The golden age of mobile photography is upon us. Smartphones are now more capable at producing high-quality photos than digital cameras were just five years ago. Editing photos has been an evolving process but a lot of great services have been released to mobile users in the last year such as filters from Instagram or full-featured suites from Aviary and Skitch. Today, Aviary is making a dramatic update to its platform to gives users a set of powerful tools to edit photos on the go.

Version 2 of Aviary mobile releases a bunch of new feature and performance updates. Here is a breakdown of what is new:

One-touch auto-enhance: The ability to easily touch up a photo without going through a complicated editing process. Use one of Aviary's pre-set optimization settings and enhance a photo with a tap.

Improved effects: 10 more effects with new border designs.

Unique dials: This is really a user interface function. A dial instead of a slider for brightness and color palettes.

Stickers: Bowties, cigars, funny glasses.

New design: What would an update be to a mobile app if it did not completely throw out its old design and start anew. Sometimes this works for the better, many times it does not.

Minimal branding: This is perhaps the best rollout for this version of Aviary and hopefully it is not limited to just the mobile versions of the apps. Anyone that has used an Aviary extension before knows that the little blue lower-case A company logo pops up on just about everything you want to edit or take a screen shot of. This is now hidden and can be accessed by swiping to the last page of the app for details.

Aviary is up to date with all the mobile platforms. It can instituted by developers writing apps for Android 2.2 (API level 8) or higher or iOS 4+. It will also work on all browsers and tablets that support HTML5, JavaScript or Flash.

Aviary also wants to help developers make money through the mobile SDK. Users of apps that have Aviary embedded can purchase premium effects as well as original and branded stickers. Aviary will split the revenue with the app maker.

Note, at the time of publication, the Aviary app was still awaiting Apple App Store approval. It can be found through partner apps such as Pic Stitch.

Does Aviary outshine Skitch or other photo editors on iOS and Android? The SDK is a clever bit of implementation for developers to add photo editing capabilities to apps. Let us know what you think of the newest version in the comments.

Twitter profile pages will now display thumbnails of the user's four most recent tweeted photos on the right sidebar, right under their vital Twitter statistics, and clicking 'View All' opens the user's gallery in the current window. This is the first new feature Twitter has built upon its native image sharing, which launched this summer. Until that launch, third-party services handled image sharing on Twitter. The new user galleries will support those services, but the galleries themselves will only be available from Twitter's website.

This isn't a full-fledged image gallery feature; it won't replace major photo services that offer higher-quality images and better organization. But photos shared on Twitter are often more informal than that, and the existing third-party photo services, while they do show users' image history, don't offer many features for meticulous organization, either. Twitter's image galleries will just be a way to quickly browse the photos someone has shared, and that's a nice feature, as long as you're not certain members of the U.S. Congress.

Would you browse a user's photos on Twitter? Tell us what you think in the comments.

This week, the lawyers at stock photography leader Getty Images have decided to weigh in on the situation, too, as it relates to the company's Flickr Collection contributors. Getty's verdict? "We're OK with Google+," it says.

Members of the private group (note: link only works for members) "Getty Images Contributors" on Flickr were recently informed by a company representative that Getty's lawyers have deemed Google Plus OK for them to use.

"The important thing to watch out for in Terms of Service, and it's the same as we've talked about for contests, is that whatever they do (or allow third parties to do) with the images should be in the context of the service itself, not to re-license or otherwise commercialize the images to other parties (or even the main company itself) outside of the context they're posted for," writes Flickr member Tom W at Getty Images, in a message posted to all group members.

Tom cites specific sections of the Google Plus ToS (11.2 and 11.3) in his post, explaining that their intent is to allow Google to provide copies of the images to third parties "in the context of the service - social networking, photo-sharing, etc." For example, if members wanted to allow their friends to print copies of their photos, like Flickr does with Snapfish. However, says Tom, Google does "not provide for licensing to another party for their own use."

