I love Picnik. I can't put it any simpler than that. Picnik is a photo editing program that works in your browser— PC or Mac. The interface is ridiculously easy to use, the options are fun and plentiful, but most importantly, your picture will look good.

I have long hesitated to really use much photo editing. Photoshop is just too complicated for my ADD brain (I still have no idea what a layer is, exactly). I don't want to read a manual or a take a class just to tweak pictures I take as a hobby. Other programs, such as Picasa, seem too simple for my needs, and the results never quite satisfy me. Picnik is a nice middle ground. I currently use the free version, (although a paid account is available) and have discovered a few options I use faithfully.

One basic tool I am consistently pleased with is sharpen. I have used it with pictures taken both with my camera phone (a Motorola RIZR Z3 2.0 megapixels) and my digital camera (Canon Powershot SD500, 7.1 megapixels). The pictures always seem natural, rarely grainy (unless you crank it way up), and a little goes a long way. Picnik has all the traditional options, such as color temp, cropping, and exposure.  I tend not to care too much for the Auto-fix. I prefer to tweak the details myself.

For this little guy, I used sharpen, exposure, color temperature and focal soften:

Before:	After:

Picnik also offers some really cool effects. (I've noticed now that I sometimes shoot pictures based on what I can do with them once I upload them.) Sure, you can soften or turn your picture sepia, but try out the 1960's filter reminiscent of those washed out pictures from your 4th grade summer vacation at Disneyland. Also fun to play with are Night Vison,Orton-ish and Cinema Scope. My very favorite is the Lomo-ish filter, which adds a Holga type haze around the picture:

Before:	After:

Picnik also includes options such as frames (check out Polaroid) and adding text or shapes. Once you are done, you can upload your photos directly to a variety of photo sharing/hosting sites, including: Flickr, MySpace, Photobucket, Facebook or email.

Give it a shot, registration is free. It's easy to use, and it may change the way you take pictures.

I'm a Flockstar!

Flock, a browser aimed at social media users, has been my default browser going on two months now. I tried it on a whim after some frustrations with Firefox, and I've never looked back.  Flock is built on the Firefox platform, and many of the extensions are compatible.  Flock is attentive to it's users. I have posed a few questions to @Flocker via Twitter, and always get a quick response.

There are numerous features on Flock, and these are what I find myself using over and over:

The People sidebar: Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube are all built right into the browser's sidebar. You can follow recent content from the users you follow on these sites.

I would like to see a feature where I can manually refresh tweets from Twitter rather than wait for the automatic refresh, and I understand that this is something in the works. I would also like to see more Twitter features such as direct messaging enabled.

The web clipboard: The web clipboard sidebar allows you to highlight, drag, and drop text, links or images. It saves text and pictures in the sidebar, so you can either view, email or blog them later on. So much better than saving a whole page in bookmarks for one paragraph or picture to refer to later.

The share this link via email button: I knew it was there, but I just recently started using it. Click the button, it goes to the default email you choose, whether it's web based or desktop based, and adds the headline and the link. All you do is add the recipients.

Photo Uploader: One button opens a window. Drag and drop a picture from your computer, and post to the web. You can even do some minor touch ups, and add a title and description. There are several different services that you can currently upload to, including Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, and others. It seems you can only upload to one site at a time.

You also can search Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook, YouTube and other services from a slick scrolling Media Streams tool bar.

Extensions: I love that I can use my most of my favorite Firefox extensions. Some extensions have been added for downloading on the Flock site. Currently,  I use AdBlock Plus, Foxmarks, Google Toolbar, Blue Organizer and Long Titles (gotta be able to read xkcd properly!). Firefox themes aren't compatible but the Flock default is a clean silver theme that is easy on the eyes.  There is also an Eco-Edition in green.

My only real annoyance is that Flock will not auto-complete an URL. If I type in an URL without the .com, it takes me to a Yahoo search page. I would like to either see a choice of search pages or simply the ability to finish the URL.

Give this neat little powerhouse of a browser a try, kick the tires, slam the doors,  play with the features, and get more done with your browser. For more information on Flock, check out the Lifehacker Screenshot Tour of Flock 1.2.

Have you ever wanted to display your mood on individual blog posts in TypePad? Now you can!

I recently launched Emoodicon, a new site that sells mood rings which hold swappable emoticons (sort of like a secret decoder ring for how you're really feeling). I wanted to be able to use the emoticons on the blog itself, but more importantly, I wanted other people to be able to use them as well… so I've developed two ways for people to add the Emoodicon images to their blogs. There are two sets of images at present, one with kitties and one with robots. We'll be adding two more sets in the future based on the monkey and mime in the Emoodicon animation. I'm hosting the images, so there's no need to upload them to your own account.

Here's a sample of what the images look like:

Kitteh Emoodicons (Emoticon Key Here)

Bleep Emoodicons (Emoticon Key Here)

For Basic Templates: The first option will work for basic templates (or pretty much any site on the web) and uses a little bit of JavaScript that you can just cut and paste into a Notes Style TypeList. There's also some CSS that allows you to customize the wording and appearance if you choose. Full instructions for this method can be found here on the Emoodicon Blog. The advantages of this options are:

1. It's easy and works anywhere
2. You can insert a mood icon anywhere in your post
3. You can customize it quite a bit if you desire

The one important warning about the script is that it must be the very last bit of code to load on your page. So if you want to add it to abasic template blog, put the Notes Style TypeList at the very bottom of your right-most column.

