It seems everything is moving on to the web, even photo-editing. Adobe recently released an online edition of Photoshop but one of the longest running photo-editing cloud services is Picnik. We used it to see if Picnik still got it.
While most cloud apps require you to sign-up in order to do anything Picnik gives you the opportunity to just use the basic service without any sign-up process. This is great when you just want to edit something quickly on the go and then posting it online.
Picnik also have a number of other features. For example it is possible to crop, resize, sharpen or rotate photos. Picnik also have nice options for adjusting colors and exposure, it is also possible to correct red-eyes by just clicking a button.
Adjusting colors in Picnik is pretty easy, but of course with less options than in Photoshop or Gimp. It is possible to change the saturation and color temperature. You can also pick a neutral area in the image and use it as a base for adjustment.
Adjusting the exposure is one of the most important features in photo-editing software. In Picnik it is possible to change the contrast and exposure. The more advanced options allow you to change brightness, the exposure of shadows and lighter areas. Picnik also have a histogram so that you can more easily adjust photos the way you want them.
The red-eye reduction works pretty well, there are different options for human and pet-eyes. If you do not want to go through all the editing options manually there is a auto-fix option, Picnik will then automatically adjust your photos applying all the options mentioned above.
Most of us have played around in Photoshop and Gimp with the different effect filters. Picnik have a set of its own, by selecting the Create tab you get a surprisingly high number of different effects. You get the usual soften, greyscale and sepia effects. But also some really nice ones, such as snow, 1960s colors and a favorite from Photoshop, the pencil sketch. The effects really look great, and there is no difference really from desktop software. They are also easy to apply and manage if you have used similar features before.
Picnik also includes features for working with text and applying it to images and photos. There are a number of different fonts available, since Picnik is in the cloud it is impossible to add your own fonts as would be possible in Photoshop or Gimp.
A new addition in Picnik is the touch-up feature. It a set of effects aimed at touching up photos of humans. For example there is a lipstick effect and a feature where you can change the weight of the person in the photo. Most of the other touch-up options are available in the premium version (for $2.08 a month).
Picnik comes with different frames that you can apply around your photos, such as a stamp effect and rounded edges. There is also an interesting feature in Picnik; called Sandbox, where users have made their own effects using flash scripting. The scripting makes it possible to bend photos in different ways, not possible before (according to Picnik).
Overall Picnik is a great photo-editing tool, the free version goes a long way and the premium version is pretty cheap compared to Photoshop and other photo-editing software. For people who want basic photo-editing software with a few advanced features Picnik is perfect, I even dare to say that it beats Gimp in some areas such as ease of use. Picnik is also surprisingly fast, even though it runs in the cloud it starts faster than Photoshop and Gimp does on my machine. For Adobe Picnik is a very dangerous competitor for the online version of Adobe Photoshop.
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Google recently announced the release of Google Chrome OS, which will be an operating system in the cloud. Glide is a fully functioning cloud OS from a company named Transmedia, it is already on the market, and it is even free. We decided to try it; can it replace everything you do on your client desktop? Read on to find out.
Cloud operating systems is more than hype, they make sense. Netbooks which is a best-seller are not that powerful, so a desktop solution in the cloud would enable you to sync your Netbook with your desktop. It would of course give you access to your desktop from anywhere, and it would always be backed up.
Glide OS is designed to be used in a web-browser, which is achieved by using Flash. I am not a great fan of flash as it back in the day often was used to make overdesigned websites with little content or function. But Glide uses Flash beautifully; it even runs in older web-browser such as Internet Explorer 6. All it requires is Flash version 9.0.124.
Glide OS is basically a desktop environment which you can access from anywhere. It can be used from any web-browser, but also have client software for Windows, MAC OS, Linux and Solaris. Even more interestingly there are mobile versions of the client for the Iphone but also for Android, Palm OS, Symbian and Windows Mobile phones. It means that you will have access to Glide from any device.