How to Analyze the Google Plus ToS

For professional photographers trying to wade through Terms of Service, not just on Google Plus, but anywhere on the Web, it can be tricky - especially because of the wording, which often takes a law degree to decipher.

But photographer Jim Goldstein has posted some basic tips on his blog, about how he evaluates a ToS for a social media site, Google Plus or otherwise.:

1. Is a claim made that the copyright of my work is transferred to Google+ (or company X) upon posting/submission?
2. Is a claim made that my copyrighted work will be distributed to sites under a set umbrella of sites and services (ex. Google+, Gmail, Buzz, Google Search, Google Image Search, Google Maps, Google Places, etc.), or far beyond such as a blanket claim to sub-license my shared work to known and unknown companies/services (ex. 3rd party advertisers or image licensing services)?
   
3. Do terms used in relation to any claimed license include “irrevocable”, “perpetual license”, “fully paid”, “royalty-free” or the classic phrase “by all means and in any media now known or hereafter developed”?

   Horrible example often absorbed in boiler-plate ToS:

   You agree to grant to “Company X” a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual license, with the right to sub-license, to reproduce, distribute, transmit, create derivative works of, publicly display and publicly perform any materials and other information (including, without limitation, ideas contained therein for new or improved products and services) you submit to any public areas of the Site (such as bulletin boards, forums and newsgroups) or by e-mail to “Company X” by all means and in any media now known or hereafter developed. You also grant to “Company X” the right to use your name in connection with the submitted materials and other information as well as in connection with all advertising, marketing and promotional material related thereto. You agree that you shall have no recourse against “Company X” for any alleged or actual infringement or misappropriation of any proprietary right in your communications to “Company X”.

4. Can the Terms of Service be terminated by myself and not just Google?

How Does Google Plus Hold Up?

Goldstein then uses that list as a guide to analyze the Google Plus ToS, and finds that, as Getty did, the terms are (basically) OK.

In particular, take note of the section about terminating the ToS (13.1 and 13.2). This was of particular interest to commenters on our previous article. There were questions about how much power Google would have over your images once uploaded - could you ever get your rights back? It appears that Google's ToS does provide users a way to terminate their agreement at any time, by either

a) notifying Google at any time

or

b) closing your accounts for the Google services you use.

That said, there were parts of the ToS that made Goldstein nervous, to which he only gave a "reluctant OK." To review the analysis in more detail, head over to his blog.

Should professional photographers stay away from Google Plus? Is Google going to steal the rights to your photos and stop you from making money from them? No, they're not.

The Washington Post cites a story from Photofocus, an online magazine about photography. The issue it had with the ToS were the sections that read, as follows (emphasis ours):

By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

Ooh, sounds scary, right?

Well, there's another key part of the ToS that The Washington Post and Photofocus missed. And it's an important one.

Detailed by Michael Zhang of PetaPixel, the previous articles took parts of the ToS out of context in order to support their arguments. The missing parts, said (emphasis his):

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

Par for the Course...

In truth, the ToS on Google Plus isn't all that different than those on other photography websites, writes a commenter on the WaPo article. "In order to resize an image you have to have the rights to do so. In order to display an image, worldwide, in a format or dimension or crop other than the original you have to have the rights to do that," they explain.

These weren't the only sites digging into the Terms and trying to figure out what they mean. For example, on ColbyBrownPhotography.com, Brown writes that there are bigger benefits from the social marketing that could come from using the service than there are concerns. In addition, he says, "I don't know anyone in their right mind that submits images onto the Web that have a higher DPI then 72 (300 is suggested for high quality printing) or images larger then 1024 pixels. Everyone I know, at least at the professional level, also has some sort of watermark on the images they publish online."

That makes sense.

But You're Not a Lawyer!

For those still concerned, the rallying cry behind their argument might go something like this: "But you're not a lawyer!" Nope, we're not.

But Denise Howell is. She's an appellate, intellectual property and technology lawyer, blogger and podcast host who studied at UCLA. On her blog, BagandBaggage.com, she thoroughly dispels the panic surrounding the Google Plus ToS.

