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Picnik has just rolled out some neat new features for casual photo editing enthusiasts. Now found on the bottom of the editing environment is something called a “photo basket” which is a pool of photos from both cloud services like Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, and the latest shots uploaded from your hard drive. It also doubles as the new multi-photo uploader for those looking to unload the entirety of their memory card.

Switching between your photo sources in the basket is nearly instantaneous, and more importantly, it doesn’t take you away from what you’re working on. The photo basket is more than just a productivity booster though, it’s the home of a new feature that lets users create works of art using individual photographs as layers. Sure it’s missing the other 80 percent of what’s found on something like Adobe Photoshop, but with the use of transparency, text, and the myriad of filter effects you can create some truly good looking creations with a very minimal amount of effort.

Picnik now lets you put together multi-photo creations using layers. Like advanced photo editing applications each layer can be given different blend modes, transparencies, and color masks. Seen here is a collection of four photos stacked on top of one another with varying effects added on top of one another.

(Credit: CNET Networks )

When Picnik CEO Jonathan Sposato demoed this for me a few months back he insisted this wasn’t the first step in making Picnik compete with tools like Scrapblog or Glogster. Instead it was in response to users, who had been requesting support for layers since launch. Part of that request included contextual menu support, so if you’re working with more than a few layers you can simply right click to manage what order they appear in.

As a treat for Webware readers Picnik has given us 30 free 90-day premium upgrades to give out. The premium membership will take away the ads and give you advanced access to some of the more advanced features like the extra filters and a fonts. To get yours just enter your contact information on this form (note: this link opens as a pop-up). We’ll pick the 30 winners randomly, and you have until midnight (PST) on Sunday to enter. We’ll send the winners their prizes on Monday.

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Picnik adds support for layering, mass uploading

On Wednesday night, Facebook previewed the next version of its popular iPhone application, which has retained one of the top spots in Apple’s App Store since its launch in early July.

The new mobile version is a complete overhaul that shares much in common with the redesign of Facebook’s Web version–a move that could be paving the way for mobile advertising and applications later on down the road.

The biggest addition in version 2.0 is support for real-time status updates, including integration with the service’s messaging and live chat. At the time of launch, users will be getting these updates only while the application is running, with the push notifications coming when Apple flips that switch–presumably in a software update in late September, as promised.

For those using the application as a communications hub, the internetwork mail system has also been given an overhaul, letting users search through messages by words or entire phrases. It also pulls in the entirety of members’ in-boxes, as opposed to the status quo of showing only the 30 most recent messages.

Between these two enhancements and an improved News Feed that better integrates media and shared links, the next version should be far more compelling. Anxious users will have to wait until sometime next month to get their hands on it, though.

Below, I’ve bundled together all the screenshots, courtesy of Facebook. If you’re a Facebook user, you can also click through the entire set and see comments from other Facebook users here.

Source:
A much deeper Facebook experience coming to iPhone users

Benjamin Ling, the former Googler who was hired by Facebook last year and sparked a barrage of blog speculation about Google employees moving on to the next cool company, may be going back to Mountain View. Earlier this week, Facebook confirmed that he was indeed leaving the company.

Valleywag reported on Thursday that Ling had been spotted at the Googleplex, and the Gossip Girl-ish nature of that post was backed up by a report from Kara Swisher that she’d heard he’d be returning to Google to work on YouTube. More specifically, he was re-hired to help monetize the notoriously tough-to-produce-cash video site.

In his previous stint at Google, Ling had been instrumental in developing the Google Checkout payment service. He was hired at Facebook last October to market its developer platform, and confirmed in June that there was a payment system underway at the social network as well. That has yet to launch, leading some to speculate that it’s been shelved or is behind schedule.

One of the earlier Google employees to jump ship to Facebook, Ling was later joined by execs Sheryl Sandberg, now serving as Facebook’s chief operating officer, and Elliot Schrage, now the company’s vice president of global communications and public policy.

Continued here:
Report: Ben Ling’s going back to the Googleplex

European users of Twitter can no longer receive text message updates on their cell phones, in a temporary move designed to keep the start-up’s telecom bills down.

Twitterers can still use its U.K. number, +44 762 480 1423, to send updates to the site. But that number will no longer deliver text-message updates back to users, and recommends that they use the Twitter mobile site or a third-party client like TwitterBerry, Twitterrific, TwitterMail, or Cellity.

“When you send one message to Twitter and we send it to ten followers, you aren’t charged ten times–that’s because we’ve been footing the bill,” a post on Twitter’s blog explained. “When we launched our free SMS service to the world, we set the clock ticking. As the service grew in popularity, so too would the price.”

The company has managed to find “sustainable” text-message billing agreements in the U.S., Canada, and India–the other three countries in which Twitter has enabled SMS updates–so those countries will not be affected by the change. The blog post explained that Twitter is continuing to negotiate with mobile operators to make it possible for SMS numbers to exist around the world, but hasn’t gotten there yet.

“Even with a limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada, India, or the U.S.,” the post explained. “It makes more sense for us to establish fair billing arrangements with mobile operators than it does to pass these high fees on to our users.”

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Twitter kills U.K. SMS updates in cost-cutting move

Telephony service JahJah has launched two completely different voice tools that are both useful in their own right. The first is a new “concierge” service that lets you call any of your contacts with voice dialing using a special local access number. It works even if your handset does not support voice dialing, and will connect you to that person as long as you’ve synced up your address book with JahJah’s.

The other service called Babel is more useful for people visiting Beijing as part of the this Summer’s Olympics. By calling a special phone number you can leave a voice message that will be translated to Mandarin in just a few seconds. It’s meant to be used as an on-the-go tool for English speakers who are over there to watch the games and who might run into translation issues while getting around.

Unfortunately, Babel requires calling a local US, UK or Australia local access number to access it, as there’s not currently one for China. The good news is that if you’re in the depths of a local Chinatown in one of these supported countries you’ll be able to ask for directions or order a dish off a restaurant menu using your phone instead of having to point to it on a menu.

I gave Babel a spin earlier this morning and had mixed results. You might as well give up for things like URLs or long words. Even speaking as slowly and as clearly as possible it managed to flub up more than half of the words in some cases including classics like turning “point” into “porno” and “get” into “Georgia.” Regardless, it’s speed is truly impressive as it spits back results in just a few seconds. You view my trials with it in the video below, or give it a spin yourself at 1-718-513-2969. You can also find the other local access numbers for the UK and Australia here.

If you’re a native Mandarin speaker I’d love to hear how this does with English translations. Let me know in the comments.

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JahJah launches free translation and voice dialing services