At first glance Glide it resembles Windows or any other operating system a lot, except that it is in your browser. A Windows user would instantly feel right at home in Glide, and so would a Linux or MAC user.
The Glide OS Desktop has a number of different features by default, such as Email (yes you get your own e-mail @glidefree.com), Calendar, word processing and so on. At the top of the screen there are three tabs, Desktop, Glide HD and Portal. Clicking Glide HD will bring the user a file view with music, videos, documents, pictures but also RSS-feeds and a Calendar. The portal part of Glide is basically a flash based directory of websites mixed with stock quotes and chat features.
For some remote reason folders in Glide OS are called containers. Clicking a container will list all files located in there, clicking the small “Go” text in the icon will give you the bubble navigation. This basically gives you other options directly, for example if you want to upload files to the container. This is actually a bit unique, but partly resembles right clicking in Windows.
Glide OS comes with a surprisingly wide array of features and products. Most of them are consumer oriented, such as a media player or online photo editing software. The media player makes it possible to access your music collection from anywhere. Well not your entire collection since there is a 10 GB storage cap, but the favorite parts could easily be uploaded.
The Cube is another media sharing tool where users upload their videos, music or whatever and you can browse it in a Cube-type interface. It looks very neat but there isn’t a whole lot of stuff in there, and to be quite frank there are better online applications out there for media sharing.
A neat feature, which I have been missing in every Windows version, is a sticky note feature. It is easily accessible in Glide OS from the menu in the footer, complete with color coding, take that Windows 7.
Glide has a number of features built in for collaboration. For example it is possible to share documents, setup online meetings and much more. The only down-side with the collaboration features is that all users engaging in meetings will have to have a Glide account; if you have client meetings it might be a little bit much to ask them to get Glide. It would have been neater if it was possible to use an existing account, with for example Google or Open ID.
Glide can connect with your PC using a desktop client, it is a lot easier than just using the web-interface, especially when uploading files to Glide as you just have to drag and drop the files to your Glide.
The Business side of Glide looks depressing; there are simply not that many features in there. Sure some of the consumer oriented stuff such as word processing and e-mail goes for businesses as well. But all the media and music features are pretty much useless for a business. However one business application is Glide Crunch, a spreadsheet program. It is a weird application since it is not supported in the web-version of Glide, but it can be use from the client side on a local machine. Glide OS features documentation, it is both a manual and a quick intro to the desktop, both in PDF.
Glide is ahead compared to the giants like Google and Microsoft when it comes to cloud operating systems. I think Glide is not far from what it should look like, but something happened along the way that makes it very confusing. It is absolutely packed with features, yet I can’t seem to figure out what I should use it for. One answer would be everything, just like Windows. But the point with desktop operating systems is that I can add applications as I want, in Glide I either just create links to other external webpages or use Glides built in apps.
For example I know that there are better cloud word processing alternatives out there, such as Zoho Writer. Yet I cannot use it in Glide, so what is Glide really good for? I love the effort that the Glide team has put in; it is really ground-breaking. But in order for Glide to be great it has to have some kind of main focus, right now it is all over the place doing nothing exceptionally good.
For consumers there is probably more value in Glide than for businesses. It still has a long way from replacing the desktop operating system, but it still serves as a model for what a cloud operating system could look like.
Foxit is the most widely spread free alternative to the massive Adobe Acrobat Reader. It is said to be more light-weight and faster than the Acrobat Reader, of course we wanted to find that out.
For reading PDF files Adobe Acrobat Reader takes up 230 MBs, that is a lot of space compared to Foxit, which does the same thing only taking up 7 MB. Hard drive space is not really an issue today, but it does make you wonder what Adobe put in their reader that Foxit did not.
Installing Foxit is a breeze, the executable is just 3.6 MB and the whole installation process takes about 30 seconds on a reasonable fast machine. After install you get the option of installing different plug-ins, for example there is a plug-in for Firefox (which we will get back to).