The main issue for photographers, she says, is that by granting Google any type of license to the photos, they would lose the option to grant another entity an "exclusive" license for use and display of that same work. (This is the case with blogger Scott Bourne of the aforementioned Photofocus, for instance.) However, that's not a Google-only issue - it's something photographers should think about before posting their content on any Web service, social or otherwise.

Howell also notes a couple of sections where she thinks the Terms could be clearer - specifically the parts about how content may be shared with "syndicated services" which aren't defined (APIs? RSS feeds?) as well as the "promotion" license which seems to indicate photos can be used to promote the social network in ads and other materials.

Still, it's not likely that Google would delve into your private "Family" Circle for its marketing material, so this is more of an issue with the wording than a privacy concern at this point, we would argue.

Overall, Howell says she's not "personally overwrought" by the license Google asks users to grant. Bottom line: you probably shouldn't be either.

But with the technology Google has licensed from SRI, image stabilization will no longer be a concern ... at least on Android. Google is implementing the SRI tech in its Google Talk application, to deliver better video on Android 3.0+ devices. And that may be only the beginning of Google's computer vision plans.

Image stabilization technology is over 20 years old, with initial applications built for defense use by DARPA. The technology was crucial to autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles and robotics. Someone driving a tank, for example, would get nauseous in 2 minutes if it weren't for stabilization technologies, Winarsky says.

But these days, the tech has made its way into more benign, consumer-facing efforts, like Google Talk, apparently. Here, the video chatting application captures the video from a device's front-facing camera and compresses the data before transmission. In the compression algorithms, the amount of bandwidth used increases with the amount of motion in a scene.

By stabilizing the video, SRI's software allows the compression to take up fewer bits. Simply put, it's more efficient. It takes less work and fewer resources.

What Could Google Do, Post-Video Stabilization?

Although SRI can't talk for Google or about its future plans in this area, saying only that it "fully hopes to work beyond this app with Google," Winarsky was happy to talk in more general terms about where computer vision technologies are headed.

Once you have the stabilization down, he says, you can then work on things like tracking objects that appear in the frame, tracking the motion of objects and recognizing those objects. Head tracking, for example, was demonstrated at this year's Google I/O where the stabilization technology was used in conjunction with a face-tracking API (application programming interface) that will arrive in a future version of Google's mobile operating system Android.

Put it all together - stabilization, image tracking and image recognition - and you have "augmented reality" (AR), a term that describes technology that lets your device "see" the world in front of its camera lens and then act on that data in some way.

Google, of course, is already experimenting with AR to some extent through its "Google Goggles" application which lets you use pictures to search the Web. Google Goggles can currently identify things like landmarks, books, art, wine and logos, but has recently started recognizing text, too, in order to perform on-the-fly translations between languages.

Facial Recognition in Video?

There are other things that stabilization can help to enable, says Winarsky. For example, facial recognition. Until an image is stabilized, such a thing would not be possible on video. After stabilization though, the same type of algorithms that currently work on still images could be applied to moving video.

Google already uses facial recognition in its online photo-sharing service Picasa (soon to be rebranded as "Google Photos"), so it's not a big leap to assume that Google could introduce something like that to its video applications and services someday. Facial recognition in Google Talk? YouTube? Google Goggles? Who knows?

Case in point: earlier this year, Google denied that it has a facial recognition app in development, after CNN published a report to the contrary, including an on-record statement from a Google employee confirming its existence.  And Google recently rolled out a smart update to search that allows you to search for things using only an image. And guess what? It works for images of people, too.

So why not make people chatting with you on video, seen through your camera lens or those appearing in online videos "Googleable" objects? There's only one reason not to: it's a little creepy. But creepy/awesome is the line Google likes to toe. For the company, it's not a matter of if something is possible - it's only a matter of when is the right time to release it.

Stabilization, on its own, may seem like minor news, but it's an important first step towards a future where the world itself, and all the people in it, are things you can Google just by looking at them.