For Advanced Templates: The second option uses a wee snip of template code and CSS to function and is quite easy to install. It loads more quickly than the JavaScript version. This is the option I chose to use on the Emoodicon blog and it was inspired in part by Michigosh's recent comment on David's recent post, A Creative TypePad SEO Hack. Once you've added the code, you'll be able to use the Keywords field on your compose page to tell the world how you're feeling.

Click through to the extended entry for instructions on how to add Emoticons (or other images) to your blog using Advanced Templates.

The advanced template code version of this hack has several advantages over the JavaScript version: it loads faster and using the keywords field to log your mood is somewhat easier and neater than typing it into the middle of a post. The only potential disadvantage is that your mood will always display in the same place depending on where you insert the code in your template… with the JavaScript version, you can insert multiple moods anywhere you like in a post.

You will need to edit your entry-individual, entry-list and entry-list-sticky template modules to add the code below. If you don't see these template modules, you can create them and add them following the instructions in this Tutorial.

How to add the code:

1. In the Design tab, select your entry-list-sticky template module.
2. Paste the following code into the template in the place where you want the emoticon to appear. To place it at the top of an entry, put it right under the line that reads <div class="entry" id="entry-<$MTEntryID$>">. To place it at the bottom of an entry, it can go just above line reading <MTEntryIfExtended>. The entry-list-sticky module has two parts, one for stick posts and one for regular posts. Be sure to add the code in both sections if you want to display the icons on sticky posts. If not, just edit the second section of the module.
   
       <MTIfNonEmpty tag="MTEntryKeywords"> <div class="mood"><span class="feeling">I'm Feeling: </span><img src="http://emoodicon.com/typepad-emoticons/<$MTEntryKeywords$>.png" alt="<$MTEntryKeywords$>" /></div>     <MTElse>           </MTElse>     </MTIfNonEmpty>
   
   
3. In the code above, you can change the words "I'm Feeling:" to anything you want ("current mood" or whatever). The default size of the Emoodicons is 50 x50 pixels. You can also change that, by adding height and width tags to the image, although they get hard to read when they're smaller.
4. If you wanted to use a different set of images, you would change the image path in the code above to a sub-folder of your own using the File Manager to upload the images.
5. When finished, click Save.
6. Repeat the above steps for your entry-individual and entry-list template modules. Click save for each module.
7. Now, it's time to add the CSS. Open your Stylesheet and paste the following CSS at the end.
   
   .mood { float: right; padding-bottom: 8px; } .feeling { display: inline-block; color: #CC0099; font: bold 18px/normal Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: 70%; padding-right: 8px; }
   
   
8. There are a number of settings you can edit in the CSS:
   .mood can be edited to float the icon and text left or right, and you can edit the padding to make the image play nice with other elements on your page.
   .feeling controls the display of the text. You can change the color and font to match your blog. If you changed the image size in the previous steps, you'll want to edit the settings for vertical-align.
9. Once you're happy with the CSS, Click Save and Republish your blog.

How to set your mood:

To add any of our Emoodicons to a post, you just type the name of the feeling prefixed with r- for the robot set or k- for the kitty set into the Keywords field of your compose page. So, if you're happy you would type "k-happy" or "r-happy" depending on whether you want the robot image or the kitty. If you don't add anything to the Keywords field, nothing displays and the post will look the same as it did before you added the custom code. You can go back and add moods to older posts if you want, but it isn't necessary.

If you don't see the Keywords field on your compose page, click the link in the lower right corner that says "Customize the display of this page." In the pop-up window, under the heading Screen Configuration click the radio button for Custom (show the following fields). Select the checkbox for Keywords and click Save. More info on customizing the display of the compose page can be found in the TypePad Knowledge Base here.

John and I came up with this interesting hack the other day when we were talking about search engine optimization for TypePad blogs.

There's a field in the TypePad post editor called "Keywords".  If you don't see the field when you're in the post editor, click on the "Customize the display of this page" link at the bottom of the editor.  That will bring you to a pop up window where you can specifically choose to see the field, or you can choose the "Advanced" screen configuration, which also will enable the display of the Keyword field.

The purpose of the Keywords field isn't terribly obvious.  And if you're like me, you probably figured since the field was near the Technorati tags, it had something to do with internet search or was SEO related.

It doesn't have anything to do with either.

But if you re-purpose the field, it could.  What if you put comma separated key words in it, then took those key words and put them in the <HEAD> section of your individual archives ("permalink") pages with a  <META> key words entry?  That should be pretty straight forward since the key words are kept in the MTEntryKeywords variable. 

All you'd have to do is edit up the head-common module in your Advanced Template set, then use the MTInclude command to insert the module in the Individual Archives template.  This would be the only template where I think the customized Key Words would be appropriate.  Leave all the other templates alone.

That should give you a customized <META> key words entry per post!

I suppose you could use the same concept if you wanted to create custom, dynamic <META> description entries on a post-by-post basis instead of Key Word entries.

SixApart people (I know you're reading) - if you re-purpose this field in the standard templates, you can still use it for what it was meant for in the first place.  Then, give us another field in the editor and another MT variable to hold the <META> description text.  This would give a nice little SEO boost to individual posts.