Sure, you just use online photo editing tools in Flickr for a quick crop, color adjustment or the like but if you need real Photoshop Power? What if you need to clone your ex out of a photo on Facebook pronto? Or paint in some well placed horns?

Now there’s an alternative online alternative to Photoshop. It’s name is Pixlr. Layers, cloning, painting, type and even filters.

Crazy great, right? Non-photo friends, trust me here. It’s crazy great.

You Want Your Damn Lightroom?

Disdain cloning and painting? Are you a purist who only danes to shift colors and exposure and make a perfect crop? Then check out the beta of MugTug Darkroom.

Jack London once said “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a mouse.” Okay he might have said club instead of mouse.  Same difference these days in the realm of digital creation. If you’d like to discover amazing photographs by no one in particular, without a similar subject,  and with the only thing that makes them alike is that they’re sweet sweet eye candy then I suggest you try Flickriver.com.   Prepare to scroll down for as long you have batteries in that mouse.  The great images just keep coming.

Want a little more control over the context of the photos?  Take CompFight.com out for a photo browsing bout.  Maybe London’s quote inspired the name.  Inspiration can be a fight sometimes.  Consider yourself armed.

CompFight.com

Need inspiration without the constraint the camera? Then you may like the aptly named FFFFOUND! This last one was recommended to me by Joseph Grillo.
Thanks Joe.

Here’s a look at the easy interface for editing on Picnik.

A crop I like better is here: http://www.briangerry.com/imagery-2/ Click on the thumbnail for the full view.  The image was shot a couple weekends ago out bowling with family and friends.

Hello new iPhone user.  Killed that Crackberry and moving over to iPhonedom? I am what’s known as the seasoned iPhone user.  Okay, no one calls me that.  But perhaps techie or “West Coast Tech Support” is throw around in my direction.  Whatever the name I keep getting new iPhone users asking what apps they should install.

The application store does a fairly decent job of spelling out the options but then again it’s handy to have recommendations.  So here are my current top 9 or so free iPhone apps every new user should install:

1. Install the Google app and try out searching by voice recognition (just tilt the phone up and wait for the beep) and also check out the free 411 service under the “Apps” button.  Finally use the reader!  Refer to this article to see why you need a reader.
2. Install the Facebook app because let’s face it if you have an iPhone then chances are that you’re on FB also.
3. Install Showtimes.  This movie app beats Fandango in my book.  It’s actually better than looking for movies on a computer because it automatically searches the theaters near you.  Plus it’s just laid out nicely.
4. Install Epicurious. You’re going the store and you don’t know what to make.  Problem solved and you get the ingredients (shopping)  list to boot. If you use this one too often then you may wish to install Lose It.  Great program to track your weight, look up calories for food.   I don’t use it often enough but that’s a different blog post.
5. Install Yelp.  Unleash the power of social media to find out which restaurants are sought after and which ones are better off left unknown to you when you’re traveling.  (Ok some people say Urban Spoon.  Both about equal but I like Yelp.)
6. Install Photoshop mobile for great image editing on the iPhone.  You’re going to need this app because the camera on the iPhone sucks big time.  Ok, it’s actually great as a video camera but it still sucks as a regular camera.  This program is super intuitive and a joy to use.  I may be slightly biased as a long time photoshop user but I’ve always thought Adobe makes some of the very best interfaces to be found.
7. Install Card Shark because some day someone will want to play solitaire on your phone and this is a very nicely put together app.  By that I mean that it’s intuitive and fast.
8. Install PenguinLite to entertain your niece.
9. Install Tumblr and post your crappy iPhonography to your web page.  Mine is here although I’ve learned from the web-Jedi that I work with I must leave Tumblr immediately in  favor of Posterous.  These web-Jedi are never wrong about such things by the way so I’ll have to ditch it.

For better (and more advanced) advice on iPhone apps I suggest you check out Luke’s blog on Mobiah.   He’s got a new post on TED.  Gotta check that out!

Okay how about trying from the top menu bar….nope.  How about this Map icon on the right?  That looks enticing!

Ok, was pretty cool.  I can underline “pretty”.  I just italicize or bold it.   Wait I’ve found a 3rd way to try to insert photos.  Let’s try that again…nope.  Oh, wait there’s a “source” tab at the bottom.  Let’s try some simple coding.  Pretty cool.

Okay let’s do a simple list of what we know so far:

1. The tool bars don’t work so well.
2. Some of the formatting functions require the use of coding
3. Attempting to insert a photo gives you a nasty error by any of the 3 methods I tried.
4. The map insert work wells and integrates the aerial bird’s eye view option.
5. The publish to your blog from the software works well (I published this from Windows Live Writer).

Okay so now I’m back in the wordpress editor.  Which is pretty cool cause the buttons on the interface work!

Let’s now try to upload some of those pix again. Like the cool one:

;And the not so cool one:

Just to be fair. It could be an issue with this blog or that fact that I’m running it on a Mac through Parallels. I’ll check that out next.

The software I want to share with you today though is OpenProj from Serena.. On the upside the software is both Mac and PC compatible and if you’re a user of Microsoft Project then you’ll be right at home. Another nice feature is that the software is open-source (yes, free). I’ve used the software on about a half dozen projects and it’s great to be able to do a detailed gantt and calculate your critical path. Now if you have access to Microsoft Project then you want to stick with that. This is very basic and has none of the use-ability enhancements that you find in Project.