Why is this? Because it's the one feature that will actually encourage adoption.

In many ways, Google Plus is a Facebook-inspired clone. Google hasn't rethought social so much as re-engineered it. You can almost visualize the checklist that went into the social network's creation. Do we have a like button? Check! (It's the+1 button.) Do we have a News Feed? Check! (It's the "Stream.") Do we have privacy settings? Check! (They're called Circles.)

That's not to say that Google hasn't done a great job with the implementation. Google Plus is already a much better product than the half-baked experiment that was Google Buzz, the mashed-up social networking aggregator that was smooshed into your Gmail inbox.

But for the mainstream user, a Facebook-like experience isn't necessarily enough of a draw to lure them away from a social network where their friends already hang out, to a new one populated with their email contacts, no matter how pretty it looks.

Unless, there's a reason. And in Google Plus's case, that reason is photos.

Android is Google Plus's Secret Weapon

There are now half a million Android phones activated each day. As of May 2011, there were over 100 million Android devices worldwide. Consider this Google Plus's potential install base.

And what's the key to social networking success? Photos. Facebook, if anything, is simply the world's largest online photo sharing service. All those status updates and Farmville sessions are just icing on the cake. This summer, Facebook is expected to cross the 100 billion photos mark, which is an impressive statistic, to be sure. However, Facebook still struggles on the mobile front, and even more so on Android, which is less developed than its iPhone counterpart.

Have you ever tried uploading a group of photos to Facebook from your phone using the native app's uploader? Isn't it fun to upload pictures one-by-one to albums you have to first create and name? Oh, it's not?

Well, don't worry then, Google has you covered.

While much of what Google offers feels like a Facebook alternative, the Android application is Plus's real innovation. With an opt-in feature called "Instant Uploads," your mobile phone's photos are immediately online, and are, by default, private only to you. Later, you can visit you that private album's page, and reshare individual photos with the appropriate group. Baby photos? Maybe just share with family and/or close friends. Photos of a beautiful scenic view you took on your nature walk? Share with everyone. And so on. You decide.

"Unlimited" Photos Beats iCloud's PhotoStream Limit of 1,000, & Share by Email is Easier than on Facebook

This photo-sharing idea in Google Plus isn't so different, really, than what Apple is introducing with iCloud. Via iCloud's PhotoStream service, your mobile photos are synced to all your devices instantly: computer, mobile. "cloud" (Apple's servers). But iCloud has an Achilles' Heel: if you don't manually move those photos into photo albums on your Mac or PC, they'll eventually disappear. iCloud, you see, only stores the last 1,000 images in the "cloud."

Google Plus, however, will store them all, forever. (Or at least for as long as Google exists.)

Out of everything that Google has launched, this one feature stands out as having the potential for the most disruption and the most viral impact, not only because of this instant upload and free cloud storage, but also because of the "share by email" feature. That's right: your "friends" don't have to be on Google Plus before you initiate the sharing process.

Unfortunately, this feature is currently broken. The recipient receives a confusing "we're working out the kinks email" instead.

Of course, we should give credit where credit is due. Share by email isn't a Google innovation, but the implementation is much better. For example, Facebook has a similar option, but it's tucked away at the bottom of your photo album, practically hidden from view.

For Google, share by email makes sense. After all, Google has your Gmail address book on hand, and can easily auto-complete email addresses for you, even if you don't want to use the friend lists known as "Circles."

And if you wanted to, you could even choose to just use Google Plus to share photos via email or with your Circles, while ignoring its other Facebook-like features like the News Feed...err...Stream, and chat. Of course, once you get comfortable with Photos, you might venture out and give those other things a shot, too. Hey, that's not a bad plan, Google.

From the description, the app seems somewhat basic, maybe even a little boring: share photos via Facebook, Twitter or email. But it does so with a simplicity, elegance and ease that I've often found lacking elsewhere.