The interface in Foxit is less cluttered than Adobe Acrobat Reader but looks a bit dated. However if you worked with Adobe Acrobat Reader you will feel at home in Foxit. While Foxit features the standard array of tools and features it brings nothing new to the table. From a feature stand-point users will do just as well with Acrobat Reader.
Foxit is pretty fast, we have not done any scientific tests but viewing a 25 MB PDF-file with a lot of images was surprisingly fast. Even the Foxit PDF viewer in Internet Explorer is much faster than Adobes.
Foxit also came with a Firefox plug-in, which we did not have any luck with. When opening a PDF file in Firefox the browser notified us of that the server was busy, and then the browser crashed. Then we tried again and it happened all over again.
In other third party PDF readers the files often looked differently than in Acrobat Reader, Foxit does a great job rendering PDF files and we could not tell any difference between the two readers.
Adobe Acrobat Reader have a number of different features to sign documents digitally, this is very handy if you or your business is using one of Adobes lifecycle products. Foxit has no similar features built in, which makes it less useable in an already established Adobe environment.
What does the Foxit people make money on if their PDF reader is free, there has to be a catch, right? Indeed, Foxit has applied the same business model as Adobe, to get the Pro version of Foxit you have to pay. The pro version contains the possibility to draw in PDF files, attach files and save them without evaluation markings. However commenting works fine in the free version.
For small businesses and individuals Foxit is a very good alternative to Adobe Acrobat Reader, it is overall leaner and faster. However in a business setting with clients using extra Adobe unique features (such as document signatures or security options) Adobe Acrobat Reader is a better choice.
Daily the media features people who have gotten their credit card numbers stolen on the net, or companies who have been hacked and lost sensitive information.As more applications move into the cloud, security will be more vital than ever.
HotSpot Shield from Anchor Free protects you and your network while surfing the net. The program creates a Virtual Private Network (VPN) between your network and Anchor Frees servers, which is connected to the Internet. The VPN prevents hackers and other parties to intercept data that you submit; it also ensures anonymity when surfing.
HotSpot Shield is perhaps best used in a public Wi-Fi hotspot (hence the name), where security threats often are more severe. However since the service connects to Anchor Frees server it basically means that you are trusting them, and we have no idea who they are. We are not saying that they can’t be trusted but users would do best in not trusting HotSpot Shield completely.
Also do not buy the hype that you need this product to be completely secure on a public Wi-Fi, yes it helps but virtually all online banks and PayPal already have encrypted services. So HotSpot Shield adds an extra layer of security for your e-mail and general browsing.
HotSpot Shield is free and available for Windows 2000/XP/Vista and Mac OS. There is currently no Linux version, which might be a drawback for some.
How does a company like Anchor Free finance a free product like HotSpot Shield? The business model is very 90s; HotSpot Shield is financed by pop-ups and advertisements. However we didn’t find them that annoying. Anchor Free also collect and store information about your usage (according to their privacy policy).
HotSpot Shield has a bandwidth cap of 3 GB per 30 days for HotSpot Shield, this means that watching video or listening to music is out of the question. But for general browsing the cap should be fine.
HotSpot Shield is slow from the get go and at certain periods it is painfully slow making it almost impossible to use. The service also gives you a US based IP-number, this means that some have used it for getting access to US-only services such as Hulu or Pandora. Hulu have however closed that hole, so if you are looking at this service simply for getting access to Hulu you are out of luck.
For power-users travelling a lot and connecting to public Wi-Fi networks on airports etc, this product is good to have installed but should be a last resort when everything else fails. There are better and faster alternatives out there. However for the occasional traveler HotSpot Shield is a neat product.
Online storage, or storage in the cloud as the marketers would call it has been around for a while (one of the first services to my knowledge was Yahoo Briefcase, now discontinued). However because of increased bandwidth and Internet penetration the popularity of online storage products has risen dramatically. There are several benefits of having your files stored online, they can be accessed from any computer you happen to be at and they are backed up so if your house burns down or your computer fails you still have your precious files.
