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August 17th, 2008 at 3:30 pm

If you direct your Web browser to Pixlr.org, you’ll be shown a service that describes itself as “a Flickr-based photoblog application.” But if you visit Pixlr.com, well, that’s a whole new animal. Coming out of Sweden, Pixlr.com is an invention touted as something akin to Photoshop Express. And while I hesitate to agree with such an assessment, given PsEx’s photo management capabilities, in addition to Lightroom-esque editing features, Pixlr.com is simple treat to work with nonetheless. It is Flash-based.

If you’re at all familiar with free-form image editing software, local or cloud-based, you’ll find Pixlr a comfortable place to work, if a little stiff. You can drag all windows around the space however you please, though not entirely smoothly. You’ll notice lag here and there. Functionally, nothing stops you from positioning the main toolkit to the right of an image being edited, rather than the default left, and the same goes for anything else in evidence.

The top menu, where you can select an image from local storage or create one anew, holds most any option the average user would need. (No connections to online photo hosts as of yet.) It is my impression that the menu could use enlarging, but everything is legible. You won’t find a list of choices as extensive as with Adobe’s desktop titles, of course, but again, all is bound to satisfy most users. Important is the site’s average click response time, and it is a commendable one. You do recognize the fact that it is a Web-based application, your workflow probably won’t be hindered much, if at all. Naturally, smaller uploads are easier to manage. Multiple images can be edited, too.

When a job is complete, and you’re ready to save the image, Pixlr requests that you specify an image name and file type (JPEG or PNG). Click ‘OK,’ and the file will be downloaded to your machine.

Source:Mashable!

As a first-generation iPhone owner, I’ve come to discover and begrudgingly tolerate a number of quirks with the device. Not counting the botched launch the iPhone 3G, the retrofit iPhone and iPod touch 2.0 software updates, and the MobileMe cloudware suite, the software itself shows clear need for improvement. Though the device is widely seen as the benchmark for smart handhelds, and rightly so, in many ways, there some particularities that make for an exceedingly faulty experience. One is the push notification service.

Many mobile Web users of BlackBerry devotion have long known that push mail is something just shy of heavenly in convenience. And so it is something that Apple was fairly quick to say would arrive on the iPhone. Enterprise users could mate the device with their corporate exchange server and have immediate access to email, calendar, etc., and all changes would quickly synchronize. Months later, Apple announced its intention to bring push to the consumer sector, too, through the .Mac replacement known as MobileMe.

Forward to today, and MobileMe has been seen roughing the public waters for several weeks, and doing so with some major hiccups. Yet, even after Apple had announced having remedied faults in email transmission late last month - at which point I sprang for a free 30-day trial of the service - problems have evidently persisted. Email simply would not “push” to my device. At least not in any way that would seem reasonably expedient. (Hours upon hours, let’s say.) Suffice it to say, I abandoned the effort in a few days’ time.

I should note, other components in MobileMe did transfer information as advertised. Contacts added through my iPhone would move to the cloud automatically with little delay, for instance. But I assume for the broad majority of prospective subscribers, mail would be the singular most important aspect of the $99 investment. And it has underperformed, plain and simple.

I would venture to think Apple will right all problems in coming months, and according to a relatively fresh MacRumors report, the company “has pulled the push notification service in (the latest developer-specific iPhone 2.1 Beta 4 software) release ‘for further development,’” proving that hypothesis to be very probable. (MacRumor’s Jeff Longo notes that third party developers have issued requests for “background process support” of push transfers for their applications, and that this notice likely promises such an enhancement at the SDK level.)

But one thing seems clear. While Apple takes an adventurous route with its mobile platform, pressing buttons both for consumers and corporate customers alike, reliability in cloud-based communications is not its forte. Yes, it can sell you songs, music videos, television shows, and movies with aplomb. Its podcasting efforts are also exemplary. But a BlackBerry/RIM killer - a success story which the company is naturally aiming to challenge - it isn’t. And it won’t be for quite a while longer.