Above: Sample Photogram

Even though there are social networking sharing mechanisms built in to give the app a more universal appeal, the app's target demographic is, to be sure, parents. Like me. And especially parents who need to share iPhone photos with their kids' grandparents, and everyone else who "doesn't have a Facebook yet." (Yes, despite Facebook's some 500+ million users, there are still so many who still prefer email for photo-sharing. I know, shocking.)

While the iPhone's photo gallery app makes emailing photos easy enough, the end result is just a plain email. Photogram, instead, lets you dress things up a bit with a selection of artistic themes to showcase your photos, some of which are free and some that are paid. There are "baby" and family-oriented themes, party themes, minimalist themes, outdoor themes, and many others.

But the real killer feature is the ability to create recipient groups so you can share with the same folks (e.g. "grandparents," "friends," etc.) over and over again, without having to address the emails by hand. Facebook and Twitter can be combined with email recipient groups too, so you can send our your photos everywhere in just one step. Genius.

An App for Everyone

While none of these things are new innovations, necessarily, it's the way they're put together that makes the app so great. There aren't those trendy photo filters to mess with like in Instagram and its clones, you don't have to create a "profile," add friends or find others to follow - you just pick a few photos (4 max.), add a message and share. So easy, anyone can use it. And that's the point.

Sometimes, simply making a task easier, quicker and more fun is all it takes to win me over. Now, Photogram, won't you please come to Android?

Below: Photogram of the most adorable child in the world: mine.

The company has slowly added features over recent months and today unveiled a new version of its app with three big new features that could make a big difference in the ways we use Instagram. Those changes are upgraded user biographies, hashtag autocomplete and a new page to view all the photos you've clicked "Like" on in the past. Can Instagram keep its clean simplicity while adding more and more features? Time will tell, but these changes look to me like good ones so far.

Right: The new Instagram profile pages are beginning to look more and more like some of the company's competitors' profile designs.

Hashtag autocomplete is something that the Twitter iPhone app has offered for some time and the feature is an attempt to get users to contribute photos and comments to a stream of topical conversation. It is, no doubt, added at least in part so that the commercial partners Instagram hopes to monetize will have some more solid ground in order to monitor their interests. If it catches on, though, it will also likely lead to some very interesting photo-discussions about topics of interest around the world. Especially once Instagram finally launches an app on more affordable Android devices (right now it's iPhone only) then it could become a service used to capture (and perhaps unfortunately over-filter) a photographic record of history unfolding.

The whole ethos of Instagram has been about speed, simplicity, lightness, a dreamy haze and a light layer of brief social interactions. There's still almost no web presence to refer to your photos there, you can't search for your photos or other peoples' photos.

The app now stands at an odd place between simplicity and a growing list of features. Will that mix serve it and its users well? Will the startup that did so well building a simple social mobile user experience do as well at growing its app up? Time will tell.

But would you trust Twitter to host your photos? Twitter, the network for fleeting thoughts, in short form? The service that has let so much history pass through its fingers with so little agony voiced over its barely accessible archives and shallow search? I don't know if I, or others, will trust Twitter to host photos. I want mine cross-posted to Flickr, just for safety's sake. I asked, on Twitter, if other people would trust Twitter with their photos and got a resounding No. Tweets are Tweets, but photos are something special.

Many developers have expected Twitter to do something like this for a long time, though, and it makes a lot of sense for the company to enrich its offering by building photo sharing in-house. Twitter has said over and over that developers shouldn't build apps that mirror what an official Twitter client does or even might do. They are the media company, their ecosystem participants are now the analytics providers on top of the media - not the media themselves.

Facebook, of course, has a long and illustrious history of success with photo sharing and archiving. Facebook was a network built on trust, security and privacy though - until its talons were sunk deep enough that it could do a 180 on privacy without anyone feeling capable of leaving any longer.

Twitter is different. It's public, wide open, temporal, poorly archived.

Those days may be past, though. Twitter's staff is much larger and stronger than it was in the early days and its struggles with archives may be more a result of historical architecture than the company's current state. The company added a feature back in last week, for example, that it had removed two years ago because it was computationally expensive.

