Picplz Shutting Down

Picplz was a photo sharing service similar to Instagram which had an Android client long before Instagram started being ported to Android. I have been using Picplz for years now, and am sad to find out that the service will be shutting down on July 3rd 2012.

The people running Picplz have very kindly set up a download service so you can download all your content from the site easily. Just go to Picplz.com and log in, follow the prompts and you will be able to download all your photos as a single .zip file. In my case there are 245 images, so the zip file was quite large clocking in at over 200MB.

It is a shame Picplz has reached the end of its service, I found it a useful way to avoid issues with rights to intellectual property (Facebook cough cough!), and to post images to almost all my social networking services at once (Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter etc...). I'm not totally bought into Instagram even now that there is a full Android client, and sharing through Skydrive from my Nokia Lumia 710 is a bit iffy.

I'll let you know how I get on finding a replacement photo sharing service as time goes by. As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below.

Picnik Shutdown Getting Closer

The announced shutdown of Picnik, scheduled for April 19th 2012 is getting closer. Picnik is/was an online photo editing and publishing tool. Usable through a browser, Picnik had both a free and a premium paid for offering. In 2010 Picnik became part of Google.

This morning I received an email from Picnik reminding me of the imminent shutdown date and giving me advice on how to export my images and content.

Here's the message:

Important Picnik Announcement 

As we announced earlier this year, we will be closing Picnik on April 19th, 2012, and we want to make sure you have the information and support you need.
For more details on our shut down, or recommended alternatives to Picnik, please see answers to frequently asked questions.
Refund update for Picnik Premium
We have submitted all refunds for processing. For the few who have not received their refund, please do the following:

• Confirm you have not mistaken your refund for a new Picnik charge
• Contact the original financial institution you used to purchase your Picnik Premium membership to confirm they have received the refund notification
• If these steps don't resolve your issue, contact us by logging into your account and clicking Help.  Please contact us prior to our April 19th closure.

Picnik Premium
Picnik Premium will continue to be free for everyone until our closing date. So please keep creating!
Grabbing your photos
If you would like to remove your images from Picnik, please use Picnik Takeout to easily download your photos to your desktop in convenient zip files. You may request downloads as many times as you like until our closing date of April 19, 2012. If you choose to zip up now, you can still use Picnik and remove any new edits though April 19th. Make sure you can open your downloaded zip files. If you have any problems, please contact feedback-data@picnik.com.
Thank you,
Team Picnik

The Picnik website also doesn't let you miss the fact that the service is shutting down soon. Here's how it looks:

Difficult to not get the message.

I had used Picnik for a while after discovering the service on the Chrome Web Store. Nowadays many of the features in Picnik are offered as part of the photo service Picasa/Google Plus Photos. Hopefully all the rest of the features will be rolled over, then it will make sense to kill off the extra (little known by the general public) brand.

As usual, fell free to leave comments and/or questions below.

Flying Over The Alps With My TZ20

Today I flew from Milan (MXP) to Edinburgh (EDI). I was lucky enough to get a window seat (no, not a Windows seat, because I use Linux...), so I took a few pictures with my Panasonic TZ20 in "Aerial Photo" mode. Here are the results.

 More after the break!

Gullane Golf Course where I took these shots

Cramond Island, which I visited with Picc0110 in the summer

As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below.

leg0fenris' Photostream [Flickr]

Since I was a child I have always been a fan of Lego and Star Wars. leg0fenris' photostream on Flickr is one of my favourite ones partly because it brings together Lego and Star Wars, partly because of the great quality of the photo compositions and the sense of humor.


Here's a slideshow of leg0fenris' photostream, from Flickr:

As well as Lego Star Wars compositions, leg0fenris creates compostions with Lego Special Forces figures. My favourite one is "Under Fire" which seems to have been taken in a high risk situation for the Lego figures...

"Under Fire" by leg0fenris. (2011) Some rights reserved

Feel free to click through to leg0fenris' photostream on Flickr and check his work out for yourself.

"Awesome" by leg0fenris. (2011) Some rights reserved

As usual, feel free to leave comments/questions below, and if you have found this interesting, please Google +1 the post.

Picc0110's Photo Posts

Picc0110 is a friend of mine and in future he will be writing posts on this blog about digital photography, cameras and web photo services.

A Self-Portrait of Picc0110

Picc0110 is a twenty-something year old recent University graduate who is doing very little with life at the moment. [His words, not mine...]


To fill some time he recently decided to invest in a Canon DSLR camera (Digital Single Lense Reflex) - and is having lots of fun with it. 

The majority of his photos are completely unedited - this is due to his lack of Photoshop or GIMP skills. As time goes by he will write a few posts about how he gets on, what he's doing with his camera and what new things he's learning.


Please feel free to post comments/questions either here or on his Flickr profile and let him know what you think.