appearing on your friends’ dashboards. The social network is also working on a way to let you turn off notifications for specific games and applications, while leaving them on for others.

Will Users Gripe?

Facebook is well known for rolling out tweaks and visual changes to its homepage, and Facebook users are just as famous for voicing complaints about Facebook redesigns. It’s too early to tell if this round of Facebook changes will create a backlash, but at the time of this writing there were almost 3700 mostly negative comments on the company’s blog post detailing the new homepage design.

LONDON - Nearly two thirds (60 percent) of businesses believe social network Facebook poses the biggest threat to security, says Sophos.

Research by the security firm for its Security Threat 2010 report revealed that MySpace was voted second with 18 percent, closely followed by Twitter with 17 percent of votes.
Only 4 percent named LinkedIn as a security threat.

“Facebook is by far the largest social network - and you’ll find more bad apples in the biggest orchard,” said Graham Cluely from Sophos in a blog.

Cluely added that the security team at Facebook works hard to counter threats on their site - it’s just that policing 350 million users can’t be an easy job for anyone.

However, he pointed out that when Facebook rolled-out its new recommended privacy settings late last year, it was “a backwards step, encouraging many users to share their information with everybody on the internet”.

He also warned users that while LinkedIn is considered to be the lest threatening social network, it still provides hackers with “a sizeable pool of information”.