Would you, could you, should you trust Twitter to save your precious little moments in pictures? We're likely to find out very soon.

The tags will appear on the "photo" tag on the Facebook Page, not on the walls and can be tagged by anyone on Facebook, not just people who have liked that page. For the start of the feature, only Facebook Pages with the "brands & products" or "people" categories can be tagged in photos. Facebook will look to expand that to more page categories over time.

This seems like a smart play by Facebook as it tries to become a stronger destination for companies and brands online. Marketers could focus viral ad campaigns around photo tagging like "show us the weirdest place you ever drank a Pepsi and win a trip to Bonnaroo" or something of that nature.

Are you going to start tagging brands in your Facebook photos? Let us know in the comments.

The LightBox photo app, a combination camera and photo gallery, is only the first of many the company plans to build. These apps, for the most part, will be designed to replace default Android features with professionally designed counterparts.

Being an Android user myself for several months now after switching from iPhone, I have to admit that I haven't completely gotten used to the far more "geeky" nature of the apps I find on the Android platform. It's an ecosystem where functionality and feature set takes precedence over design - not that there's anything wrong with that - but it's a startling shift after years on the iPhone. There are exceptions to this, of course. The major application makers (Foursquare, Twitter, etc.) tend to deliver a relatively consistent experience across devices. And there are apps, like LauncherPro for example, that have an almost Apple-like feel and quality. But many of Android's most exciting and unique apps have more to do with geeking out with your device than ogling mobile eye candy. A perfect example of this is Tasker, a complex but powerful tool that allows you to control every aspect of an Android phone. (Read more about Tasker here.)

In other words, there's a lot you can do on Android, but it isn't always pretty. LightBox may change that.

A Social Camera Roll

If you're a die-hard iPhone user, you may or may not think LightBox is anywhere near iOS-quality.  But you might be making the mistake of judging the app in terms of Apple's design standards. Instead, this app uses Android-specific user interfaces, like tabs at the top and option menus. These are things Android users know well and expect to see, but leave some iPhone fans cold. So let's just say this: for Android, this is a very attractive app.

LightBox is easy to use, too. The built-in camera function lets you snap a pic, optionally apply colorful filters through a scrollable interface above the photo and then tap "OK" to save the photo. On the next screen, you can add a brief description of the photo, set its privacy options and share it to your social networks.

This screen is definitely my favorite. Everything you do here is a simple tap of a button. You can choose to include location, set sharing options and configure privacy settings. Photos are always synced to LightBox's own servers, either publicly or privately, plus the app supports Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr for now. Integration with Foursquare is in the works, as is support for other social sites like flickr, Picasa, Posterous and more.

Your photos can also be viewed within the app, as can popular public photos others are sharing. The nice thing here is that the photos are continually synced with LightBox servers, so they load quickly in full resolution, even when being pulled down from the Web for display. This syncing, we're told, is done effectively so there won't be a hit to the device's battery, but I haven't used the app long enough to determine whether this is true. I haven't noticed any negative effects so far, however.

At present, there are some issues with application crashes, but to be fair, the app is actively being coded now. It's very early. I won't judge this app's bugginess or lack thereof until its developers say it's ready for testing. I'm assuming the problems I'm experiencing now will be dealt with in future updates.

"Android-First" is the Big News Here

But what's most exciting about LightBox, is not just this app, it's the company's agenda going forward. LightBox will focus on building great Android experiences first, and iOS ones later. That's a shift in thinking that's well overdue, especially given Android's market share numbers.

TechCrunch recently wrote up details regarding the company's initial round, which will help the company grow its team. Investors include Index Ventures, Accel Partners, SV Angel, 500 Startups and angel investors Beth Ellyn McClendon (formerly UX Designer/Product Manager for Google Maps, YouTube, Android, and Google.org), Brian McClendon (VP Engineering at Google), Charlie Oppenheimer (EIR at Matrix), Michael Herf (formerly CTO of Picasa), Pasha Sadri (founder and CEO of Polyvore), Shishir Mehrotra (head of Monetization at YouTube).