There are probably a gazillion of storage products out there; we have chosen to review the ones that we have used previously. They have all been reviewed from a consumer / small business stand-point, larger enterprises would of course have different needs. We have only chosen to review free alternatives.
Microsoft Skydrive
Skydrive is Microsoft’s attempt to conquer the online storage segment, which actually isn’t much to conquer since most larger players got rid of their similar solutions (AOL, HP and so on). Skydrive is pretty basic; you can upload files in a web-browser from any computer.
It is possible to create public folders, but maybe more importantly share them with selected groups (synced with your MSN Messenger account) or individuals.
Skydrive offers 25 GB of storage, which should be enough and is considerably more than what other storage services offer. For example Dropbox offers only 2 GB in their free (basic) account.
The limitations on Skydrive becomes pretty clear after a while, most other cloud storage services have a client or the possibility for the user to mount the service as a drive on their computer. Skydrive has no such functionality, which means that you have to open a browser window every time a file has to be uploaded. It can’t be used as a good backup solution either, since it has no ability to automatically sync files. Skydrive has however one advantage, you do not need a separate login since your Windows Live ID can be used.
Skydrive folders
Skydrive’s web interface.
Web interface for Dropbox
Dropbox as a folder in Windows 7.
The Dropbox Client in Windows 7 alerts of updated files.
Ensnips web interface.
Dropbox
Dropbox has been around for a while, the free version offers a limited 2 GB but if you fork $19.99/ month you get 100 GB. The whole point with Dropbox is storing and sharing files in work-groups. Dropbox is tightly integrated with the Dropbox client, available for Windows, MAC and Linux. The client sits in your tray but also enables you to upload files using a drive mapped on your computer.
There are several options in the client such as audio notifications as soon as someone in your work-group updates a file. It is also very easy to just open an edit a file directly without having to login to a web-interface. Sometimes it’s almost too easy, if you have a large work-group or a novice work-group there is a risk that files get involuntarily replaced. Dropbox also has a web-interface, very similar to Skydrive. Unlike Skydrive Dropbox has the ability to automatically sync documents, making it a perfect backup solution.
Esnips
Esnips is more community oriented and wider in scope than most other online storage services. It is for example possible to create profiles with pictures and info about yourself. Esnips even have a marketplace where designers, photographers and others can sell their content files. The storage itself is however pretty basic, 5 GB with a web-interface and a toolbar client allowing you to upload files directly from your computer more easily. However the client is not as easy to use as the one from Dropbox.
Apart from the community and storage the solutions Esnips has some unique features, such as the ability to take snippets from web-pages and directly import them into Esnips. Esnips also has a post to Twitter feature, which works quite well.
Box.net
Box.net offers 1 GB of storage for free, although you can get 30GB for $15 per month and user. The service is more oriented towards small businesses than individuals. Box.net has a desktop client, collaboration workspaces, versioning, mobile access and a lot of other business oriented features. For example it is possible to view CAD-files without using a CAD program etc.
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While most cloud apps require you to sign-up in order to do anything Picnik gives you the opportunity to just use the basic service without any sign-up process. This is great when you just want to edit something quickly on the go and then posting it online.
Picnik also have a number of other features. For example it is possible to crop, resize, sharpen or rotate photos. Picnik also have nice options for adjusting colors and exposure, it is also possible to correct red-eyes by just clicking a button.
Adjusting colors in Picnik is pretty easy, but of course with less options than in Photoshop or Gimp. It is possible to change the saturation and color temperature. You can also pick a neutral area in the image and use it as a base for adjustment.
Adjusting the exposure is one of the most important features in photo-editing software. In Picnik it is possible to change the contrast and exposure. The more advanced options allow you to change brightness, the exposure of shadows and lighter areas. Picnik also have a histogram so that you can more easily adjust photos the way you want them.