LightBox will launch into private beta soon - a sign up sheet is here on its website if you want to participate in the upcoming tests.

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According to Justin Mitchell, an engineer on Facebook Photos, photo privacy on the social network is complex. "Really complex," he says. "Probably 10 people in the world intimately understand the privacy calculations involved when you attempt to view a photo on Facebook. That said, this information should be generally available, and the principles behind it explained." He then did just that, in 8 "easy" steps.

The list below, said Mitchell, is a checklist where the first item for which the condition is met will determine the visibility of a photo posted to Facebook (profiles only, though, not Pages).

This is what he wrote:

1. Is it your photo? You can always see your own photos.
2. Are you tagged in the photo? If so, the photo is always visible. It does not matter if the photo owner has you blocked, or anything else, the photo will always be visible to you. This is necessary, since anyone tagged in a photo has a right to untag themselves.
3. Was the photo posted to your profile's wall? If so, the photo is always visible. This is necessary, since anyone should have the right to remove content from their own profile.
4. Has the photo owner blocked you? If so, you may not see the photo.
5. Does the owner of the photo allow friends-of-friends to see people tagged in their photos? If so, and if you are friends with anyone tagged in the photo, then the photo is visible.
6. If the photo belongs to a "special album", for instance a wall album or profile picture album, then obey those privacy settings.
7. If the photo has photo-specific privacy, for instance wall or mobile photos, obey that privacy.
8. Obey the photo album privacy.

There is already some debate on the thread about whether or not this list is 100% accurate, but since it's coming from someone at Facebook who would know, we believe it is.

Next Page: More Thoughts on Online Privacy

Online Privacy Too Complex, Please Give Up

What this list demonstrates, however, is the tricky, complicated structure of Facebook Privacy settings - an issue that ended up under the spotlight earlier this year for being overly complex , prompting Facebook to redesign the interface for simplicity. (It still is not that).

Can the average end user read that checklist and really understand the nature of their photos' privacy? We would bet many will find it confusing. And even more wouldn't even care to try.

What are YOU Hiding?

Maybe it's time for everyone to give up on online privacy, anyway. I mean, who wants to share thoughts with only a few select friends, as Facebook was originally designed to allow? Isn't making everything you think, say or do available to the wider world best? Why should different groups of people know you in different ways? What are you trying to hide, pray tell? Your private, personal life? Your actual identity?

Ahem.

OK, I'm being a bit sarcastic here. But I'll admit, I'm more than a little suspicious of anyone who goes completely anonymous on the Internet today - especially those that run around in tech circles spouting off expert opinions hidden behind thinly veiled agendas to either affect stock prices, aid their employer, hide from their employer or even just post adoring praise about a newly launched startup. (Hello, hired PR flack!)

Increasingly, going online at all means giving up your privacy, your personal information and your anonymity.  (See The Wall St. Journal's "What They Know" series, for example, or the new lawsuit against Apple claiming its mobile apps sharing personal data.)

It's the beginning of the end, folks.

As for Facebook, it spent several months during 2010 under fire when it decided to default all its users' posted content to "public" including things like status updates, photos posted, links and videos, etc. because, you know, everyone wants everything to be public and the world would be a better place if that was the case. Well, that's Mark Zuckberberg's agenda at least. Eventually, some of these changes were rolled back and the new controls were put into place, but the company's crusade is far from over.

Now, Facebook is hard at work spreading "Instant Personalization" (the feature which gives select websites the ability to instantly tap into your Facebook profile information to customize their site) to even more online properties. Originally launched with Docs.com, Pandora and Yelp to the scrutiny of federal regulars, Facebook has recently expanded the program to Clicker, Bing, TripAdvisor, Rotten Tomatoes, and Scribd. The difference? This time around, no one seems to care.

The end of privacy and extreme openness seem to be to be the inevitable conclusion of a world cyberlinked together though the Internet. Information, as they say, wants to be free. From your Facebook photos to the private inner-workings of international diplomacy courtesy of Wikileaks. Managing online privacy is overly complex, businesses, marketers and advertisers want you to believe - it's easier to give up, give in and disclose.

Will you? Have you?

Built on top of Linux, the feel of Chrome OS is that of just using a Web browser running on a small notebook computer. This leads to some obvious limitations, of course. For example, how do you transfer files from a USB device to Google Chrome OS? The short answer: you don't. But I found an exception just the other day - I managed to access photos on a USB Flash drive in a surprising way.

I knew that plugging in a USB flash drive to my Chrome OS would get me nowhere. As a Web-only operating system, Chrome OS isn't designed (for now, at least), to access external storage. According to Google's own Help documentation, the USB port on the notebook's right side allows you to connect the "most common devices" including things like "external monitors with VGA connections, USB mice and keyboards, headsets, and microphones."

Not USB flash drives. I mean, really - who uses that stuff anymore?

Well, I guess I do, although not by choice. This particular USB flash drive was given to me by another family member and it had photos of my daughter's 1st birthday party on it. In Google's world, those photos should have been uploaded to the "cloud" - Google Docs, perhaps, Picasa Web Albums, maybe or a competitor's service like Flickr, Facebook, etc. Too bad grandma didn't get the memo about the cloud. What to do now?

Using Facebook to Get to USB Storage from Chrome OS

Surprisingly, I found that I could upload the photos in question to Facebook by the way of Facebook's own photo uploader. It allowed me to dig into the Linux file structure under Chrome OS, locate the external storage drive media, and choose the photo I wanted. It was buggy, but it worked.

Instead of using the photo upload button from the Status Update box on my Facebook profile page, I went into my Facebook photo albums. From a new album I created, I clicked the button to add photos.

In the window that appears, click "Select Photos:"

Then, you'll be into the Chrome OS file system. Find the Media folder. (Sorry, I didn't have any way to screenshot these since I was now no longer in a webpage where I could access my "screenshot taking" Chrome extensions).

In the Media folder, I found two folders - my photos were in the second one.

I picked the photo I wanted, then clicked OK. The photo uploaded to Facebook:

TA-DA! Cloud workaround!

Now a word of warning: this process didn't always go smoothly, Chrome OS would report unresponsive Web pages (I clicked "Wait" and all was well), the Flash plugin would crash and sometimes, the photo wouldn't even upload the first time, but the second time it would. Obviously, this feature isn't ready for primetime. But in a pinch, it worked.

Enjoy!

"Changing pictures on Facebook to include product placement will create false memories," Raskin warned at the conclusion of a 45 minute presentation about the plasticity of human memory. "We will have memories of things we never did with brands we never did. Our past actions are the best predictor of our future decisions, so now all of a sudden, our future decisions are in the hands of people who want to make money off of us. That makes me very, very scared. I can see this happening and I can see it happening very soon."

Raskin, aged 27, is one of the most prolific inventors at Mozilla and a serial entrepreneur besides. In the keynote speech (embedded below) he makes a call to arms for information professionals to try to stop this dystopian future of cognitive brand subterfuge of free will, but he notes that no one knows how to inoculate people from it. Even people aware of the tactics remain susceptible to them, he argues.

The full video of Raskin's talk is embedded below. Time-pressed viewers can skip to 30:58, where Raskin tells a charming story about Michael Arrington and discusses the social media specifics beyond the cognitive generalities he spends most of the talk discussing.

Note: The video contains a discussion of sexual violence that may not be suitable for some viewers, between the 15:00 and 20:00 marks.

What do you think? Are Raskin's concerns realistic and properly framed? If so, what can be done about this - if anything? I've emailed Facebook to ask it what the company thinks of these arguments and will update this post when I get a reply. The concerns raised by Raskin need not be specific to Facebook, but that site does offer many of the preconditions Raskin says are required for the effective creation of false memories and has already experimented extensively with the use of social endorsements of questionable authenticity.

Update: Facebook responded and said it had no comment.