The red-eye reduction works pretty well, there are different options for human and pet-eyes. If you do not want to go through all the editing options manually there is a auto-fix option, Picnik will then automatically adjust your photos applying all the options mentioned above.
Most of us have played around in Photoshop and Gimp with the different effect filters. Picnik have a set of its own, by selecting the Create tab you get a surprisingly high number of different effects. You get the usual soften, greyscale and sepia effects. But also some really nice ones, such as snow, 1960s colors and a favorite from Photoshop, the pencil sketch. The effects really look great, and there is no difference really from desktop software. They are also easy to apply and manage if you have used similar features before.
Picnik also includes features for working with text and applying it to images and photos. There are a number of different fonts available, since Picnik is in the cloud it is impossible to add your own fonts as would be possible in Photoshop or Gimp.
A new addition in Picnik is the touch-up feature. It a set of effects aimed at touching up photos of humans. For example there is a lipstick effect and a feature where you can change the weight of the person in the photo. Most of the other touch-up options are available in the premium version (for $2.08 a month).
Picnik comes with different frames that you can apply around your photos, such as a stamp effect and rounded edges. There is also an interesting feature in Picnik; called Sandbox, where users have made their own effects using flash scripting. The scripting makes it possible to bend photos in different ways, not possible before (according to Picnik).
Overall Picnik is a great photo-editing tool, the free version goes a long way and the premium version is pretty cheap compared to Photoshop and other photo-editing software. For people who want basic photo-editing software with a few advanced features Picnik is perfect, I even dare to say that it beats Gimp in some areas such as ease of use. Picnik is also surprisingly fast, even though it runs in the cloud it starts faster than Photoshop and Gimp does on my machine. For Adobe Picnik is a very dangerous competitor for the online version of Adobe Photoshop.
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Cloud operating systems is more than hype, they make sense. Netbooks which is a best-seller are not that powerful, so a desktop solution in the cloud would enable you to sync your Netbook with your desktop. It would of course give you access to your desktop from anywhere, and it would always be backed up.
Glide OS is designed to be used in a web-browser, which is achieved by using Flash. I am not a great fan of flash as it back in the day often was used to make overdesigned websites with little content or function. But Glide uses Flash beautifully; it even runs in older web-browser such as Internet Explorer 6. All it requires is Flash version 9.0.124.
Glide OS is basically a desktop environment which you can access from anywhere. It can be used from any web-browser, but also have client software for Windows, MAC OS, Linux and Solaris. Even more interestingly there are mobile versions of the client for the Iphone but also for Android, Palm OS, Symbian and Windows Mobile phones. It means that you will have access to Glide from any device.
At first glance Glide it resembles Windows or any other operating system a lot, except that it is in your browser. A Windows user would instantly feel right at home in Glide, and so would a Linux or MAC user.
The Glide OS Desktop has a number of different features by default, such as Email (yes you get your own e-mail @glidefree.com), Calendar, word processing and so on. At the top of the screen there are three tabs, Desktop, Glide HD and Portal. Clicking Glide HD will bring the user a file view with music, videos, documents, pictures but also RSS-feeds and a Calendar. The portal part of Glide is basically a flash based directory of websites mixed with stock quotes and chat features.
For some remote reason folders in Glide OS are called containers. Clicking a container will list all files located in there, clicking the small “Go” text in the icon will give you the bubble navigation. This basically gives you other options directly, for example if you want to upload files to the container. This is actually a bit unique, but partly resembles right clicking in Windows.
Glide OS comes with a surprisingly wide array of features and products. Most of them are consumer oriented, such as a media player or online photo editing software. The media player makes it possible to access your music collection from anywhere. Well not your entire collection since there is a 10 GB storage cap, but the favorite parts could easily be uploaded.
The Cube is another media sharing tool where users upload their videos, music or whatever and you can browse it in a Cube-type interface. It looks very neat but there isn’t a whole lot of stuff in there, and to be quite frank there are better online applications out there for media sharing.
A neat feature, which I have been missing in every Windows version, is a sticky note feature. It is easily accessible in Glide OS from the menu in the footer, complete with color coding, take that Windows 7.
Glide has a number of features built in for collaboration. For example it is possible to share documents, setup online meetings and much more. The only down-side with the collaboration features is that all users engaging in meetings will have to have a Glide account; if you have client meetings it might be a little bit much to ask them to get Glide. It would have been neater if it was possible to use an existing account, with for example Google or Open ID.
Glide can connect with your PC using a desktop client, it is a lot easier than just using the web-interface, especially when uploading files to Glide as you just have to drag and drop the files to your Glide.
The Business side of Glide looks depressing; there are simply not that many features in there. Sure some of the consumer oriented stuff such as word processing and e-mail goes for businesses as well. But all the media and music features are pretty much useless for a business. However one business application is Glide Crunch, a spreadsheet program. It is a weird application since it is not supported in the web-version of Glide, but it can be use from the client side on a local machine. Glide OS features documentation, it is both a manual and a quick intro to the desktop, both in PDF.
Glide is ahead compared to the giants like Google and Microsoft when it comes to cloud operating systems. I think Glide is not far from what it should look like, but something happened along the way that makes it very confusing. It is absolutely packed with features, yet I can’t seem to figure out what I should use it for. One answer would be everything, just like Windows. But the point with desktop operating systems is that I can add applications as I want, in Glide I either just create links to other external webpages or use Glides built in apps.
For example I know that there are better cloud word processing alternatives out there, such as Zoho Writer. Yet I cannot use it in Glide, so what is Glide really good for? I love the effort that the Glide team has put in; it is really ground-breaking. But in order for Glide to be great it has to have some kind of main focus, right now it is all over the place doing nothing exceptionally good.
For consumers there is probably more value in Glide than for businesses. It still has a long way from replacing the desktop operating system, but it still serves as a model for what a cloud operating system could look like.
HotSpot Shield from Anchor Free protects you and your network while surfing the net. The program creates a Virtual Private Network (VPN) between your network and Anchor Frees servers, which is connected to the Internet. The VPN prevents hackers and other parties to intercept data that you submit; it also ensures anonymity when surfing.
HotSpot Shield is perhaps best used in a public Wi-Fi hotspot (hence the name), where security threats often are more severe. However since the service connects to Anchor Frees server it basically means that you are trusting them, and we have no idea who they are. We are not saying that they can’t be trusted but users would do best in not trusting HotSpot Shield completely.
Also do not buy the hype that you need this product to be completely secure on a public Wi-Fi, yes it helps but virtually all online banks and PayPal already have encrypted services. So HotSpot Shield adds an extra layer of security for your e-mail and general browsing.
HotSpot Shield is free and available for Windows 2000/XP/Vista and Mac OS. There is currently no Linux version, which might be a drawback for some.
How does a company like Anchor Free finance a free product like HotSpot Shield? The business model is very 90s; HotSpot Shield is financed by pop-ups and advertisements. However we didn’t find them that annoying. Anchor Free also collect and store information about your usage (according to their privacy policy).
HotSpot Shield has a bandwidth cap of 3 GB per 30 days for HotSpot Shield, this means that watching video or listening to music is out of the question. But for general browsing the cap should be fine.
HotSpot Shield is slow from the get go and at certain periods it is painfully slow making it almost impossible to use. The service also gives you a US based IP-number, this means that some have used it for getting access to US-only services such as Hulu or Pandora. Hulu have however closed that hole, so if you are looking at this service simply for getting access to Hulu you are out of luck.
For power-users travelling a lot and connecting to public Wi-Fi networks on airports etc, this product is good to have installed but should be a last resort when everything else fails. There are better and faster alternatives out there. However for the occasional traveler HotSpot Shield is a neat product. 
